Using iTunes on an external hard drive

My iTunes are clogging my lap-top C drive, so I've purchased an external HD. I have a single USB connection between the external drive and the lap-top. I'd like to run iTunes from the external drive exclusively, but can't quite figure it out; any one done this successfully?
Thanks

Sure.
First thing you're going to want to do is transfer everything to the external:
MacMuse: Moving iTunes to a new drive
Then, just make sure that the external drive is powered on and connected every time you start iTunes.

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How to use iTunes with an external hard drive?

Hi-
I'm pretty new to iTunes, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. I have about 15GB worth of music saved onto my laptop now and taking up a ton of space. So I got an 80GB external hard drive to move everything onto. What I don't understand, though, is what happens after I save my music onto the external hard drive and remove from my laptop hard drive. How do I play music in iTunes from the files stored on the external hard drive?
Thanks in advance!!
HP Compaq NC6000 notebook Windows 2000

Welcome to discussions! Even though this is the "using iTunes music store" forum, for questions & issues using the store, I can go ahead & offer a little advice. This link from MacMuse will explain about moving iTunes to a new drive. The most important point being is you must tell iTunes the location of the iTunes music folder on the EHD. Please post back if you have any questions.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=121879

Using Itunes with an external hard drive

I have an old powerbook which has become full with all my music. I have bought an external ION hardrive. All i want to do is transfer my entire music collection to the ION drive, whilst keeping all the titles and artist info within itunes, so that it acts as a frontline database that points to the external harddrive. I do not feel the need to have any music on my internal harddrive and am happy to only ever be able to access my music with the external hard drive attached.
I have played around with it, but have now managed to have a few bits on the ION, and a few bits in the powerbook and nothing seems to be able to find the other. This creates problems when i then connect my ishuffle, which seems to find nothing.
I hope i've done nothing terminal. Any help?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Thanks for the help. I should point out that there is only one powerbook involved, not 2. Anyway, I have done that and indeed my ION external hardrive shows all the music files, but they are no longer featured in itunes at all. i thought i would see th titles of my library there, but the actual files would be on my external hard drive.
It a mystery! how do i get the titles and artists info back into itunes whilst the actual music stays on the external hard drive?

Using iTunes 7 with external hard drive

I just purchased an external hard drive (Verbatim Smart disc) to hold all my music because my library was too large for my iBook. All the music was loaded onto it by the nice people at the Mac store who helped me sort out why my computer was being funky. I launched iTunes and went to the Advanced section of the Preferences to tell it to find my music on the external drive now. But it's not listing any of the music. So it looks like nothing is there, even though the music is all there. Have I missed a step? How do I get it to see my library in its new home? Thanks for any advice!

Thanks for the recommendation. The article was good, but didn't quite address my problem. The article details what to do to copy your library over to a new location on a hard drive. My situation is that my library has already been moved over to the external hard drive. The nice guys at the mac store did that for me and reinstalled my system software when I started having trouble with my computer. So now when I go through these steps to attempt to make my iTunes find the library, it doesn't for some reason. I've followed all the steps and it makes perfect sense, but it's not working. Any other clues?

How do i use itunes through an external hard drive?

i have about 10G left on my laptop's harddrive. i've been told placing itunes on an external harddrive would free up space.
i put everything on the harddrive, did the whole advanced stuff by changing the location, etc. etc. but ater all that there's still no difference on my hard drive....
what the heck?

Hi... Looks like things have got a little confused over there. Can we get a few facts straight before suggesting things that might make matters worse?
Where exactly is your active library file? If you hold down shift as you start iTunes and click the option to Choose a library, then drop down the list box at the top of the search box it should reveal the current path. E.g. mine here is at D:\iTunes and the library file is called iTunes Library.itl so my active library is D:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl
BTW if you didn't get asked to choose or create a library you didn't do it right.
What is the current setting under Edit > Preferences > Advanced tab for the location of the iTunes Media folder? Mine is D:\iTunes\iTunes Media.
Where is the media that you've moved around? Are there copies on the internal drive and the external drive? Select a file in your library that currently plays, press CTRL-I to get info, and copy down the location of the file from the Summary tab. Repeat the process for a file with a broken link. Its path should begin file://localhost...
With all these bits of information we should have a better picture of where things currently stand. I have scripts that can be used to repair broken links, and iTunes has got better at doing it by itself, but things need to be in a sensible layout before that is worth trying.
tt2

How to run itunes off an external hard drive using the new itunes

I have windows 8. I installed the new itunes and I want to know how to run itunes off an external hard drive.
thank you for your help.

Same way as before, hold down shift as you start iTunes, Choose or Create a library.
tt2

I moved itunes file to external hard drive and want to move the file on my pc to recycle bin. When I move i get an error message that it cannot delete ituneshelper.dll access is denied. Can I move that file to the recycle bin?

I am trying to free up space on my pc and moving itunes files to external hard drive. I have followed instructions and believe I have file copied to new drive, but I am having trouble moving file to recycle bin as the instructions say. I am getting the following error message: cannot delete ituneshelper.dll:access denied, make sure disk is not full or write protected and file not in use. I know the file is not in use when trying to move. Any help would be most appreciated. I am on Windows XP.

Yes. And you should not have moved that folder. Put it back. To move your iTunes library move the folder from User's Music.
tt2

I am trying to backup my Itunes onto my external hard drive. I am at the step where I on Itunes, click on File - Library - Organize library. I am suppose to check mark both boxes there, It won't allow me to check mark the second box, why? How to fix this.

I am trying to backup my Itunes onto my external hard drive. I am at the step where I on Itunes, click on File ->Library ->Organize library. I am suppose to check mark both boxes there, the first being "Consolidate Files" & the second being "Reorganize files in the folder 'Itunes Media'. I am able to checkmark the first box but It won't allow me to check mark the second box, why? How can i fix this? Please help!

Well you must have made a mistake somewhere. The last instruction of step four reads:
When you've found your iTunes library folder, drag that folder to your external hard drive. This will begin the iTunes backup. The amount of time the backup will take depends on the size of your library. When the transfer is done, your backup is complete and your external hard drive can be disconnected.
Normally dragging content from to a new location on a different drive will result in a copy action which is what you were supposed to do. At a guess you somehow managed to move the iTunes folder. Then when you started iTunes it created a new blank library for you assuming it had just been installed rather that raising a warning.
Close iTunes. Rename the iTunes folder on the internal drive as iTunes (Empty) then copy the iTunes folder from the external back into the User's Music folder. Start iTunes. All should be well.
When you've made sure it all works please read my User Tip and use that method to backup in future. Since you already have a folder with the backup in place you can skip the "Make New" operation in the fourth step and simply choose the external folder.
tt2

How do I back up my itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary

How do I back up my entire itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary.
Thanks

This is where iTunes stores backups for different operating systems: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
I do not use a Windows machine, have a Windows Vista Dell I rarely startup now. But, from what I remember with Win boxes is, you will have to create on the external hard drive a file system like that one iTunes normally uses, and then in the iTunes preferences or control panel edit the location for the storage to specify the name of the external hard drive, or its letter code, with the name of that file system you created on the exernal drive.
I would also move all of the files from the internal file system to the external since you have now told iTunes that is where they are...before deleting from the internal drive, test iTunes to see that it goes where you want it to go.

ITunes Library to External Hard Drive...and iTunes Match???

So, my iTunes library is getting too large for my computer's storage capacity. I'm thinking of moving some of my library to an external, USB hard drive. However, I've never done iTunes through an external hard drive before and I have some questions.
Can I copy new discs (import) straight onto the external hard drive? Or do they need to go onto my computer first then get transferred to the hard drive?
Can I still use iTunes Match and pull songs from the library on my hard drive and from the main computer?
To partition a library between a computer and an external hard drive, do I need to activate sharing or anything special? Or will the computer/main iTunes library just consider the external drive to be a different location for some of the tracks?
How would I backup the external hard drive? Would Time Machine (running off a separate hard drive) back up another external hard drive if they were both plugged in?
Can you burn the entire library to data discs anymore? Or do you need to make a playlist of your entire library? If the latter, is there a way to turn off the message about iTunes in the Cloud playlists only accepting songs matched or uploaded? I have some songs that erroneously did not get matched or uploaded. If I try to put them in a playlist and burn it to a data disc for backup, iTunes won't do it.
Please help!

I recommend you keep everything inside the iTunes folder.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder from internal to external.
Hold Option and launch iTunes.
Select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder you copied to the external.
This is all you need to do. Everything will work normally.
You can delete now /Music/iTunes/ folder on the internal.

My iTunes on my external hard drive

I've been getting messages that my startup disk is full. I have an external hard drive and I was wondering if I can put my iTunes library on the external hard drive. All of the articles I've seen on the board here concern backing up iTunes on to external hard drive. However is it possible for me to put my library on only the external hard drive and not on my computer so I can free up space?
Thanks!

Yeah, that's my question too... My Linkstation LAN disk holds all of my iTunes collection, but whenever my computer goes to sleep and wakes up again, the mount to the LAN disk is broken temporarily, causing iTunes to constantly be reverting to it's default file location on the Macintosh HD (internal). This is horribly irritating. Every day, sometimes several times a day, I have to keep going back into the settings, changing it back, then manually copying all the file it accidentally put onto the internal drive back to the LAN disk, then going in and resetting the pointers on each individual file in iTunes to the external location. If I try using the consolidate library, for some reason it starts re-copying my entire 500+GB library from the beginning. Arghh. I want iTunes to stop defaulting back to the internal drive without asking me. Is there a way to set that?

HT201250 can i back up my iTunes on one external hard drive to another external hard drive through time machine?

I have my itunes on an external hard drive which I use on my macbook. Can I back these files up through time machine onto a second external hard drive?

For TM yes, for another backup program running on the mac yes. You can avoid the NTFS issue by installing a NTFS driver in your mac: there are two proven ones: Paragon and NTFS-3G. These drivers make it possible for a mac to read and write NTFS formatted drives.
But it will not help TM (I am not 100% sure about that), but other backup apps it will help.

HT1727 how do I transfer my iTunes from an external hard drive to a different computer?

How do I transfer my iTunes from an external hard drive to a pc?

If you don't have all of your music files within the iTunes Music folder structure, simply moving all of your music to a new location will not result in your iTunes library automatically updating the file paths to all of your songs appropriately. If you have a few other locations in which you store your music, you can take the ExportImport script turingtest2 wrote, make the modifications below, export the results, paste them into Microsoft Word or Excel, do a Find and Replace with the correct file location, and then import the new locations. To use the script, follow turingtest2's instructions on this thread as posted on Dec 19, 2012 6:28 AM.
Note that the modifications, while they worked for me, show my lack of experience with VB as the progress bar will no longer work. Definitely be sure to back up your iTunes library file before executing the script with the below modifications, but doing this for 3500 items didn't even take 2 minutes for the script to run.
Line 89 was:        Prog=True
Line 89 is now:     Prog=False
* I had to do this because otherwise the progress bar was erroring out. So, i just turned it off.
Lines 164-165 were:
'File.WriteLine "<#>" & .Location           ' Not so useful if working with missing tracks
'File.WriteLine "<Album>" & .Album
Lines 164-165 are now three lines (the middle one is the only uncommented line):
'File.WriteLine "<#>" & .Location           ' Not so useful if working with missing tracks
File.WriteLine "<Location>" & .Location
'File.WriteLine "<Album>" & .Album
Finally, insert this whole block around line 270 so that it looks similar to the others:
        Case "<location>"
          If T.Location<>Value Then                ' Don't update if value won't change
            T.Location=Value
            U=U+1
            Trace T,"Updated Location"
          Else
            V=V+1
          End If
          'If Trace Then MsgBox "Updated Location"
Note that I had to comment the very last line as well or else the program errored out. You won't be able to trace the results either.
Just thought I'd share this in case anyone else needed something like this.

I just bought a MBA and I need to move my photos and itunes to an external hard drive (from my old MacBook Pro) because they won't fit on the Air. I got the photos moved fine and I followed an online tutorial to move the necessary files for itunes, but i

I just bought a MBA and I need to move my photos and itunes to an external hard drive (from my old MacBook Pro) because they won't fit on the Air. I got the photos moved fine and I followed an online tutorial to move the necessary files for itunes, but it didn't work. The files copied fine, but when I tell iTunes on the Air to look at the external drive for the library, it doesn't find anything. What I copied was the entire iTunes Media folder. So, how do I move the necessary iTunes files from my old Pro to a external drive so I can access them from my new Air? Whew!

iTunes- How to move the library to an EHD
After you move the library you need to open iTunes by first depressing the OPTION key then launching iTunes. You will be given a choice of which library to use. This can then be made a permanent change, if you wish, in the Advanced section of iTunes preferences.

Running itunes from an external hard drive

Hi there,
My itunes library is getting a little too large for my iMac to handle (nearing 500gb of my 1TB hard drive, leaving little space for all my other software and documents) and I'd like to move the itunes library and run it from an external hard drive.
I've read the following link and am clear on the procedure...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Sure, I can go through the process and see what happens, however, I thought I'd ask to see if anyone else has done something similar and am curious as to whether they encountered any issues / have any words of wisdom to impart?!
I have an Apple TV which syncs with my iTunes, as well as an iPad and an iPhone. The iPad and iPhone sync when connected, but the Apple TV syncs over WiFi...
Will I have any side affects by moving my library to an external hard drive?
I plan to purchase a drive with FireWire 800. That said, I do have a 2TB TimeCapsule, but I cant seem to find any decent information on how to use it as an external hard drive...(even though, I believe, it says you can do so in the 'sales bumf' on the Apple store)
Your thoughts/advice/comments wold be appreciated!
Cheers,
D

MacFormat Issue 236 page 65.
Sorted!

Using iTunes on an external hard drive

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