Why Does my iTunes library take up so much space on my hard drive?

Hi, I have a MacBook (white) and I'm having some annoying problems with iTunes. First, I had about 8,000 songs in my iTunes library. I deleted the songs I don't listen to/don't want anymore, and I deleted about 2,000 songs. I also deleted about 40 home movies that I shot, and all my podcasts. After several restarts and opening and closing iTunes, the space my iTunes folder in my music folder still takes up over 45 GB of space, even though I only have 18 GB of music in my iTunes. Any ideas as to how I can get rid of all the extra files and reclaim some of my much-needed disk space? Thanks in advance!

Diane Wordsmith wrote:
If you did not see the dialog box asking if you wanted to delete from the hard drive, I think this may be one of those options where you can say "Don't ask again," meaning until you trash your iTunes prefs, it will cease asking the question.
you can bring those dialogs back. iTunes > preferences > advanced > reset all dialog warnings
JGG

Similar Messages

Why does the "other" category take up so much space on my iphone?

I want to get rid of the "other category that is taking up so much space on my iPhone. It's taking up 2GB of space. Thanks!

This much "other" indicates corrupt files.
A restore should resolve.

Since I have iTunes match, why does my iTunes library not appear in iPhoto music options for slideshow?; only songs purchased or placed on iTunes over a year ago appear in the iPhoto library under the iTunes or purchased option.

since I have iTunes match, why does my iTunes library not appear in iPhoto music options for slideshow?; only songs purchased or placed on iTunes over a year ago appear in the iPhoto library under the iTunes or purchased option.

10/20/14
Yes, I am signed in to iTunes match on the macbook pro, iPhone , & iPad (all updated & correct music libraries) where I bought all the tunes but still no updated tunes on the iPhoto music library after 3 days of being on iTunes match.
Thank you,
TMAbanjoman

Does copying files into the iTunes library take up even more space?

Hi everyone, I recently upgraded to Leopard and decided to give Boot Camp a try so I backed up everything onto my external hard drive using Time Machine and created my partition for Windows. In doing so, I know have an empty iTunes library.
I just copied everything to my hard drive using Migration Assistant, and although all of the files were locked because I didn't have enough "permission", i fixed that problem. However, when I tried to copy all of my itunes folders into my library, it said that I did not have enough space on my computer for it.
Dose copying music into the library use even more space than what it already is? I'm confused, because I thought that if i have the music files in my computer already I don't need to make another copy of it to place into iTunes...or maybe I'm just confusing myself.
Could someone please just let me know how I can add my music into my library? I really don't think this should be so difficult, I'm just terrible with computers. Thanks!

Under Preferences -> Advanced you can uncheck "copy music to iTunes folder", this should fix your problem.
Hope this helps.

Is there a way to access my iTunes Library, which is stored on a (PC) External Hard Drive, on a MacBook Air (through an Apricorn Universal Hard Drive Adapter), without transferring the music files off of the external hard drive?

Is there a way to access my iTunes Library, which is stored on a (PC) External Hard Drive, on a MacBook Air (through an Apricorn Universal Hard Drive Adapter), without transferring the music files off of the external hard drive?
In other words, because the MacBook Air only has 120 gbs of hard drive space & my old hard drive, from a Lenovo, has 500 gbs of hard drive space (and I have over 120 gbs of music), I’m looking to manage my iTunes music from the external hard drive permanently. Upon attempting to access the iTunes library held on the external hard drive the following message comes up: “The iTunes Library.itl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file”. Is there a way to get around this?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much!

You will have to engage a split library which means you will have to start answering questions on this forum because you will need to learn a lot about how iTunes works in order not that have a big mess at the end of it all. It also won't be easy when the time comes to relocate it all to different drives.
You can go to advanced preferences and turn off organize media and copy to items to media folder when adding items to library. Next read about how to selectively consolidate items to the external drive.
Sept. 2010, Consolidate selected content - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589812 and April 2014, https://discussions.apple.com/message/25414357
"...selected the new tracks directly in iTunes, Control-clicked on the selection, and saw that now you can consolidate selected items." - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090919000326840
Remember that when you start iTunes without the external drive turned on iTunes will present you with a bunch of broken links. If you have automatic downloads enabled with iCloud you may have to turn that off to prevent iTunes from repopulating your drive trying to deal with those "missing" tracks.
If you add tracks in bunches to iTunes and want them to go to different media folders you will need to either add them by holding down the option key while dragging if the desired media folder is not the one set in preferences, or by changing the media folder in preferences. Changing media folder preferences only applies to new files added, not old ones.
Okay, I am going to stop typing because you might just reply to me, "Oh, okay, forget it," and I don't need the exercise.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

Why does AirPort Extreme stop working when I plug in a USB hard drive?

Why does Airport Extreme stop working when I plug in a USB hard drive? The USB drive has its own power supply. I've tried isolating the hard drive from Airport using a powered USB hub to no avail.

The USB port on the AirPort Extreme is borderline as far as its ability to supply adequate power to a hard drive. Another way of saying the same thing is that this is not a high power USB port, like you would find on a computer.
Your 2TB drive likely requires a bit more current than the USB port on the AirPort Extreme can supply. It is also possible that the drive's firmware may not support a network USB connection....only a "local" connection to a computer. Check with Seagate support on that possibility.
Try using a powered USB hub with the 2TB drive....and make sure that the drive is formatted correctly in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or FAT32....which the AirPort Extreme USB port can accept.

Why does my iMac (with Mountain Lion) no longer recognize my external hard drive I have used as a back up via Time Machine after the hard drive was accidentally unplugged?

Why does my iMac (with Mountain Lion) no longer recognize my external hard drive I have used as a back up via Time Machine after the hard drive was accidentally unplugged?

Do you mean the external hard drive is not mounted on the iMac desktop?
Check if Disk Utility sees the drive. Applications / Utilities / Disk Utility. If the external shows up in the left column, select it and click on Mount.
If it does show up this way, I recommend using DU to Repair Disk.

How come itunes match takes up so much space on an iphone even before you download any songs? I noticed my storage space went down about 1gb after enabling itunes match before I downloaded anything.

A couple things about itunes match. First, why does it take up so much space before you download any songs when you enable it on an iphone? Also, why does it not give back that space when you disable itunes match? It would also be very appreciated if Apple would add a confirmation check to itunes match in settings when you disable it - the same way they do when you enable it. More then once I have disabled itunes match when I meant to disable show all music, and it is a pain to wait for itunes match to go through the whole process of enabling itself again.

It is not a bug. However you may leave your polite feedback for Apple at this page: http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Why does writing iTunes library tmp files bring my system to a standstill?

For the last couple months, i have noticed that i periodically get completely balky periods with my mac (stats below) -- eventually i traced them to the times when iTunes is writing temp files (which is pretty much constantly, even if nothing is actually playing or changing in iTunes), which are apparently limited to a .5 to 1.5 MB/sec write speed. Since my library file is over 245MB (and the corresponding XML library 235MB) this means it takes several minutes to cycle through this behavior. While the tmp file write is in progress, the entire rest of the system goes into a veritable work stoppage. Actions do eventually happen, but only after a bunch of beach-ball spinning and cursing.
Any ideas? I've been asking about this for a while and nobody seems to have come up with anything useful yet.
Much thanks in advance. I have a lot of software i don't want to have to reinstall, so something that would skirt that would be preferable to a complete tear-down and rebuild. That isn't even a guarantee of fixing things if this is in fact a hardware problem (which i don't have any real reason to suspect, and would like to rule out in advance, if possible).
-mjb

The file in question "Temp File.tmp" is written to the /Music/iTunes folder, on my startup drive, in my home folder, every time iTunes thinks it needs to update the disk copy of the library. It first rebuilds the "iTunes Library" file, swaps the temp in for that, and does the same for the XML.
No USB is involved in this transaction, unless it somehow going out and re-checking every single entry in my library against the actual file on the external drive, before writing to disk.
There does not seem to be any indication of corresponding disk read activity while it is writing. Just the write, very slow, that blocks all other aspects of my system for performing normally.....
WRT the 25GB free, i have the same problem even when i have over 60GB free on the internal drive. It doesn't seem to be caused by lack of free space. Something is restricting (throttling?) disk write speed. I have noticed one or two other programs exhibit similar behavior (in particular, the Transmission bittorrent client has a big slowdown when it is first creating the new, blank files, to be copied into by the subsequent torrenting).
Hope that clarifies things...
-mjb

Does dragging music into the itunes library take up double the space on my hardrive?

If my music is in my C drive and then i drag and drop it into the music folder in itunes, will that take up double my space on my harddrive?
Same goes if I delete my music from my C drive, will it still say in itunes?

There's a setting that determines what happens. In iTunes Preferences, Advanced tab you can choose to leave the music where it was or copy it to the iTunes library. If you choose to leave it where it was then it will not take up double the space. If you choose to copy it to the iTunes library it WILL take up additional space, but you can then delete it from any other locations.
If you delete music from your C: drive that has already been indexed in iTunes this will confuse iTunes momentarily, but it will recover when you try to play it. The better way to delete music is to delete it in the iTunes library; this will keep things in sync.

Why does my iTunes library show up to be different sizes?

I have about 2600 songs in my iTunes library. At the bottom of the iTunes library window, it says there are 2600 songs, 13.03gb. All of these songs fit on my 16gb iTouch.
Now, when i go to finder>Music>iTunes>iTunes Music the folder is 114gb!
WHY IS THIS SOOOO MUCH LARGER?
It's the same contents that are in my iTunes library!

Selecting Music in iTunes will show only your music.
Selecting Music>iTunes>iTunes Music in the Finder shows everything in iTunes including music, movies, audiobooks, podcasts,TV Shows, etc.
Go to Music>iTunes>iTunes Music>Music and this is only the music files.

Why does my iTunes library not properly synch w/ my Nano?

I have deslected several podcast within my iTunes library in order to remove them from my Nano, yet no matter how many times I run "update" the podcasts remain on the Nano. I have even deleted them from my iTunes library and they still remain on the Nano after updating.
What is the story here? I thought that only items selected within the library would be synched with the Nano. (Yes, I have changd my Preferences to "only update checked songs" and "manually manage podcasts." What else has to be done?
Toshiba w/ Windows XP Windows XP

I figured it out! I could see ALL my music in the itunes media folder but my iTunes library only had a fraction of the files. I had to go into the itunes media folder and import them in.

I have matched my music library but iTunes still takes up a major portion of my hard drive

i have matched my itunes library but itunes still is taking up a big chunk of my hard drive. i want to get rid of it but want access to my cloud library of course. am afraid to just delete the library as it exists now. simply put i just want to clear up space and still have access to my library in the cloud.

jokrxp8 wrote:
i have matched my itunes library but itunes still is taking up a big chunk of my hard drive.
Because you have not deleted it from the hard drive.
am afraid to just delete the library as it exists now
Make a backup of it first.
simply put i just want to clear up space and still have access to my library in the cloud.
Yes, this is what iTunes Match does.
Delete songs from your computer and uncheck Also delete this song from iCloud.
Try it with a few songs first.

HT1349 Due to backing up my itunes on an external 1 terrabite hard drive, I now have duplicates of the same song in my library. Anyone know how to run something to remove duplicates? It's taking up too much space on my hard drive.

Is there something I can run to remove duplicate songs from my itunes library. This occurred when I backed my itunes library up on an external hard drive, now I have multiple duplicates of the same songs. HELP!

I cannot find this 300GB "Backup" in the Finder, only in the Storage info when I check "About This Mac".
You are probably using Time Machine to backup your MacBook Pro, right? Then the additional 300 GB could be local Time Machine snapshots. Time Machine will write the hourly backups to the free space on your hard disk, if the backup drive is temporarily not connected. You do not see these local backups in the Finder, and MacOS will delete them, when you make a regular backup to Time Machine, or when you need the space for other data.
See Pondini's page for more explanation: What are Local Snapshots? http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I have restarted my computer, but the information remains the same. How do I reclaim the use of the 300GB? Why is it showing up as "Backups" when it used to indicate "Photos"? Are my photos safe on the external drive?
You have tested the library on the external drive, and so your photos are save there.
The local TimeMachine snapshot probably now contains a backup of the moved library. Try, if connecting your Time Machine drive will reduce the size of your local Time Machine snapshots.

HT1751 I copied my old itunes library from my pc on to a external hard drive and put it on my laptop. How do i merge it with my current itunes account on my laptop?

I copied my old itunes account on my pc to an external hard drive and put it on my laptop. How do i merge my old itunes with my current account on my laptop?
Thanks

Tunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
Quick answer if you use iTunes default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Start iTunes with the option (shift on Windows) key held down and guide it to the new location of the library.
Downloading (using iOS or computer) past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519 - enabled with iTunes 10.3 and newer; not available in all countries; apps, books (not audiobooks), music, t.v. shows, and movies (some - not all studios have permitted this). Movies currently available in the USA only. Downloading previously purchased movies and TV shows requires iTunes 10.6 or later. Discontinued items not available. For items not included in the iCloud list (e.g., ringtones), or locations or computer systems where iCloud is not (yet?) available, you only get one download per fee paid. Apple notes it is your responsibility to back up your purchases.
Select the store on the left side of iTunes.
Click on Purchased on the right side under Quick Links.
You can re-download your available previous purchases.

Why Does my iTunes library take up so much space on my hard drive?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for