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store itunes on ext hard drive
tegan1973
12-04-2010
Hi you clever people
Wondered if any of you know whether you can store your itunes and music on an external hard drive and how you do it. My music on the laptop has eaten alot of the memory and it would be easier to have it elsewhere.
What do you suggest? I am not very good with computers. So please explain in easy terms!
thanks
imagegrill
12-04-2010
Point the iTunes library to your external drive.
Edit -> Preferences
select the Advanced tab then click on the change button to browse to the location of where your music is stored.
imagegrill
12-04-2010
Ah, sorry that just lets iTunes know where you library is.
To add a new folder go to File -> Add folder and browse to your collection!!!
TomDaOne
12-04-2010
I had to buy an external hard drive because I had the very same problem as you. What you need to do is plug in your hard drive and find it on your laptop. Then you need to find all your music files which are already on the laptop.

What I'm about to suggest will unfortunately mean you lose all your iTunes songs play counts. But I could never see any way around that unfortunately.

I'm guessing they will all be in a file called "iTunes Music" which itself would be with in a folder named "iTunes". What you need to do is move the entire "iTunes Music" folder to your external hard drive.

If you open up iTunes now all your songs should have a ! sign next to them. This means iTunes cannot locate the files and thats because you have moved them. You can delete all those songs with the ! mark next to them.

What you need to do next is open up the "iTunes Music" folder which should now be on your external hard drive. "Select All" and drag it directly into iTunes. All the songs should gradually re-appear in iTunes itself.

The next thing you should do within iTunes is this. Edit> Preferences> Click the "Advanced" Tab.

What you need to do now is change the "iTunes Media Folder Location" to the directory where your external hard drive is located. (Mine is in my "F" Drive so is F:\iTunes\iTunes Music) though yours may be on a different drive. As well as doing that I would tick the box marked "Keep iTunes media folder organized".
TomDaOne
12-04-2010
Hmmm took me ages to post that and seems possibly imagegrill explained it in a much simpler way?
tegan1973
12-04-2010
Thanks guys. Trust me giving me lots of instructions helps. I need them. Will give it a go!
pilot25dmc
14-04-2010
You don't state what operating system you are using so I will explain it in general terms.

Go and find the iTunes folder on your computer, take the ENTIRE folder and move it to your external HD, don't open it, just take the entire folder and move it, remember its the iTunes folder you want to move, not the iTunes Music folder.

It will start to copy the folder to the external HD, once it has finished open iTunes and then click on FILE, PREFERENCES then ADVANCED. You will then be able to select where iTunes stores your music, you want to select the iTunes folder you copied into your external HD.

Close iTunes and then re-open it, try to play a song, it should begin playing.

Go to the OLD iTunes folder stored on your computer and delete it.

By using this method you will be able to keep all your playlists and play-counts.
tegan1973
15-04-2010
Just wanted to let you know it worked and I now have all of my itunes music on a hard drive. I even transferred a couple of cds to itunes and they copied onto the hard drive. Success!!!

I didn't lose my playlists or anything!

Thanks for the instructions. I really appreciate it!! xx
elnombre
15-04-2010
If you run into the problem of iTunes creating a blank library, or not finding the old one after you have moved the files to the external hard drive, hold down CTRL when you launch the program and you will be prompted to choose the library file and can navigate to it.

Don't know if you'll come across that problem, but I did.
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