# iTunes and External Hard Drive



## kobogigo (Aug 21, 2003)

Hi Everyone, hope you can help me. It may be an easy solution, I just can't seem to figure out the answer. 

I would like to run my iTunes music and iPhoto from my external hard drive, thus freeing about 10 gigs of hard drive up on my ibook hard drive. How do I go about doing this and not lose all my ratings, genre settings etc. 

My external hard drive has 200 gigs and is partitioned into 3 volumes, two with 30 gigs and one with about 130 gigs.

Thanks in advance.
Kobo


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## TrevX (May 10, 2005)

kobogigo said:


> Hi Everyone, hope you can help me. It may be an easy solution, I just can't seem to figure out the answer.
> 
> I would like to run my iTunes music and iPhoto from my external hard drive, thus freeing about 10 gigs of hard drive up on my ibook hard drive. How do I go about doing this and not lose all my ratings, genre settings etc.
> 
> ...


Go into the iTunes Preferences and point your Music Library to a new folder on the External drive, and at the same time have iTunes keep your music folder organized. When you change your music library location, iTunes will automatically copy everything over to the new directory, keeping all of your ratings and settings. Once the copy is done, feel free to delete the old music library.

Trev


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## ncoffey (Apr 6, 2005)

Remember that when you open iTunes (or connect an iPod which will open iTunes), you should have the hard drive with your music collection on and connected. If you don't you'll have to reset the path to where your music is again. (I used to have that problem until I got a firewire hard drive and just started booting off it.)


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## kobogigo (Aug 21, 2003)

*Thanks for the help*

Thank you for the help, I will do this tonight when I get home. 
Kobo


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## kobogigo (Aug 21, 2003)

*Didn't Work *

I followed these instructions:
Go into the iTunes Preferences and point your Music Library to a new folder on the External drive, and at the same time have iTunes keep your music folder organized. When you change your music library location, iTunes will automatically copy everything over to the new directory, keeping all of your ratings and settings. Once the copy is done, feel free to delete the old music library.

But it did not work. Is there something I am missing here? I do not boot from my external drive, does this matter? 

Kobo


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## mr.steevo (Jul 22, 2005)

Hi,

Do this:

Back up everything before doing this.
1. File>Export Library. This exports all of your playlists into one XML file.
2. Move music files to new location.
3. Go to User>Music>iTunes and drag the iTunes Music Folder and iTunes Library file to a temporary folder on your desk top.
4. Open iTunes. There should be no music in it.
5. Go to preferences and set the library location as the location selected on your external drive. Also, make sure "add music to iTunes music folder when adding to library" is checked.
6. Open>Add to library Select your old iTunes music folder (which you moved into a folder on your desktop. iTunes will copy all of the songs to the new library folder on your external drive. This may take some time
7. Open>Import select the xml library file you exported in step 1. This should import your playlists.
8. Once your sure everything is working, delete the files you moved to your desktop.

s.

***edited to resolve [File "Open"] issue.***


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## kobogigo (Aug 21, 2003)

Thanks for the advice, I will try this and see what happens. 
Kobo


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## gmark2000 (Jun 4, 2003)

Remember to back-up everything!


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## kobogigo (Aug 21, 2003)

mr.steevo said:


> Hi,
> 
> Do this:
> 
> ...


Hi again  

Everything was going well up until step 7. Go to File "Open" is not a choice in iTunes or is this from a different file? Not sure where to look. 

Kobo


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## kobogigo (Aug 21, 2003)

*Found a different way to do this!*

Well I tried this and it appears to have worked. 

Copied my iTunes music into my external hard drive
Dragged iTunes music folder from Music to the trash
Opened iTunes, selected preferences, changed iTunes location folder to new external hard drive

Then opened up iTunes and everything was there ... it worked! 

Let's hope it is still there in the morning  and if not I have completed the backup. 

Kobo


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## sccoaire (Feb 11, 2005)

TrevX said:


> Go into the iTunes Preferences and point your Music Library to a new folder on the External drive, and at the same time have iTunes keep your music folder organized. When you change your music library location, iTunes will automatically copy everything over to the new directory, keeping all of your ratings and settings. Once the copy is done, feel free to delete the old music library.
> 
> Trev


For future reference, you have to click on "consolidate library" from the Advanced menu after you changed the music library location. Only then will iTunes copy everything over to the new directory. And when you delete the old music libary, make sure you don't delete the xml file. That file isn't copied when you consolidate your library. I learned it the hard way.


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