ituneswin: Move iTunes music/Library to new drive
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Today's theme is - let iTunes do the work
If your hard drive is nearly full after loading all your music into iTunes or if you just want to move all those music files to another hard drive on your system, here's the way to make the change and save all your playlists, ratings, and play history.
* iTunes Preferences -> Advanced tab; Keep Music Folder organized ... should be enabled.
* iTunes Preferences -> Advanced tab, set the library location to some folder on the new drive; preferably a new empty folder
* iTunes Advanced menu -> Consolidate Library... This step copies all the files in iTunes' library to the new location. It also maintains your ratings and playlists.
* if it finishes properly, manually delete the original files through Windows Explorer. iTunes won't Move the files, only copy them to the new location.
* If you see a file called iTunes 4 Music Library.itl1 in the old area - leave it alone. It continues to live in that location despite the change to the Library location.
1 - in version 5, this file is now known as iTunes Music Library.itl
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