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User profile for user: Ursa Major
Ursa Major Author
User level: Level 1
17 points

Moving Music library from macintosh HD to external drive

I have a large music library (122GB). Free space on my Macbook's internal drive is only 30GB, which wasn't enough when I upgraded to Big Sur. I've decided it would be best to move the music library to an external drive (Transcend JetDrive Lite 256GB) and keep it there. How can I move the library so that Music can find everything and will add any new music there rather than to the internal drive.


I don't use Music very often to add new tunes/albums. Mostly that is done by ripping CDs to WAV format and then converting those files to AAC and putting them in the folder:


Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to Music


The next time Music opens, the albums/tunes are there in the library. This works very well for me.


I have looked for the answer to this question but most of the things I've found relate to iTunes (not Music) and to older versions of the OS.


Thanks for helping, Peter

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Feb 26, 2021 3:28 PM

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User profile for user: Ursa Major
Ursa Major Author
User level: Level 1
17 points

Posted on Mar 5, 2021 9:24 AM

That's fine as far as it goes but I actually want to move my whole existing library to an external drive. This approach will only put new files onto the external drive. The only way of getting everything onto the external drive is to delete it from the internal drive and re-import it. This would be a big task for a 130GB library.


Is there a method for moving the whole library?

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User profile for user: Ursa Major
Ursa Major Author
User level: Level 1
17 points

Mar 5, 2021 9:24 AM in response to Leanne_68

That's fine as far as it goes but I actually want to move my whole existing library to an external drive. This approach will only put new files onto the external drive. The only way of getting everything onto the external drive is to delete it from the internal drive and re-import it. This would be a big task for a 130GB library.


Is there a method for moving the whole library?

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Moving Music library from macintosh HD to external drive

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