ITUNES DATA TOO LARGE FOR MY OLD PC TO CONSOLIDATE BEFORE MOVING TO NEW PC

The iTunes consolidate function makes copies of files in the new location, which won't work if you are short on space. Assuming your external drive letter is D: (change to suit reality) you can, with iTunes closed, copy the iTunes folder from the C: drive to D:\ as D:\iTunes, then press and hold down shift as you launch iTunes, click the choose library option, then browse to and open the library at D:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl. Next go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced, and if needed reset the media folder such that it becomes D:\iTunes\iTunes Media. Now you are in a position to use File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files which should copy existing content in from your C:\Users\edsgr\Music folder into D:\iTunes\iTunes Media. When the process is complete you can move the drive to another computer, install iTunes, and hold down shift on the first launch to choose the library on the external drive.

Note that if you're going to access the library on the external drive in future then you should back up to a second external drive for security. See Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy - Apple Community for suggestions there.

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In brief there are two approaches depending on whether the existing content is inside the usual location of <User's Music>\iTunes\iTunes Media or not. If it is you can copy the whole iTunes folder to your external drive, move the drive to the new computer, then shift-start-iTunes (see Use multiple iTunes libraries on PC - Apple Support) to open the library from the iTunes folder on the external drive. If not then you copy the iTunes folder to the external drive, shift-start-iTunes while on the source computer, open <External>\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl, reset the media folder to <External>\iTunes\iTunes Media, consolidate, close iTunes and move the drive to the new machine.

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for a comprehensive guide, but probably too much esoteric computer talk. If you want me to break it down to simpler instructions let me the know the current location of your library (in particular the .itl file), and the drive letter of your external drive.

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The iTunes Media folder should really be called iTunes Media, and be inside the iTunes folder where the iTunes Library.itl file resides. Anything else usually causes problems. The \Music bit in the path you refer to is a result of iTunes putting music inside a Music subfolder of the media folder, movies go to ..\Movies, podcasts, audiobooks, etc. all get their own \<Media Kind> subfolder. iTunes likes to be in charge of moving or copying any files. If you move things around by hand then except in some special cases, iTunes won't be able to find the files any more and will complain when you try to play things. If you're happy starting over and losing your ratings, play counts, playlists, date added details etc. then you can arrange the content any way that you like inside the iTunes Media folder, then add it all to the library and go with that. The steps I gave previously were designed to preserve and migrate this data which people usually want to keep. Note that consolidation only works for files that iTunes can access. If you are able to copy over everything such that iTunes can play each referenced file then you could consolidate on the new computer (to C:\Users\edsgr\Tunes\Tunes Media), then clean up the duplicate originals of each file that will be sitting somewhere in C:\Users\edsgr\Music but outside of the iTunes folder.

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