iTunes on external hard drive.

Question

iTunes on external hard drive.

I have an iTunes library backed up on an external hard drive and have just finished making a fresh reinstallation on my Mac. I would like to keep the library on the external hard drive to save space on my Mac.

How do I get iTunes to open the library on my external hard drive?

I have tried moving the itunes library.xms (and other help files) to the local itunes folder and when I start iTunes all my songs are listed. Then I opened preferences and choose my external itunes folder as the new media folder. But still iTunes will not find my songs when I try to play them.

It seems like I have an old library structure since my folder is arranged as:

iTunes:
-"various library files"
-Album Artwork
-iTunes Music
-Mobile Applications
-Previous Libraries

Any ideas?

Macbook Pro 13 (mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 30, 2011 4:37 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 30, 2011 4:59 AM in response to JezuzStardust

The copy on the external hard drive needs to be identical to the original iTunes folder. Then open iTunes while holding down the option (alt) key. You will be asked to choose a library - navigate to the iTunes folder on your external disk.

Note that the external disk must always be mounted before you open iTunes or it won't see the library.

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Answer 2

Jan 31, 2011 2:53 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Hi!
I knew there would be a simple and smart solution to this!

Thank you!

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Answer 3

RynH

Level 1

0 points

Feb 12, 2011 6:17 PM in response to JezuzStardust

I've got the same problem but holding down "option/alt" while opening iTunes won't open the library in the external drive. Any thoughts as to why this is? Thanks!

Ryan

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Answer 4

Mar 23, 2011 3:45 AM in response to RynH

Is there a way to move all the songs to an external drive, erase all the songs on the MacBook internal drive (I need space) and not loose Ratings and Playlist?

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