Can/Should I put iTunes files on a separate drive?

Question

Level 1

42 points

Can/Should I put iTunes files on a separate drive?

A look at my storage situation shows that iTunes files are taking up a pretty big share of disk space. I'm wondering if I can or should put iTunes and its files on an external hard drive, which would give my iMac some breathing room.

Will that interfere with Time Machine, backups?

Will it make the music inaccessible when I want to listen via my iPhone? (As it is it's pretty dodgy now. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.)

Has anyone tried this or know that this is something I shouldn't do?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.1)

Posted on Nov 13, 2017 10:31 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Jean Shea Author

Level 1

42 points

Dec 12, 2017 12:37 PM in response to Jean Shea

Second verse in this story: I successfully transferred my iTunes to a separate drive and all was good. Then one day I lost access to it. So I pulled back a copy of my iTunes from my Time Machine and restored it to the iMac drive because I couldn't get ANY access to external drive.

Then came the ITunes update. As well as the Mac OS update (High Sierra) and a security patch for the "root" problem. And when all the updates were added, voila! Access to the external drive restored. But I have a new, and not so serious problem. Apparently I've got iTunes data on both iMac and external drives.

The bulk is on the external drive, and the stuff on the iMac contains folders that are empty. When I run iTunes, all my music is available to me. And all the error messages are gone. I can run backups, sync with my phone. Ostensibly, it's all good, except it's split up.

SO my question after all that: Is there a way to merge these iTune data without eliminating one? Should I just forget about it and live in a split iTunes world? Sort of defeats the purpose, but given my recent experience, I'm not keen to make a return trip to crazy town.

Reply

Answer 2

Niel

Level 10

726,863 points

Nov 13, 2017 10:37 PM in response to Jean Shea

1. No, as long as the drive containing the iTunes library is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS, and you open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences, click on Options, and remove it from the exclusion list.

2. No.

(155030)

Reply