Tip: Moving your iTunes Library to an External HDD.

Summary

Learn how to move your iTunes Music folder to a different location on your Mac. To move the iTunes Music folder on a Windows PC, see this article.

If your hard drive is nearly full after loading all your music and other media into iTunes, or if you just want to move all those music and media files to another hard drive on your system, here's a way to make the move while retaining all your playlists, ratings, and play history.

Products Affected

iTunes 7 for Mac, iTunes 8 for Mac

First make sure that the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" option is checked in iTunes Preferences:

1. From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.
2. In the resulting window, click the Advanced button.
3. Select the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" checkbox.
4. Click OK.

Once you've done that, follow the next set of steps to change your iTunes Music library location to the new drive and then consolidate your library to the new location. This not only copies your audio and media files over, it also retains your ratings and playlists. Note: If you move your music and media library to an external hard drive, you will need to have that drive connected to access your files. No matter what, it's always a good idea to have a backup of the media you have in iTunes.

1. Open iTunes.
2. From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.
3. Click the Advanced button in the Preferences window.
4. Click the Change button in the iTunes Music folder location pane.
5. In the Change Music Folder Location window that appears, navigate to the location where you would like your new Music folder to be created. Note: By default, your iTunes Music folder is a folder named "iTunes Music" in ~/Music/iTunes/ where the tilde "~" represents your home directory.
6. Click the New Folder button in the Change Music Folder Location window.
7. In the New Folder window that appears, enter the name of the new iTunes Music folder.
8. Click Create.
9. Click Open in the Change Music Folder Location window.
10. Click OK in the Advanced window.
11. From the File menu, choose Library and then Consolidate Library... A message appears that says: "Consolidating your library will copy all of your music into the iTunes Music folder. This cannot be undone."
12. Click Consolidate. Important: This action copies all of your music and media files to the new location. There must be enough hard disk space available to copy all of your music and media files.
13. After the folder has been copied, locate your original iTunes Music folder, and drag it to the Trash or Recycle Bin. Note: Don't remove the iTunes library files that may be in the same location as the iTunes Music folder. For more information about the iTunes library files, see this article.
14. Empty the Trash.

Additional Information

If you move your library to an external drive, you'll need to power up and connect the drive before starting iTunes. If you don't, iTunes will prompt you to either locate the library or to create a new library (which will result in an empty library).