iTunes Tip #44
Running out of hard drive space on your start-up drive? Maybe you never though you could fill that huge hard drive that your Mac came with. If you are a big music fan and have been “ripping” your large CD collection to iTunes or have been buying music or videos from the iTunes Store and you are finding little room left on your start-up drive. With iPod’s being 80GB (with larger ones coming, I am sure) there is no surprise you may be in this situation.

Moving your iTunes library to an external hard drive and running iTunes this way maybe just the ticket. This can be done for Mac and Windows users.

Here’s how:
Connect an external Firewire or USB hard drive. Wait until your Mac shows the hard drive on the desktop.

If you are using USB hard drive, it is a good idea to make sure it supports USB 2.0. Also make sure that your Mac’s USB port also supports USB 2.0. Older Macs may not and the ports on the keyboard generally do not. Use the port on the back of the Mac. Watch older USB hubs, as some of them do not support USB 2.0 and you will pay the price of a much slower speed.

Formatting the external hard drive using the Disk Utility (located in the Applications -> Utility folder). Using HFS + (also called journaled) is a good choice for Mac users. Windows: use MS-DOS. Make sure there is enough hard disk space available to copy all of your media files.

Open iTunes. Go to the iTunes Preferences.

Mac users: From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.
Windows users: On the Edit menu, click Preferences.

Go to the Advanced Tab.

Ensure that “Keep my iTunes Music Library Organized” AND “Copy New files to the iTunes Music Library Folder” are enabled and click OK.

Inside your original iTunes library (This is usually located User (Home) -> Music -> iTunes for Mac users and \Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes for Windows) there is usually these files and folders:

• Album Artwork folder that contains the album images
• iTunes Library file
• iTunes Music that actually contains all your music files
• iTunes Music Library.xml file or iTunes Library.xml file

Now let’s change your iTunes Music library location to the external drive and then consolidate your library to the new location. This should copy your audio files retaining your ratings and playlists.

Go to the iTunes Preferences. Click the Advanced tab.

Click the Change button in the Advanced pane. The Change Music Folder Location window will appear, navigate to the external hard drive where you would like your new iTunes Library.

Click the New Folder button in the Change Music Folder Location window and name of the new iTunes Music folder. Calling it iTunes is not a bad idea.

Click “Create” and click “Choose” in the Change Music Folder Location window. Click OK.

From the iTunes Advanced menu, choose Consolidate Library.

A dialog message will appear, see above: “Consolidating your library will copy all of your music into the iTunes Music folder. This cannot be undone.”

Click Consolidate.

NOTE: With later versions of iTunes you will find this button under File -> Library -> Consolidate Library

iTunes will now copy all of your media files to the new location on the external hard drive. This may take awhile if you have a large library.

After the all your folders and files has been copied to the external hard drive and you can see that iTunes is working properly. You can trash your original iTunes Music folder (only) allowing you to recover free space to your start up hard drive.

Just drag your original iTunes Music folder to the Trash or Recycle Bin.

Note: Don’t remove the other iTunes library files that may be in the same location as the iTunes Music folder.

Leave these:

• Album Artwork folder that contains the album images
• iTunes Library file
• iTunes Music Library.xml file or iTunes Library.xml file

Empty the Trash or Recycle Bin.

Always Make Sure To Have External Drive Mounted
Once you have moved your iTunes Library to an external drive, it is important to remember to always have the external drive turned on and mounted before launching iTunes. If your external drive is not mounted to your desktop you will get this dialog from iTunes:

This simply means that iTunes can not find the library last used. Clicking “OK” will allow you to choose the location of the iTunes Library. So get the external drive mounted on your desktop, click OK and select the location of the folder where your iTunes Library resides.

Multiple Libraries
You can maintain multiple libraries for iTunes. After setting up multiple libraries in different locations, just hold down the Option key to Choose the Library you want to use. See above.

Always have a backup of the media you have in iTunes. So backup to disk, another hard drive or another computer!

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