Hi Matthew, You asked about moving your iTunes library to an external drive: > > Have an itunes question. I just moved my lybrary over to an external drive. > I changed whare the irt is located, but How do I know if what I am looking at > is on the external drive or not? If the contence was moved over to the drive > why is everything still on the macontash hd? Thanks. > > Matthew
I wrote a reply to Jane's question about this last week, and was going to point you to this, but a check of the archives showed that this post never made it to the list, although there's a copy in my Inbox dated January 28 (go figure). So I'll append this note along with apologies to Jane for the late reply. The brief answer to your question, Matthew, is that in order to move your iTunes library to an external drive, you have to update the information in the iTunes database to point to the new location. You do this by first changing the location for your iTunes Media Folder in the Advanced pane of your iTunes Preferences. This only specifies where future additions to your iTunes library will be written. To actually move your library to the external drive, you then use the "Organize Library…" menu option under iTunes. This is outlined in more detail in an iLounge article called " Transferring your iTunes Library (November 30, 2011)": <http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/mobile/articles/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/> In case that long link breaks, here's a shortened link to the same page: <http://bit.ly/yhmVQk> Please read that article, because it explains a lot of the basic concepts about how iTunes organizes your library. And to answer your question about how you can tell where any track in your iTunes library is located, if you select a track in the songs table and use the "Get Info" (Command-I) shortcut, the summary tab will show you the path to the file. There are also more details in my reply to Jane, pasted in and appended below my signature. HTH. Cheers, Esther Subject: Moving iTunes library to an external drive [was Re: Working with external Drive] Date: January 28, 2012 To: Mac OSX & iOS Accessibility <mac-access@mac-access.net> Hi Jane, I've retitled your subject since the main question is about moving your iTunes library to an external drive and using it there. The best descriptions I've read of this process are the articles on the iLounge site. There's a recent (end of November 2011) iLounge article titled, "Transferring your iTunes Library" by Jesse Hollington that explains the process. I prefer to use their mobile site, especially when I access these articles from an iPhone or iPad, so that's the format I'm giving you in the link: • Transferring your iTunes Library (November 30, 2011) <http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/mobile/articles/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/> In case that long link breaks, here's a shortened link to the same page: <http://bit.ly/yhmVQk> Otherwise, you can do a Google search on "ilounge transferring iTunes library", and use Safari Reader (via the Command-Shift-R shortcut on your Mac) to avoid the ads, additional graphics, etc. on their regular site. To briefly summarize, iTunes maintains the information on where your music, audiobooks, movies, etc. are located in a database file that is relatively small, that you will continue to keep on your main computer, while you move the contents files and folders from your iTunes Media folder to your external drive. However, the correct way to do this is by using iTunes with the "Organize Library…" option found as a submenu under the File menu's "Library" menu option. The iLounge articles use embedded graphics to display the option menus, so I'll describe the dialog menu that appears for the "Organize Library…" option. It consists of two check box options, one for "Consolidate files" that puts copies of all media files used by iTunes in the iTunes Media Folder while leaving the original files in their current location. The second check box option is for "Reorganize files" in the folder "iTunes music" that creates files and folders within the iTunes Media Folder location specified in the Advanced menu of your iTunes preferences, and places files that you imported into iTunes into the correct folders in this location, while leaving files that were not imported in their current locations. The article does a good job of describing the various options you have for moving your iTunes library files if you're upgrading your computer or, as in your case, simply moving the library to an external hard drive. It also describes the common wrong ways to try moving your iTunes files and the misconceptions behind these ways. In the case of moving iTunes content to an external hard drive, you're going to first bring up your iTunes preferences menu with the Command+Comma shortcut, and then navigate to the "Advanced menu" on the title bar. (I think you can use Command+7 to go directly to the "Advanced menu", but the general method of interacting with the toolbar, then navigating to "Advanced" and selecting it with VO-Space will work.) Then you'll need to change the iTunes media folder location to point to your external hard drive. After you change the iTunes media folder location by typing in a new path to the your external hard drive and pressing the "Change…" button, you can close your preferences window (Command+W). Once you've finished adjusting your preferences, you'll navigate to the "File Menu" on your iTunes menu bar and use the "Organize Library…" option. (For example, use either VO+M or Control+F2 to move to the menu bar, press "F" to move to the "File" menu, then arrow down and press "L" to move to the "Library" menu option, right arrow to the submenu to "Organize…", and press Return to bring up the dialog window.) You'll check the "Consolidate Files" to move your imported files to the new location on your external hard drive that you specified in your preferences. This process copies imported content to the new iTunes Media Folder location and updates your library database to the new paths. You can verify this by checking an entry in your music library and using "Get Info" (Command+I) and going to the "Summary" tab to check the path to that file. Once you've verified that your file are correctly copied to the new location, you can clean up and delete the originals. Common misconceptions and mistakes are simply trying to move your iTunes Media folder to the new location without updating the iTunes database. (The library database will still point to your original track locations). Often, people then try to add the folder contents in the new location to their iTunes library. This results in duplicate entries (from both the old and new locations). Then, they delete the old files, which results in both duplicate entries for tracks and dead links for the original track entries. While it is possible to clean this up on the Mac with AppleScripts, like "Super Remove Dead Tracks", and "Corral All Dupes" or "Dupin" (a paid and more powerful set of routines) from the "AppleScripts for iTunes" web site maintained by Doug Adams, it is really painful to try to clean up after these mistakes under the Windows version of iTunes. Another common error is thinking that just changing the iTunes Media Folder location path in the Advanced section of the iTunes preferences will change the current iTunes Media Folder location -- that you can move the iTunes Media Folder to another hard drive, and then just change the path in preferences and have everything work. What that location path actually controls is the where new additions to the iTunes library -- purchases from the iTunes Store, tracks ripped from CDs, etc. -- will be located. This is why, when moving your iTunes library to an external drive, you first change this path to the iTunes Media folder location in your preferences, and then use the command to Organize your library with the Consolidate library option checked to copy your files to the new location. Another concept that this article highlights is that these "Organize Library" options only copy over tracks that you permit iTunes to "organize". These are tracks that are in your iTunes Media Folder and whose file and folder structure are determined by their tag information. Many Windows users and some Mac users do not let iTunes reorganize tracks that have been added to iTunes. The current topic of moving an iTunes library is an intermediate to advanced level topic. (I know that Jane has previous background in this, so she can just read the tutorial for the information she needs). There are some good recent iLounge tutorials written by Jesse Hollington that cover basic iTunes concepts. These are: • The Beginner’s Guide to iTunes (December 12, 2011) <http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/mobile/articles/the-beginners-guide-to-itunes/> • The Complete Guide to Album Tagging, Art and Playlists in iTunes (December 9, 2011) <http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/mobile/articles/the-complete-guide-to-album-tagging-art-and-playlists-in-itunes/> Once again, I've linked to the mobile ilounge versions of these guides, which is my preferred format for reading on the iPad. Shortened URL versions of these links, in case they wrap, are: for the beginner's guide: <http://bit.ly/A41mGK> and for the guide on tagging: <http://bit.ly/wZhGcE> On the related topic of cleaning up using the "Super Remove Dead Tracks" AppleScript, you can read the archived posts from this list at the secondary Mail Archive: • "iTunes AppleScript "Super Remove Dead Tracks" [was Re: Cleaning upitunes library]" http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/msg02563.html (The Mail Archive supports access key navigation, so you can read down the thread to the next posts with the Control+N shortcut for Safari, and Control+P for previous posts. If, for some reason, you're not using VoiceOver, or you turned on VoiceOver on a Mac where Safari was already open, use Control+Option+N and Control+Option+P for the access key combinations. In other web browsers, substitute the Control key with appropriate access key -- e.g., Alt+N and Alt+P in Internet Explorer.) Finally, Jane asked about podcast subscriptions. These should be correctly handled for an external drive. The way this works is that if the external drive is attached when she checks for updates, then the podcasts will download to the external drive. However, this will also allow you to get updates on your local drive when the external drive is not available. (This was set up to be workable for laptop users who might be using an external drive for most of their iTunes media content. I can probably find the appropriate section in an iLounge tutorial with some searching.) HTH. Cheers, Esther On Jan 26, 2012, at 17:33, Jane wrote: > I've got an external drive. I want to move all my iTunes stuff and some > documents over to it. Will I be able to set iTunes library to use that > external drive? How about subscribing to podcasts? I keep hearing they > would appear on the internal drive and I'd have to transfer over to external. > > Jane > > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
