Move Itunes Library To External Drive Mac

09.04.2020
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By Malcolm Owen
Monday, March 05, 2018, 10:51 am PT (01:51 pm ET)

Sep 24, 2019  That's not entirely a good thing. If you're not paying attention, your iTunes library can quickly take up more than its fair share of drive space. Moving your iTunes library from its original location to another internal or external drive can free up some room. It can also give you more space to grow your collection. Your existing iTunes Library will be moved to the new drive and any new music, videos, or whatever you have in iTunes will be backed up to the new drive as well. Please keep in mind that you can go back to step 2 and change where your iTunes Library is stored—to your computer. Nov 10, 2019 iTunes will load that library and automatically adjust its settings to make that the default iTunes folder while you're using it. Assuming you followed all the steps in the backup process (most importantly consolidating and organizing your library), you'll be able to use your iTunes library on the external hard drive just like it was on your main hard drive. In this tip, we’re going to show you how to successfully move your iTunes library from its default location on your startup drive to an external drive connected to your Mac. This method will result in a seamless move, with your iTunes app able to pick up right where it left off, with no hiccups. With macOS, take advantage of built-in backup for your music, videos, movies, and eBooks. If you have hundreds or even thousands of songs, videos, movies, and eBooks in your iTunes. library, you may find that the original hard drive you used to download all this content is now starting to fill up. Nov 22, 2018  How to Move iTunes Library to External Hard Drive with iTunes. Step 1 To find the location of your iTunes media folder, launch iTunes on your computer Then click “Edit” (PC) or “iTunes”(Mac) on the menu bar Preferences Advanced Here you will.

A user's music and video collection can be one of the largest consumers of hard drive space on a Mac, and is typically overlooked in favor of other items when it comes time to free up drive space. This guide explains how to shift where iTunes stores all of the content to an external drive.



Users looking for ways to reduce the amount of things they store on their Mac usually steer clear of doing anything to iTunes and their precious music collection. Even at a time when there are many popular streaming services available to use, deleting these files is not viewed as an option, making iTunes itself an obstacle for salvaging a Mac's drive.
Moving iTunes to an external drive is one compromise, one which still keeps the music available, but off the primary storage drive completely. Though daunting to users, possibly due to the sentimentality associated with music collection, moving an iTunes Library is a relatively simple procedure that is also quite safe to perform.

Before the move


Transferring gigabytes of files between drives can take a considerable amount of time, with that length depending on a number of different variables.
First, make sure to select an external drive with a fast transfer speed, typically one that connects over USB 3.0, USB-C, or Thunderbolt. Using an older technology, such as USB 2.0, can severely prolong the amount of time it takes, purely from its slower transfer rates.
Once you have your selected drive installed, make sure it has enough storage capacity to hold your library, and for future expansion. Right click the desktop icon for the external drive and select Get Info, and make sure the Available listing has enough to cover the library's size.

The size of the iTunes library also dictates the length of the transfer, so it may be worth doing a little pruning beforehand. For example, check your podcasts to see if there are old and listened-to episodes that can be safely deleted.
If you are running iTunes 12.7 or later, there may be an archive of apps that are no longer usable within iTunes, that you may wish to remove. If you do, this AppleInsider guide will tell you how.

While it may be tempting to reuse an external drive already used for Time Machine backups, it is recommended to use a different drive completely. Backups are meant to be separately stored from the data it is duplicating, and keeping some of that data on the same drive as a backup effectively defeats the object of the exercise.
Now would also be a good time to make an up-to-date backup of your Mac before transferring any files.

Moving the library


We first need to collect together all of the content iTunes manages into one folder before making the move. Open iTunes, click File in the Menu Bar, then Library, then Organize Library.


Make sure the Consolidate Files checkbox is ticked, then select OK. Wait for iTunes to complete its consolidation before continuing.


Check the path for the folder within iTunes by going to Preferences within the iTunes Menu bar and selecting Advanced in the new window. The iTunes Media folder location section at the top details where the file collection is located.

Close iTunes, then bring up a Finder window and navigate to the iTunes folder.
If the external drive you wish to move it to is already empty, click and drag the iTunes folder from the Finder window directly

Move Itunes Library From Macbook To External Hard Drive

onto the icon for the external drive. Alternatively, copy the iTunes folder, navigate to the place in the external drive you want to use to store iTunes in a separate Finder window, then paste.


At this point, the iTunes folder will be copied over to the external storage.
Depending on the bandwidth of the connection, the size of the iTunes folder, and if the Mac or the drive are being accessed by other tasks, this could take a long time to complete. For extremely large collections, or if the Mac needs to be used during the day, it is recommended to wait for a period of time when the Mac is left alone, as it can take multiple hours to move to its new home.


Once the transfer has completed, iTunes needs to be told where to find the files.
Hold the Option key and open iTunes. This will bring up a Choose iTunes Library window with three options. Select Choose Library on the far right.


In the next window, navigate to the external drive and enter the iTunes folder. Find and select the iTunes Library file, and click Open.


At this point, iTunes will open up from the new location, and will be accessing files from the external storage instead of the Mac's storage. If you are unsure, you can check the path again by going to Preferences in the iTunes Menu Bar, selecting Advanced, and reading the iTunes Media folder location.

How To Relocate Itunes Library



If you wish, you can close iTunes and disconnect the external drive. To reuse that iTunes library, you will need to reconnect the drive to the Mac before opening iTunes again, else it will offer a 'Library cannot be found' error.

Saving space


Once the iTunes library is confirmed to be working on the external drive, and possibly backed up too, you now have the option of deleting the initial iTunes library from the Mac to save space. Navigate to the original iTunes folder, and either drag it to the Trash or right-click the folder and select Move to Trash.


To fully reclaim the storage after this, either enter the Trash and select Empty, or right-click the Trash and select Empty Trash. If you have the Trash to automatically delete files after 30 days, doing this will free up the storage occupied by the iTunes folder in the Trash far earlier.

If you usually buy movies or TV shows from iTunes store, you will find most iTunes movies are in large file size, usually occupy more than 3G storage for each movie. So for iTunes movie lovers, it's neccessary to prepare an external driver and move the iTunes library to the external driver to avoid the hard drive is filled to the brim. Mac show library in finder. In this article, we will walk you through how to move and copy your iTunes movies and TV shows to external driver on Mac OS.

Customize the iTunes Library Path to External Driver

The most popular method we use is customizing the iTunes library path to external driver. Then each time we download iTunes movies or music or other data from iTunes, they will be saved to external driver automatically.

Step 1Gather your files

Go to 'iTunes -> Preferences' and make sure the options 'Keep iTunes Media Folder organized' and ' Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library' are checked.

Step 2Change the iTunes library default path

On the same 'Preference' panel, click 'Change' button, then you can customize the iTunes library storage directory to your external driver path. Then everytime you download items from iTunes, it will be saved in the customized path automatically.

Step 3Consolidate iTunes library

Go to 'File ->Library -> Organize Library ' and check the 'Consolidate files ' option. And then click 'OK'.

Done. Your existing iTunes Library has been moved to the new drive and any new music, videos, or whatever you load into iTunes will be downloaded to the new drive as well.

Backup iTunes Movies to External Driver without DRM Protection

Itunes Library On External Drive

For people who don't like the DRM protection attached in iTunes videos, you are recommended to strip the iTunes DRM protection and save the iTunes videos anywhere you want.

TunesKit iTunes DRM Media Converter for Mac is the strongly recommended application for Mac users to strip the DRM protection from iTunes videos. It's obviously there is no change to iTunes files in the first method we introduced above. iTunes videos are still encrypted by Fairplay DRM protection, which prevent us transfering our movies, TV shows to anywhere else like Andoid mobile devices, Windows Phone etc. But with TunesKit for Mac, we can easily get rid of the DRM protection from iTunes videos and watch them anywhere we like. TunesKit DRM Media Converter for Mac will help us convert iTunes M4V videos to unprotected MP4 format for playing on various mobile devices. It's worth to mention that TunesKit will retain all metadata of iTunes movies, including audio tracks,subtitles, closed captioning, 5.1 surround etc.

Step 1Download and Install TunesKit app on your Mac

To run TunesKit for Mac successfully on your Mac, please make sure you are running Mac OS X 10.8 or later and have installed the newest iTunes.

Step 2Import iTunes videos to TunesKit for Mac

Click 'Add Files' button, then it will find your iTunes library automatically. Choose the videos you want to bypass the DRM from. You can also drag and drop the videos from iTunes library folder.

Step 3Remove DRM from iTunes videos and convert M4V to MP4.

Click 'Convert' button, then TunesKit will start to work. The conversion will be finished soon. Once it's done, you can find the output files under the 'Converted' tab or by clicking 'Open' button.

Until now, you have successfully backup the iTunes videos without quality lose. You can copy the DRM free iTunes movies to external driver or everywhere you like. No worry at all for the storage space.

Transfer photo library from mac to external hard drive. How can I copy them to an external drive without messing up the Photos app?A. I don’t use iCloud and don’t want to store my pictures online. Apple’s Photos app lets you within the program, and even store those libraries on external drives.

Dave Henry is a long-time TunesKiter who loves all technological things. In his free time, he likes reading about science and technology, writing for his blog, watching sci-fi films, and meditating.