Bustikated

In the never ending battle for hard drive space, the first place any sane person will look is media. Movies. Music. Photos.

Using an external disk for your iTunes library has one downside: If you use a laptop, your library and your computer might not be in the same place at the same time. You’ll be able to sync your devices and browse your library, but obviously you’ll be unable to partake in any media consumption.

This should be of little consequence as your iPod will probably be with you, and probably has some of your media on it. However, if you must have everything, all the time, consider getting a small external drive before abandoning this approach all together.

Once you’ve made the decision to move your library to an external drive, you’ll need your computer, your external drive, and a bit of time.

Dive In

The first thing to do is sync your iPod. This is a “just in case everything goes nuts” move, and is the 2nd best way to protect your media.

Get Your Shit Together

I guess it’s as good a time as ever to tell you that my lil tutorial assumes you’ve set iTunes to “Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library” Yes, there are ups and downs to this decision as well, but if you need this tutorial, the copy method probably works just fine for you.

More Step 2

Now, make sure everything is as it should be by clicking Consolidate Library from the Advanced menu. This will copy everything to your current library folder (should already be there), and also organize everything (provided you’ve set the appropriate option in the advanced preferences tab). This will get everything ready to be transfered to your new drive.

Cover Your Ass

The second is to back up your library files. Open a finder window & navigate to your music folder. Inside the iTunes folder, you’ll find two files iTunes Library & iTunes Music Library.xml. These files describe all the important info about your music. Select both, and right click and choose Duplicate. You’ll see two new files (iTunes Library Copy & iTunes Music Library Copy.xml).

Prep your new folder

Using Finder, make a new folder on your external drive for your library. I recommend making it in the drive’s root directory (the top level, what you see when you double click on the drive’s icon) and calling it something like “My iTunes”.

The Change

Open iTune’s preferences, and select the Advanced tab. Click Change. Select your folder and click Open. Now, select Consolidate Library from the Advanced menu, again. This time, everything will be copied to your new location. You’ll see a progress indicator