If you’re like me, you may find your hard drive getting a little crowded sometimes. What seemed like a huge amount of space a year or so ago, suddenly seems cramped. One of the biggest space hogs for hard drives is your iTunes library. In this article, we’re going to show you how to move your iTunes directory to an external drive.
First off, we’re going to assume you have an external hard drive formatted and ready to go, and that its connected to your Mac, either via USB or FireWire. (I know FireWire is considered passé, but I have an older MacBook Pro that has FireWire built-in, and I’m willing to bet that many of our readers do too.)
Now, we need to find the directory where your iTunes library is currently located. To do that, just open iTunes, and then click the iTunes menu, and then click “Preferences.”
Once the Preferences dialog box pops up, click the “Advanced” tab. It should be the last tab on the right, and it’s icon looks like a gear.
Here on the Preferences tab, you’ll see the “iTunes Media Folder Location.” It’s right at the top, can’t miss it. This is where iTunes is currently looking for your iTunes library on your hard drive.
Now open a Finder window, and navigate to the path shown in iTunes. Open up another Finder window and navigate to the drive and directory you want to move your library to. Now click and hold on the current iTunes library folder, and drag and drop it to its new location on the external drive. Copying will begin. Go get a cold drink and a magazine, depending on the speed of your drives and the size of your iTunes library, this could take awhile.
When the copying is finished, it’s time to tell iTunes the new location of your library. Start up iTunes, if you closed it, and go into the “Preferences” menu again. Click the “Advanced” tab, and there next to your iTunes Media Folder Location, you’ll see a “Change…” button. Click the button. You’ll see a dialog box pop-up, select the new location of your iTunes library and then click “Open.” iTunes will now look for your iTunes library in the new location. Click the “OK” button in the Preferences window.
Note that you will always need to have the external drive handy to access your iTunes library. Also, be sure iTunes can find your music on your external drive before deleting the old iTunes folder to reclaim space on your Mac’s hard drive.
