February 14, 2011

How to Move Your iTunes Library to Another Hard Drive

Your iTunes Library contains both your media -- music, videos, and more -- and the information iTunes keeps about it to make browsing, searching and managing what you have easy and powerful. If the size of your library is outgrowing the space you want to allot to it on your hard drive and you want to move it to another drive in your system, begin by using the Advanced tab in iTunes Preferences and make sure you have the Keep iTunes Media folder organized option checked. This will ensure that all the organizing information gets moved along with the media. You can then use the Change... button located there to choose a new location for your library. To copy everything to the new location, use the Organize Library command under Library in the File menu, check Consolidate files and then OK. Finally, when the copying is done, delete the files from their original location. (If you'd like a step-by-step walkthrough, go here for the Mac and here for Windows.)