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Trouble moving Music (formerly iTunes) to a new external drive

I currently have my iTunes folder stored on an external hard drive and have the Music app on my MacBook Pro set to find the library there. I bought a new, larger hard drive and want to move my all of the contents of my iTunes folder from the old hard drive onto the new one and link it to iTunes.


I copied the iTunes folder from Old HardDrive to New HardDrive, then disconnected Old HardDrive, held down the option key and clicked the Music app. When prompted, I selected "Choose Library," selected NewHardDrive in the left navigation bar, clicked through the iTunes folder and selected the "iTunes Library.itl" file.


Now here's where things differ from every how-to article I've found online on how to move iTunes to a new drive and get weird:


After I select the "iTunes Library.itl" file and select Choose, a menu appears for me to name and select where to save... something? the "iTunes Library.itl" file I just selected? It's not clear. By default, this menu is pointing to the Music folder on my machine, which I don't use because everything is pointed to the Old HardDrive. And I don't want to use, because I'm moving it all to the New HardDrive.



Why am I being asked to name save the file? I thought by selecting the .itl file, I was telling the Music app where to look for the library. At no point did I duplicate or create a library; why am I needing to rename, I guess, this .itl file and move it somewhere? And where should I move it? It feels right to move it to the external drive, but where? Just in the iTunes folder, where the .itl file I am renaming lives?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Jan 30, 2022 6:14 PM

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Posted on Feb 1, 2022 11:46 AM

Yes, repeat with TV, copying first the TV folder to New HardDrive as New HardDrive/TV, reset the media folder to New HardDrive/TV/Media and consolidate. iTunes quit managing locally stored copies of mobile apps back in iTunes 12.7. There is no real point in holding onto that collection.


Nothing on the new drive is looking inside the iTunes folder on that drive so you can safely throw that folder away.


tt2



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12 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 1, 2022 11:46 AM in response to hiddenmuse

Yes, repeat with TV, copying first the TV folder to New HardDrive as New HardDrive/TV, reset the media folder to New HardDrive/TV/Media and consolidate. iTunes quit managing locally stored copies of mobile apps back in iTunes 12.7. There is no real point in holding onto that collection.


Nothing on the new drive is looking inside the iTunes folder on that drive so you can safely throw that folder away.


tt2



Feb 1, 2022 2:40 AM in response to hiddenmuse

When your old iTunes library was converted to Music the new library would have been created at ~/Music/Music where ~ is your home folder. There should be a relatively small folder on the path ~/Music/Music along with the media content that is presumably somewhere on <Old External>. You can copy the library folder by hand, option-start-Music to connect on the new path, then you should let Music consolidate which copies files to their new paths and updates the library with the new locations.


See Make a split library portable - Apple Community for some background.


tt2

Feb 1, 2022 11:32 AM in response to turingtest2

Ah ****! Ok, perfect, I plugged the old drive in and went through the steps again and all is working well now! I made sure to unplug the old drive and test that I can still play songs and yep, I can. Thank you so much!!


So, two more questions:


  • Do I also need to follow these steps with the movies and TV shows that are in that old iTunes folder? And there is also a Mobile Applications folder with all of my apps.


  • Is it OK to delete that top-level iTunes folder on the new drive now that all the songs have been copied over to the Music folder on the same drive? Or at least the music files in there? There are still lots of things in there, like previous iTunes libraries and genius lyrics, and the old itl file, but Music copied all of the song files to the new location (~New HardDrive/Music/Media/) and if I can avoid having duplicates taking up close to 100GB I'd like to do that.

Feb 1, 2022 10:47 AM in response to turingtest2

Ok, just walked through all of these steps but unfortunately Music doesn't recognize the songs (that weren't purchased through iTunes). I have hundreds of thousands of files, and I'm getting "The song 'X' could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" with an option to cancel or locate it.


Here's what my external drive looks like currently:


This is what I selected in Music > Preferences > Files > Reset


And this is what I did for Files > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files


After I clicked OK in the Organize Files menu, nothing happened. The menu went away, and Music didn't appear to be doing anything, which is why I assume it can't find my music files. :( But at no point during these steps did I do anything to indicate where all my media files are. I think I am missing that step somewhere, but I'm not sure where and how to tell it to find all those files in the iTunes folder.

Jan 31, 2022 3:09 PM in response to hiddenmuse

Hi hiddenmuse,


We understand you're looking for help moving your Music Library to another drive.


Have you tried going through the steps more than once? It might be expected to get a prompt to name the folder if you chose to create a new library, after holding down Option while opening the app.


If the behavior persists, you may want to try doing the same from safe mode, to see where you get a different result there:


Cheers!

Jan 31, 2022 6:28 PM in response to hiddenmuse

Music uses a Music Library.musiclibrary database for the library, not the iTunes Library.itl file which is a legacy from iTunes. The easiest way to keep the library on the new external drive will be to copy the folder ~/Music/Music to <New External> as <New External>/Music, option-start-Music and open the library at <New External>/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary, then use Music > Preferences > Files to reset the media folder to <New External>/Music/Media and finally consolidate the library either when prompted or using File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files.


tt2

Feb 1, 2022 10:23 AM in response to turingtest2

Ok, so I did copy the ~/Music/Music folder from my user folder to New HardDrive. Now I have two folders on the drive with the following paths:


New HardDrive/Music/Music/Media/Automatically Add to Music/

New HardDrive/Music/Music/MusicLibrary


and


New HardDrive/iTunes/ which contains album artwork, genius files, and the iTunes.itl file.


Where do I drag the iTunes folder that contains all of my music files, iTunes metadata, etc.? Into the New HardDrive/Music/Music folder? To live next to the MusicLibrary file? And then option+open the Music app and let it consolidate? Or are you saying to keep the iTunes folder containing all of my data at the same root level as the /Music folder and when I open the Music app it'll organize all this itself?


To clarify, I tried option+open Music while the iTunes folder was at the same level as /Music/Music and I was again asked to choose the library and then prompted to save another folder called Music 1 back over on my machine's hard drive. I am looking to have everything housed on the external drive.

Feb 1, 2022 10:29 AM in response to hiddenmuse

You don't need the doubly nested Music folder on the external drive. Move the folder Media and the package Music Library up one level, then delete the now empty Music folder inside New HardDrive/Music.


Press and hold down Option as you launch Music until you see the choose or create library dialog.

Click Choose Library...

Browse to and open New HardDrive/Music/Music Library(.musiclibrary) - the extension is hidden.

Use Music > Preferences > Files > Reset to change the media folder to New HardDrive/Music/Media

Use File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files to copy in the music content of the old iTunes Media folder. Don't move those files by hand. Let Music do it so it can update the links in the library.


tt2

Trouble moving Music (formerly iTunes) to a new external drive

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