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Moving downloaded music files to an external harddrive

I'm looking to move my downloaded music media files (i.e., CD's that were imported, purchases made and downloaded, personally produced music media files, etc) from my internal harddrive on my iMac to a new external drive. I know I have to make changes in the Preferences so that newly download files go to the external drive. My question is how do I tell the Music application that the music media files are now also in a new location after I've moved them?

iMac 27″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jun 28, 2021 2:14 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 1, 2021 9:42 AM

I did some further exploration and testing on this. I first changed my Preferences to store new media in a different location, my new external harddrive. Then, I copied (not moved) all of the files from the original location's Music directory to the Music directory of the new harddrive using 2 open Finder windows. I then started Music and attempted to play one of my CD's. It indicated that it could not locate the first song/track and asked I wished to search for it. I let it search. It found it in it's original location and apparently changed internal pointers/indexes to the new location. It then asked if I wished to locate the remaining tracks/songs, which I did and those were changed as well. That CD now plays from the new location just fine.


I tried this same process for a 2nd CD with a minor exception: rather to play the CD at the Album level, I selected the 1st track individually. It again indicated it couldn't find it, I let it search, it found it and changed the index for it. However, the exception was that I never was asked to correct or search for the remaining tracks/songs from the album. I didn't try to play the entire album to see if it came up then, however, I just selected each track, 1 by 1, and let it resolve individually. So I guess this is resolved but maybe the instructions/steps for doing a move could be much more clear, concise and understandable to people of all technical levels. Just a thought. Thanks.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 1, 2021 9:42 AM in response to jcosta97

I did some further exploration and testing on this. I first changed my Preferences to store new media in a different location, my new external harddrive. Then, I copied (not moved) all of the files from the original location's Music directory to the Music directory of the new harddrive using 2 open Finder windows. I then started Music and attempted to play one of my CD's. It indicated that it could not locate the first song/track and asked I wished to search for it. I let it search. It found it in it's original location and apparently changed internal pointers/indexes to the new location. It then asked if I wished to locate the remaining tracks/songs, which I did and those were changed as well. That CD now plays from the new location just fine.


I tried this same process for a 2nd CD with a minor exception: rather to play the CD at the Album level, I selected the 1st track individually. It again indicated it couldn't find it, I let it search, it found it and changed the index for it. However, the exception was that I never was asked to correct or search for the remaining tracks/songs from the album. I didn't try to play the entire album to see if it came up then, however, I just selected each track, 1 by 1, and let it resolve individually. So I guess this is resolved but maybe the instructions/steps for doing a move could be much more clear, concise and understandable to people of all technical levels. Just a thought. Thanks.

Moving downloaded music files to an external harddrive

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