Did you even transfer/move your iTunes Library to another location?

[Evren Carven]

Recently, I lost space for my disk and need to move all my iTunes library to an external hard disk. I find some instruction from Apple support materials. From the instruction, you can move the library to another folder or external disk or another computer. I have no idea where to store my library. I would like to hear your advice. Thanks.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Mine isn't really applicable to either scenario, as I had my iTunes library on my computer. I had also installed iTunes through Bootcamp and set Windows to access the iTunes library on the OS X volume. So yeah, you can store it anywhere.

Where to store it is a different case. It's really a question that we can't answer as it's based almost entirely on your usage. If you permanently have an external hard-drive plugged in, it would be good to store it on an external HDD. There's no point moving it to a different folder on the same computer as it's still taking up the same amount of space and in all events it's just easier to keep it as the default place.

You can move it to a different computer, but again if you want to access it through your main computer you'd have to ensure that the computers are permanently linked or turned on when you need to do that ... again, quite a hassle.

I suppose of the three scenarios you've posed, external HDD would be best.

 

[Shirasaki]

I would prefer taking a portable library anywhere I would like to go. This is better, and library is centralised, making it easier to manage.

I now have my library stored in an external drive, formatted as HFS+ journal. This could let Mac manage everything with little or no efforts, and Windows can still use this library when driver is installed for reading writing access.

There is also a drawback. If your disk is lost, you will eventually lose your entire library. Backup to different disks regularly is a good idea.

 

[BaggieBoy]

I have iTunes on a Mac mini, which had a single slow 500GB HD that was getting full. So installed a 240GB SSD as the primary drive and a 750GB SSHD (Seagate Momentus XT) as secondary drive. The iTunes library now resides on the secondary drive.

This iTunes library is actually a copy of the one on my MacBook Pro, and both are backed up to different external drives via Time Machine. So I'm confident of recovery if something catastrophic happens.

 

[c55]

I put my iTunes library on an external drive. there's no need to waste storage on your hard drive with music. I also can plug my external drive into my car's head unit if I wanted to and it plays all my music.

 

[burgman]

Ah, iTunes Match?

 

[BrettApple]

I've got mine on a 4TB USB 3.0 external drive. I used to have it internally when my MBP had two drives (256GB SSD + 1TB HDD) but with the new MacBooks having 1TB+ of SSD was cost prohibitive. So I keep my iTunes/Aperture/LPX files/Software etc on the external drive so I have it all when I'm at my desk and it isn't necessary to have it on the internal SSD. I have space issues with the 256GB SSD as it is with Boot Camp/Parallels and lots of large software. So it's a must.

I just point iTunes/Aperture to the external drive and the library is housed there. Works perfectly fine. If I want music on the go I always have my iPod Classic with me.

 

[Evren Carven]

Thanks for all you guys' advice. I decide to move my iTunes library to an external disk. For some reason, I get a 1 TB seagate external disk from my friend last week, I can use this disk as a permanent space for the iTunes library. Lol.