Manually move music and photos to MBA: HELP!

[jeanineguidry]

Hey everyone!

I just got my MBA last night (13 inch, 256) and I am transferring files from my MBP which has a 500 GB HD (only 4 GB free - I have tons of music, photos, and video files). Needless to say, I need to make some decisions on what I put on my MBA, and what will live on my external USB HD.

Does anyone know how I can manually move iTunes, iPhoto, and Aperture files over - and how I can select which ones go to the MBA and which to the external HD?

Would appreciate any help!

Jeanine

Jeanine Guidry
jeanineguidry@me.com
Macbook Air (2011), 13 inch, 256 SSD, 4GB
iPad 2 64GB/3G
iPhone 4 32 GB

 

[ZBoater]

Hi Jeanine,

I just came over to the MBA from a PC but had a similar experience. Maybe this will help.

I have 160GB in my iTunes Media Library folder. About 120 of that was movies, so I wanted to have everything else (apps, pictures, music, etc.) on my MBA but the movies externally.

I copied the entire iTunes Media Library folder to an external hard drive, and I moved the Movies and TV Shows folders out of it. I then used the Library Add Folder command in iTunes to import the iTunes Media Library folder (without the two folders I moved out). Under Preferences I have it set to copy files to the library when added.

When I was done, I went into iTunes preferences and turned the copy option off, basically letting me add items to my iTunes library but NOT copy them onto the Library. I then proceeded to add the two folders. The movies and tv shows show up on iTunes, but the files themselves stayed on the external drive.

This will be a little difficult to maintain. Anything I buy in iTunes will be downloaded onto my library (on the MBA). If I want to add more movies, it will be a somewhat manual process to copy them to the external drive, turn off the copy preference, and manually add them.

I would be interested to see if someone else can chime in and suggest a better option!!!

 

[guywoodman7]

Does anyone know how I can manually move iTunes, iPhoto, and Aperture files over - and how I can select which ones go to the MBA and which to the external HD?

Not sure if this applies to Aperture, but to move iTunes and iPhoto libraries as a WHOLE is quite easy. Just drag and drop your full "iTunes" folder, and also your whole iPhoto Library (from the finder) over to your MBA. Once that transfer is complete you just hold down the option key on your keyboard when you click to launch iTunes or iPhoto...a prompt will come up asking you to locate the library you want to use. Point it to the libraries you just moved over and your all set.

As far as selectively bringing over items from either application, thats a can of worms. As far as I know there is no way to do this easily...it's just a matter of manually going through what you want. I would suggest moving over one of your entire libraries, then deleting what you don't want to free up space, and do the same thing for the other libraries.

Hope I helped.

 

[jeanineguidry]

I would suggest moving over one of your entire libraries, then deleting what you don't want to free up space, and do the same thing for the other libraries.

I am planning to do that with iTunes (since I will have enough space) but I won't by a long shot have enough space to move my entire iPhoto library over - it's around 130 GB .

Thank you guys for helping me think, though!

jeanine