Setting up new iMac: two questions about using external drive for storage (T7)

[flyersgl]

I went ahead and cheaped out and bought the 256gb iMac (w/16gb memory). I bought a T7 500gb on which I plan to store my music and photos libraries. I have two questions.

1. When I plugged the T7 in, I see that there in a Mac installation package - should I use that? In past I have just plugged in and formatted external hard drives.

2. The iTunes folders on my old iMac are kind of messed up--legacy of multiple OS upgrades, a crash and a somewhat messed up restore from back up. For that reason, I think my workflow on the new iMac is going to be to move the folder to the external drive and re-import music into iTunes, rather than trying to restore anything from the old iMac. I have looked up "how to move iTunes library to external drive" but because of the numerous changes in iTunes file structures over the years, I am having trouble figuring out which folder(s) to move. I am looking at Music > Media > icon for Music Library. I THINK I move the whole thing but I'd like to be sure before I do it. Again, my end goal is to have a iTunes set up in such a way that it can continue to run on iMac and synch with my iPod Classic, but store the music files (~120gb and counting) on the external drive.

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

 

[Fishrrman]

"When I plugged the T7 in, I see that there in a Mac installation package - should I use that? In past I have just plugged in and formatted external hard drives."

Not sure just what "Mac-specific" software Samsung would bundle with its drives.
Certainly, it's not a Mac OS installer?

If it was me (I realize you're NOT "me"), I'd ERASE the entire drive, wipe out any pre-installed software, and "start clean". But that's just me.

I'd use HFS+ (Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format), IF the drive was going to be a "data only" drive (not bootable).
Reason: there remain Mac OS 3rd-party drive utilities that work with HFS+, but not so much with APFS...

Rather than copy a "problem" iTunes music folder to the new drive "as is", you might create a NEW iTunes library on the SSD, then "re-import" to it, as you mentioned above.

Just wondering, are you still using iTunes?
Because it doesn't come on new Macs any more.
HOWEVER...
If you wish, you can STILL USE iTunes on the new Macs by installing it with the FREE app named "Retroactive".
Worth looking into.

I haven't any use for Apple's new "Music.app" because they dropped the free internet streaming radio tuner.
But with Retroactive, I installed the old iTunes and the internet radio still plays...

 

[Boyd01]

I have two 2TB T7 drives, erased and re-formatted both as APFS before using them, no problems. Personally, I don't trust any software that drive makers bundle on their devices, but that's just me. Elsewhere I have read that you need to use an included Samsung utility to update the T7 firmware. Never did that, doesn't seem necessary to me.

If you are concerned about corruption in your music library, perhaps it would be safer to just drag the individual song files to the Music app from your old iTunes backups? You could choose a new location on the T7 for the library if that's what you want. Sounds like you must not have much media or else it wouldn't fit on a 500gb drive (along with everything else)... I have over 1TB in my iTunes library. I use a Mini (running Mojave) as a dedicated iTunes server on my LAN. Since it all works, I am sticking with iTunes. But I use the Music app on another Mac and it seems to be OK.Does the "Retroactive" app work on the M1? Don't know, but I would avoid that kind of hack unless you have a good reason to use it.

One thing to watch out for, in the past I corrupted my iTunes library by having it on an external disk that was not connected once when I started iTunes, that was a pain to fix. The library database (.itl file) is separate from your media and it is stored on your startup drive by default. Just changing the location of the library did not move the .itl file, so when iTunes started, it would find the database but not the media and that would corrupt it. The fix was to manually move the .itl file to your library location on the external drive. Not sure if this is still relevant in the Music app, but it's something to keep in mind.