Read Itunes Library from External Hard Drive instead of iMac

Read Itunes Library from External Hard Drive instead of from iMac?

Hey Everyone!
I have about 110 gigs of music in my iTunes Library and I'm looking to clear some space on my iMac. I've already backed up my whole library onto an external hard drive. I'm just wondering if there is a method to keep my library intact (renamed songs, playlists, etc.), delete the files from the computer itself and have it read the files straight from the hard drive instead. If anyone can help me with a solution to this I'd be more than appreciative!!! Thank you in advance!

(Details: I have a 2TB Lacie external HD. I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.8. Library is located in User/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Not sure if this helps at all.)

Thank You!

go into iTunes preferences, go along to the "Advanced" tab, then browse for a new location for the library.

Alright great found it! So just change the iTunes media folder location to the back-up folder on the external? The library will stay intact? No playlists or manually renamed track information will be lost?

have you copied your "itunes media" folder onto the new drive already?

When you move it, you must consolidate the library in iTunes, otherwise it won't work.

Follow the instruction in this article and you can't go wrong.

iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder

Keep in mind also that once this is done you must make sure the drive with your library is mounted when iTunes is launched. If not iTunes will look in its original location for the library. It will mark songs it can't find with an !.

The fixes are simple. Either quit iTunes and relaunch once the external drive is mounted or create an Automator workflow that mounts the drive before launching iTunes.

Thank you everyone for all your help! Kevriano that article is gold! It worked perfectly!

Slydude said:

Keep in mind also that once this is done you must make sure the drive with your library is mounted when iTunes is launched. If not iTunes will look in its original location for the library. It will mark songs it can't find with an !.

The fixes are simple. Either quit iTunes and relaunch once the external drive is mounted or create an Automator workflow that mounts the drive before launching iTunes.

Click to expand...

Hey Slydude. I know I posted this a while ago but I'm just curious if you could explain to me how to create an automator workflow to mount the drive before launching iTunes. Thanks man.

No Problem. I think I promised to post this on another forum as well but can't remember where. Must be getting a bit old.

My original workflow doesn't quite work unless the drive is attached to something like a Time Capsule which behaves as a server. I tried something different with a directly connected drive and it does not seem to work reliably. I will keep poking at it and post an answer ASAP.