Moving my iTunes movies...

Hi folks,

I have recently invested in an external HD drive to free up some space on my MacBook.

Am I able to move my iTunes movies/ tv shows/ music videos to it from iTunes and still use them without having a copy on my MacBook and keeping them externally?

Any advice greatly received. The main problem I experienced was in order to play them I had to drag them back into the iTunes window which then duplicated them onto my computer anyway!

Cheers

Stuart

Thanks very much for that, I'll look into it.

Cheers

Stuart

Had a look at the video. I know how to move everything but Id like to leave my music on the Mac and transfer movies and tv shows over only. Is it a case of copying them to disc then deleting them off iTunes and re-adding them?

My thoughts of this were that when I added them again although I could choose not to have them added to the iTunes folder on my computer for future music I would still like that to happen so is there a way when I re check that box that the movies will remain only on the external HD?

Sorry it even sounds confusing to me!

Try putting aliases to the folders on your external hard drive inside of your iTunes library folder. I did something similar to this a while back. The alias should be named identically to the folders that iTunes creates. It should save you the trouble of having to re-add the moved items to your library and has the added benefit of automatically putting new videos that you add in the folders on the external drive.

When the drive isn't connected you'll get that little (!) icon next to those files. I can't predict what will happen if you try to add items when the drive isn't connected. The worst that could happen though is that the alias would be overwritten with a real folder and the new item would be placed in there. Which is really easy to fix.

You are not going to be able to set up iTunes to manage it's library automatically with storage in multiple locations. You'll need to manually manage it to do what you want.

Ok. So I copied all my video files to my external HD and then deleted the originals from iTunes.

I then dragged and dropped them from my external HD with the 'copy everything to itunes folder' un-checked. They all copied in nicely and when the external HD is connected they work fine and when it isn't I get the ! sign.

So now I have re-checked the 'copy everything to itunes folder' box and they aren't copying on when I play them, so I think I've had a bit of success with it!

Does that sound about right?

Thanks everyone for the advice. Loving your work ;D.

Yeah, they'll stay put, only new stuff will be added to your iTunes folder with 'Copy to iTunes Music Folder' checked. You'd actually have to hit that "Consolidate Music Library..." menu item to move those files from the other hard drive to the local one. Don't do that. They've hidden that command well lately.

I suggest you leave 'Copy to iTunes Music Folder' unchecked though, and simply add movies to your external HD and then drag them onto iTunes once they finish copying. I think if you do this with that box checked, any future items you add this way will duplicate the files in the iTunes folder on your internal HD.

Yes. Put all the stuff on the external drive. Look at iTunes, preferences, Advanced, then click Change... choose the folder where it all is. Makes sure it all works OK. Then you can scrub all the data from the MacBook if you can avoid using it when you're away from the external drive.

To avoid having to rename and rate every tune, leave the XML file from your iTunes folder structure too. Tell me how it goes...