Time Machine, iTunes and Library

Hello people,

I hope youre all having a lovely weekend.

Ive finally used TM to back my files onto an external hard drive. Id like to delete the mp3s from my mac and only use them from my external hard drive.

Ive seen plenty of tutorials on how to back-up itunes directly to an external hard drive and relocate the library, but how do I do that if Ive backed up using TM?

Please help!

Thanks,

Bilal.

scorpionbilli said:

Ive finally used TM to back my files onto an external hard drive. Id like to delete the mp3s from my mac and only use them from my external hard drive.

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I'm sorry to say that's not a good idea. TM will eventually delete old files that are no longer on your hard drive once it is full. TM shouldn't be used to store files you no longer have on your computer.

What you want to do is use another external hard drive and transfer all your MP3s over (not using TM). Also remember that if you only have one copy of something then you don't have a backup. All you did was transfer the location of your files.

scorpionbilli said:

Ive seen plenty of tutorials on how to back-up itunes directly to an external hard drive and relocate the library, but how do I do that if Ive backed up using TM?

Click to expand...

I don't believe that is possible with TM. You should be able to do this with a drive not using TM. Go into iTunes preferences and try changing the location of the iTunes Media folder. If that doesn't work then try reimporting all the MP3s from the external hard drive.

thanks endless mac, I will try this and let you know how I got on! wish me luck!

thanks for the advice

I would recommend getting another external drive, moving your itunes library to that drive.
Hold option and open itunes, it will give you an option to open a new itunes library, select the library that is located on the new drive.
Then delete the old library off your computer.

You can also have TM backup that drive...

I'm new to Mac myself. But I'm not new to using an external hard drive and I do understand the concept of the "time machine" and the way it works.

To the original poster,
If you are looking to put all of your files on an external hard drive, including music, you don't want this to be your time machine external drive as others have said. The way you would do it is manually drag what you want onto your EHD.

I'm sure theres a way to do it through opening Itunes but I wouldn't even go through that. I like to do things manually to make SURE it's done right.

So, plug in your drive, double click your external drive on the desktop. Now, click your finder. Put them beside each other. Go to your Itunes folder and take all of your music and drag it onto your external hard drive.

You can do the same with documents, pictures, etc. You create folders on the drive the same way you do on your computer internal hard drive.

The system you now have to figure out if you do this manually and not with a sync feature, is to remember what files are new and need to be backed up on your external hard drive and what files are already on there.

The way I go about this: Say, I put 10 new photos from my camera on my MacBook. Instead of putting them in the folders they belong in, I put them in a folder on my desktop I created called, "New Pictures." Because if I put say 3 new pictures in of me in the folder I have in my pictures folder which is, "Me." Then it will be in a pile of pictures and I won't remember what's what and I could forget to back up one.

So, when I get to my external drive. I plug it in, I then go to the folders each picture belongs to and drag them from new pictures folder on my desktop, to the folder it belongs in on my external drive. Such as, "Me," or, "Animals."

Now, I've got them backed up. So, now I can take them out of the new pictures folder on my desktop and put them in the folder they go in on my laptop hard drive.

Same with files and music. BUT if you want to only have it on the External drive then you don't have to worry about this. Just put them on the external drive and that's it!

If you want to use Time Machine and you don't think you'll need it often you don't have to buy an External Drive for it. You can just use DVD's and do it every so often. Because your important files, music, photos, documents, are all on your external drive anyway. So, time machine would be more for your system files and applications.