Hi i recently switched from PC to Mac, I have a terabyte external harddrive full of media that I loaded onto the mac... iTunes organizer put all this music onto my macbook internal harddrive, and I want it so that i can only get to the media when my external harddrive is plugged in (I don't want my media files on the internal harddrive). I went through preferences and changed the location of the "Media" folder to my external, but this is only for newly added files i'm guessing? At the moment I'm copying and pasting the entire "iTunes" folder to my external, but this may confuse iTunes... should I uninstall iTunes then re-install it to the external? what can i do? any feedback is appreciated. help please
iTunes data
- Thread starter Burty62
- Start date
C
chas_m
Guest
I think you've hopelessly confused iTunes ... I'm confused just reading what you've done! 
The two keys to solving your problem are:
1. Using the option key at iTunes startup to point iTunes to the library you want it to use, and
2. DON'T mess with the structure of the iTunes Library folder!
So if you are saying you have an iTunes Library folder of already-correctly-organized music on the external drive and you want iTunes to use that now and forevermore, then all you have to do is start iTunes with the "option" key held down. You'll be asked to locate the library you want to use or create a new one. Point it to the external drive's iTunes Library folder (I know you did this in preferences but we're not there now, do it here as well) and that should do the trick. As long as the external drive is mounted, iTunes will now (on normal launch) default to that library.
You DO NOT put the iTunes application anywhere other than your boot drive's application folder. This is *only* the iTunes Library folder we are talking about.
Hope that helps.
The two keys to solving your problem are:
1. Using the option key at iTunes startup to point iTunes to the library you want it to use, and
2. DON'T mess with the structure of the iTunes Library folder!
So if you are saying you have an iTunes Library folder of already-correctly-organized music on the external drive and you want iTunes to use that now and forevermore, then all you have to do is start iTunes with the "option" key held down. You'll be asked to locate the library you want to use or create a new one. Point it to the external drive's iTunes Library folder (I know you did this in preferences but we're not there now, do it here as well) and that should do the trick. As long as the external drive is mounted, iTunes will now (on normal launch) default to that library.
You DO NOT put the iTunes application anywhere other than your boot drive's application folder. This is *only* the iTunes Library folder we are talking about.
Hope that helps.
Okay I tried this, but I have no library file on the external.. so i hooked it back up to my other computer with the full library and went to "export library" and saved it onto the external, but when i hold down option and do wat you just said it doesn't display the library file i just exported?
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