Move Your iTunes Library to Another Hard Drive in Three Simple Steps

If your iTunes library has gotten a bit too big for your regular hard drive, it may be time to move it. If you don't want to lose your playlists, play counts, ratings, and other stuff that iTunes keeps in its databases, here's the easiest way to move it to a new home.

We've shared other ways to do this in the past, but these days it's much simpler. All it takes is a few simple steps, whether you're looking to move your library to a new folder, a new drive, or even a NAS. Ars Technica runs down the process with a lot of detail, but here's the gist of it:

1. Open up iTunes' Preferences and go to Advanced. Make sure the "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" box is checked.
2. Click the Change button under "iTunes Media Folder Location" and choose your new folder where you want iTunes to reside. Click OK (and if iTunes asks you if you want to continue matching the "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" prefernece, choose Yes).
3. Go to File > Library > Organize Library, check the "Consolidate Files" box, and click OK. This will copy all of your files over to the new location, keeping your library structure completely intact.

When you're done, you can delete the files in your original iTunes Media folder, but don't delete the other .itl and itdb files?iTunes will still use those in their original location. Hit the link to see the full process, as well as a few troubleshooting tips if you have any problems.

How to offload your iTunes library to a NAS | Ars Technica

Title image remixed from Madlen (Shutterstock).

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/pd1hTrElu6I/move-your-itunes-library-to-another-hard-drive-in-three-simple-steps

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