Some iTunes help?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

OK, here’s the sitch.

  1. I have a laptop. It contains a 290GB hard drive.
  2. I have used this for my media storage and work machine.
  3. Currently iTunes is using 210GB of space
  4. I now have less than 3MB of free space
  5. Performance is degrading.

Bad

Solution?

  1. I have a 1TB external HD
  2. I have copied my entire ‘iTunes’ directory to it (elapsed time = 4 hours)
  3. Profit

I would like to repoint my iTunes software to that external for all purposes and then delete the folder on my hard drive.

How do I do so? Can anyone give me a quick overview? I am reluctant to do so without advice lest I render all of my media files unusable somehow.

2

In iTunes:

Preferences (or possibly “Options” I’ve got a Mac)=>Advanced=>“iTunes Media folder location” Change…=>enter path/choose folder

Then delete everything from iTunes. It will ask you whether you want to keep the files or send to trash. Send to trash (or “Recycle Bin”). Once iTunes is completely empty, drag the folder from your external HD and drop it into iTunes. It should import pretty quickly since the files are already in the correct folder.

3

BTW needless to say don’t permanently delete anything until the new music folder has finished importing and you have verified that 1) your songs play and 2) iTunes is playing them from the external HD and not the trash (right click then “Get Info” or “Properties”=>check path at bottom of “Summary” tab).

There may be some minor annoyances like losing some album artwork but that can always be added back later.

4

What’s your OS?
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder

iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder