Transfering itune files to an external hard drive
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Anonymous | hi, the c-drive on my computer is almost full up with music loaded into 3 separate itunes accounts, so i have bought an external hard drive to copy them over and then delete the c-drive files. can anyone tell me what the process i need to go thru to do this and can i instruct itunes to recognise this new drive for future downloading.my operating system is windows xp home.garyj. |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 3363 Registered: Dec-03 | Do all the transfers to the external hard drive first before doing anything with iTunes. Find the letter drive designation of the external hard drive. Now open iTunes and go to "edit", click on "preferences". Go to the "Advanced" tab..from there you can look at "iTunes music folder location". Click on "change", now designate where you want your music to go. back up back up back up...can't stress that enough. |
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error189 Unregistered guest | how do you delete your itunes account? |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 3772 Registered: Dec-03 | uninstall |
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Help please Unregistered guest | I'm glad I found this topic. I'm copying music to an external hard drive too. I'll do all that you suggest for the iTunes. My question is, the external is a usb 2, and there isn't a spare usb 2 port on it for my ipod to connect to. I have a firewire port that i was using to transport music from my c: drive to my ipod. How will music get transferred to my ipod? |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 3817 Registered: Dec-03 | You can still use the firewire port and the USB at the same time.Anyway you will need to hook up the external hardrive so that iTunes can reach it when you are trying to access the music on the external drive. When you add folders or files to iTunes you are telling iTunes where to find the music. For you to be able to load that music on to your ipod, they both have to be connected to it at the same time. If you can only connect one external device at a time let me know. There is a work around for that type of issue. |
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Help please Unregistered guest | Hi Berny, thanks for the info. I can hook up both itunes and the external drive. However, I've found that when I play a song from the external drive, it has a skip at right about the 12 second mark, no matter what the song is. But when I tested playing the same song from my C drive (which is running out of space and the reason for my purchase of the external), it doesn't skip. And, what's worse, when I transferred songs from the external drive to my ipod, the ipod picks up these skips! What can be done? |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 3964 Registered: Dec-03 | don't do that, what you do is transfer the songs on your external drive to your c drive first and then itunes will download it to your ipod. After you are done, delete the files on the c:drive again. I know it is a lot of hassle but it is the best and safest way to manage your songs. Also make sure that you do not let iTunes organize your music files. |
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Unregistered guest | Hi, So glad to have found this site & thread. Here's my problem: I've lots (about 3000) tunes on my iPod and want to back up these tunes to my external hard drive -purchased just for this purpose. I want to down load iPod tunes to my Mac iTunes, then copy that onto the external hard drive, then erase that batch from the MAc iTunes, and downolad another batch from the Ipod and so forth. I've tried using Restospect to do this, but just get hopelessly baffled. And when trying to figure out a drag,drop and click procedure - 1) I'm not sure just what to drag and 2)everytime I try moving some tunes and trying to check out the move, I feel the tune is just coming back up through my Mac iTunes. Do I drag the "iTunes Music" folder and name it -say the "date iTunes." If you can give me any help, I'd be very very grateful. |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 4111 Registered: Dec-03 | Sorry Kitty, I am not familiar with Mac OS. |
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New member Username: ThundarrPost Number: 1 Registered: Oct-05 | I have windows XP and want to store all of my music on an external hard drive within iTunes. The problem is i only have 1 usb 1.1 drive on the computer. should i get a hub or an external hard drive with a built in hub? |
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Unregistered guest | Berny: have read the above and am still having trougle with the whole thing. I also need to move music off c drive to external drive. Have Ipod and all music is automattically, after cd is entered, stored on itunes. I do not want to do this. I just want to enter directly to the new external hard drive and then be selective as to want music I want to put onto ipod. Purchased Lacie 80GB. In addition, I have several hundred more CD's waiting to be put onto itunes which will slow computer even more. Can you give me a step by step on how to do this. Thank you, |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 4159 Registered: Dec-03 | Lauraq, When you open iTunes, click on "edit" go down to "preferences" and click on that. Go to the "advanced" tab. From here you will see "iTunes Music folder location". Click on the "change" button. From there you can specify the external hard drive as the drive where you want your iTunes music to go. Make sure that you first create a folder for iTunes music. good luck |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 4160 Registered: Dec-03 | Have you connected your external drive yet? |
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New member Username: BeegoeMichigan Post Number: 1 Registered: Oct-05 | O.k. Aparently I'm a moron. I just bought a WD external HD and I can't figure out how to transfer my iTunes and my bit torrents into my HD. Each time I try to do it, it seems to try to copy my entire C drive. I bought the HD from eBay, and I think it's missing the booklet that comes with it, even though I bought it "new". Thanks!! |
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CathyBryan Unregistered guest | The hard drive is 13GB and FULL -- my friend purchased an external hard drive to place her photos and music on. I don't have an iPod or iTunes and found this board. Can we move the music folders to the external hard drive and leave the program on the internal hard drive without the program losing touch with the files? Then above someone said they have to be copied back to C to play them copy to the iPod. Can the program be set up to always look to the external hard drive? The reason for getting it is the small internal hard drive and lack of space - there isn't enough space left to burn a CD. |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 4164 Registered: Dec-03 | CathyBryan, Check out my post on Oct 21. The copying to the C: is a different matter. |
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paul24074 Unregistered guest | Is it possible to use an iPod effectively as an external hard drive to store music on? I don't want to keep songs both on my hard drive and on the iPod. I hear that iPods automatically synchronise, so if the songs are not on the hard disk they get deleted off the iPod. |
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Schmy Unregistered guest | I have a question similar to those above. I'm about to buy an external hard drive to transfer the music from my laptop to free up space. The external drive itself will remain at home but if I want to charge the iPod battery whilst at work I'll be plugging it into my laptop via the USB port. This automatically opens up iTunes which will then try to find the music library which will be situated in a different county! Will this make the iPod/iTunes "fall down" or worst case scenario start deleting music from my iPod? And what would happen if I put a music CD into the laptop whilst at work? Again it would try to find "G:/" (or whatever the external drive is called) and might throw a wobbly. |
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Schmy Unregistered guest | OK ignore that. I've just seen a setting in iTunes preferences that stops iTunes opening automatically when I plug the iPod in. I'll also set up my laptop so that it asks me what to do when a music CD is loaded rather than automatically downloading the music. Marvelous! |
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New member Username: SwigermanPost Number: 1 Registered: Oct-05 | I copied my iTunes to the external HD, but when I go into "preferences" and hit "change," I don't get an option for it. In fact, it won't let me select anything other than the desktop. Any suggestions? |
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skypof Unregistered guest | I just recently transferred all my music to my external hard drive. I deleted all the songs in my iTunes. Now, when I try to "add a folder" to copy the music over from my external hard drive, it duplicates MOST but not all the files on my external hard drive. My itunes preferences are set so that the itunes music folder is in my ex. hd. Is there any way to avoid taking up twice as much space on my ex. hd? Any help?? |
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Jason Marts Unregistered guest | Im looking at purchasing an external hard drive for my music that seems to be killing my computer. I am going to want to be able to play music off of the external and also run my ipod off of it. I thinking 160GB ish... So my question is; are there any stats or thing that i want to look for in making the purchase that will make my external better for me? |
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Unregistered guest | Im using my powerbook G4 with a carillon external hard drive for my i tunes collection. I have set the location and it seems to be working fine apart from now and again some of my files seem to just disappear! When i search in both drives there is no sign of them! Has anyone had a similar problem to me? Any help would be appreciated. |
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Unregistered guest | My old computer crashed and died.I salvaged the old hard drive, put it in a case with a USB2 connection and can access it and use it as an external hard drive. When I try to move the old itunes library to my new computer here's what I get: The old library appears in the new computer's itunes library but the songs only play when the old hard drive--the "external" is on. When it's off, the songs in the library won't play because "the source file can't be located". If I try to move songs from the old hard drive and "send to" the new computer there is no C drive listed as an option. Go figure. How can I permanently move the library from the old hard drive to the new? |
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Gold Member Username: Project6Post Number: 4226 Registered: Dec-03 | Does the new hard drive have a designated drive letter? |
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Anonymous | I have 3 external hard drives with music. Is there a way for iTunes to make a complete catalogue of all 3, and to find the song in question, when the correct hard disk (one of them) is in use. I run XP. Thanks! |
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Carl F. Unregistered guest | Last year my computer crashed. I had saved my music to an external hard drive. After I fixed the pc, I transferred the music back from the external hard drive. However, now itunes doesnt recognize my music library unless I have the external hard drive connected to the pc. Without the external hard drive connected, itunes says "unable to find original file," when I try to play a song. However, it plays all songs when the external hard drive is connected. I dont want to have to carry around my external hard drive all the time. Any way around this? Thanks alot for your time, Carl |
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Unregistered guest | My question is similar to that of Schmy. The situation: I have a Laptop with about 30GB of music and an external device of about 80GB of music. Both are in the itunes music library. WinXP Pro and always latest iTunes. The problem: When I travel, I don't have my external drive plugged. As soon as iTunes tries to play a song from the unplugged drive, it adds this neat exclamation mark in the library and refrains from ever trying to play that song again. In the end this means that even at home itunes now rarely plays any songs from my external drive. The questions: - How do I get rid of these exclamation marks quickly (not more than a couple of clicks for thousands of files)? - How could I prevent iTunes from setting these exclamation marks on my external drive at all? - How could I prevent iTunes from accessing the external drive at all, while it is not plugged? (Now it takes a while for iTunes to randomly select a song which is on the internal drive because most of the songs it wants to play are on the external disk and itunes takes a while to realize for each song. Therefore, I have quite long pauses between two songs that can actually be played.) Thanks and regards, Dominik |
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HuskieMan Unregistered guest | Berny, the laptop I'm using to run iTunes is getting low on memory so I got an external HD. My laptop only has 5.5 GB left and my songs take up 13.3 GB. From here I have two questions. 1)Your Sep. 12 post says don't let iTunes organize your music files. Please explain what this means and why. 2)On your Sep. 12 post you said to transfer from external to C:, plug in iPod, erase from C:. Is there a way to have iTunes and all of the music in it saved to the external as one thing and just plug it and the iPod into the computer at the same time to update my iPod? Because if you have to move the songs back to the C: to update, then I'll need the 13.3 GB free. Can you help me, please Thanks |
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Bitty Unregistered guest | Pretty much the same situation as Music-Dominic; I have a laptop with some of my music and an ext. hard drive with the rest, and I wonder how I can get my computer to automaticaly recognize when the songs on my ext. aren't available because it's disconnected, and not show them in the library until I connect it again. My goal is to be able to have a massive library at home that goes into all my playlists automatically, but then take my laptop elsewhere and have just my favorite songs show up in the playlists. This is a problem I've had with lots of things on my laptop; I want to have a fully functioning but minimal system the laptop, and put everything else (games, video, extra applications, etc.) on the external. Any other suggestions for making use of an ext. hard drive with a laptop to save space, but still be able to use the laptop when I travel, would be greatly appreciated. |
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Bitty Unregistered guest | Oh, and I'm on an Apple Powerbook 12" with a USB2 external drive. |
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Caro Unregistered guest | This isn't a very technical question but I was just wondering how to do it; I have my iTunes on my desktop, how can I transfer all the songs to my laptop quickly? |
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alohatoall Unregistered guest | I have the same question, but I've gone one step further than Caro -- I have transferred "iTunes" to my external hard drive, and now I want to transfer it to my laptop. How do I do that? Thanks for the help. |
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Caro Unregistered guest | Guys can anyone help us please?!? |
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go-go Unregistered guest | Similar Question: I am trying to link my iTunes library to an external F drive. I'm running Windows XP sp2, iTunes 6. I've gone into edit-preferences-change and indicated the drive. Itunes WOULDN'T import the 3000 songs from the external drive. But if i played each album (album by album) the songs would be entered into iTunes. So, I did that. Now, however, something happened and there's an "!" before most of the songs. I checked edit-preferences-change and it had reverted BACK TO the C-Drive folder (which had no songs in it, thus the !). I changed it back to the F drive, and if I "play" each "!" song in iTunes, the "!" will be removed and all is fine. Do I have to do this 3000 times? What can I do to make sure it doesn't happen again? Does the external drive have to be powered on and connected EVERY time I use iTunes? Also, something seems to be wrong, if iTunes library won't go out to the F-drive to pick up the songs without me playing them. Ideas? |
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Bitty Unregistered guest | Freakin' Apple. Such great software, but they leave out some critical details... I'm guessing there's some backwards way to deal with the external hard drive thing, we've just got to slog through all the BS. |
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ipodonpc Unregistered guest | I'm trying to get music from my external hard drive to my new PC, but I'm having to open every single song in Windows Explorer before iTunes will recognize it. With thousands of songs to go, is there a shortcut? Thanks in advance. |
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funkychickensmellz Unregistered guest | Does anyone know if it is possible to buy an external hard drive that doesn't create a new drive and justs adds on to c:? |
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ineedserioushelphere Unregistered guest | I just got a new computer. I also just got a new iPod in the mail. I have an iTunes account and am wondering how to obtain my songs on my new computer. |
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Aqua Centaur Unregistered guest | To place songs on an external drive: Copy all files to a folder on external drive from your iTunes folder or otherwise IE: E:/iTunes/iTunes Music Then go into iTunes and delete your entire library. It will ask if you wish to only delete from library or delete from the entire computer, YOU MUST CHOOSE ONLY TO DELETE FROM LIBRARY because if you do not it will delete the files from your computer. Then go into the iTunes preferences and select advanced and change the iTunes folder location to the new folder you created on the external drive. Close iTunes and then go to My Documents>My Music> and rename and folder to "Delete" Then go back into iTunes and open the program back up. Go to file and Import from folder and import the new folder that you created on the external drive. Now iTunes will play files from the external drive and copy new files to the external drive. It will create a new iTunes folder on your primary computer with the library files in it. If everything worked then you can simply delete the folder that we renamed delete. If things did not work or you experienced an error simply rename the "Delete" folder to "iTunes" and it will revert to the way you had things. Hope this helps  |
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toml Unregistered guest | I am using an ibook G4, and I am trying to use an external hard drive for my music. I copied everything okay, but whenever I delete something from my computer's itunes library, which was my intention, it deletes it from my external hard drive. How do I turn off this "syncing?" |
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marcusthomas Unregistered guest | okay... i need to know a couple things if you don't mind. i have windows xp, the latest version of itunes, 3000 songs, and an external hard drive. i want to reformat my existing hard drive, keep all of my music and important files etc. so far, i have put all of my music in ONE folder on my external HD with the exception of the cds that i loaded onto itunes in the first place. i think i found them on my computer but they are all in separate folders. all of my other important files are backed up on my external HD. I'm going to college next year and i want to be able to use this HD for music and other large file storage. These are my questions: 1. WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO DO TO GET ALL OF MY MUSIC ONTO MY EXTERNAL HD AND WILL iTunes RECOGNIZE THAT I MOVED IT? 2. HOW DO I *RUN* iTunes OFF OF MY EXTERNAL HD WITH ALL OF MY CURRENT MUSIC ON IT MAKING SURE THAT ALL OF MY CD'S ARE ON THERE? 3. WILL ALL OF THE ALTERATIONS I'VE MADE TO THE ARTIST AND ALBUM AND THE MUSIC ART STILL BE THERE... AND IF NOT, HOW DO I GET IT BACK? I'VE SPENT MANY HOURS PERFECTING THIS BECAUSE I HAVE NO LIFE SO IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME. I would really appreciate it if someone with great knowledge of this would respond with a step by step process. Thank you for your time! |
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Deonbryan32 Unregistered guest | Hi, please help! I have transfered my itunes music folder to an external hard drive, and carried out the procedure as discribed by bernie on the 13th august. But now when open itunes I can not see them in the library, although I can see new cd's that I have since added. Any suggestions? |
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Unregistered guest | Hi I had about 25 Gig of music stored on an external drive. Then I installed Itunes. I consolidated the music library with Itunes and everything was swell for a couple of weeks. But suddenly Itunes ccouldnt seem to find the tunes no more, so i started some heavy searching....all the music has disapered without a trace. I havent had any virus lately so i dont have clue whats happened. Can anyone please tell me whats going on??? ps! I use XP |
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Anonymous | how to delet artwork off the itunes main widow thing. |
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mwally Unregistered guest | My question is this - I have an external hard drive on which I store all of my music. Every now and again, for no apparent reason, it changes its location (e.g. it was originally the F:\ now it is my H:\...it has also been E and G). I figure this happens when I use other USB ports or if I use tools like Daemon Tools...so I guess i'd like to know what to do in this situation, because I can't be bothered to keep re-adding all my music to the iTunes library! |
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Unregistered guest | yer um i wonna put a vidio from my documents in to i tunes iv converted it but every way iv tryed to put the vidio in to itunes it wont let me do it and its getting rather fustrating pls help thanx |
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Sammipod Unregistered guest | Martin, You can go to a website called: http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/ I've successfully downloaded a movie! Just be sure to follow the directions. |
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Sammipod Unregistered guest | Can anyone recommend a good external hd? |
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Sammipod Unregistered guest | Can anyone recommend a good external hd? |
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marcusthomas Unregistered guest | western Digital 120gb |
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Beeflava Unregistered guest | All of the suggestions on this thread have so far been very helpful, but I have a different query. How do you transfer the music from a playlist in iTunes to, for example, an external drive? Any help is much appreciated. |
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Annoyed one Unregistered guest | Ok, I got my ipod tonite, excited, but after using itune to put musics into my ipod(video), it started acting weird, itune gave me a message saying drive can't be read or written to. So I unplugged it and plug the usb back to reset the connection. Soon after I realize the musics I had have been deleted, (the original files from my external drive, where the mp3s are). I rebooted my computer and my harddrive cannot be read anymore, window is giving me a msg saying the usb device(my HD) is malfunction... this is a new external drive as well, whats the cause of this and how do I fix it, my Ipod has also lost 2gb that cant be read. (down to 28 gb instead of 30) This happen often? |
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taylr Unregistered guest | My computer "C"drive is now full from I Tunes downloads- how do i move the music files to my "D" drive which is empty. Step by step guide for a PC novice would be great |
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Unregistered guest | Ok I just got a new computer and took my hardrive out of my old machine. The way I had the files added to itunes was by network. So i have iTunes installed on another computer in the basement. The problem now is that when i open iTunes, all my songs are from that old hardrive, even though all the files are there, every song on iTunes say "This song could not be used because the original file could not be located. Would you like to locate it? ". Is there a easier way for me to locate the songs like all at once? or do i have to locate each song on its own? or can i locate all songs at once? |
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