How to Move Your iTunes Library to an External Drive

Space, the final frontier. It may seem like an astronomically difficult problem, trying to keep enough free space on your Mac’s startup drive, especially if you have a Mac with a small SSD.

Space is precious, and one of the largest users of your drive’s space is likely to be your various media libraries. You likely have one or more photo libraries, as well as all the music, videos, podcasts, audiobooks, and mobile apps that are managed by your iTunes app. In many cases, your iTunes library is one of the main users of drive space.

Whether you are running out of space with Mojave or earlier, or want to make a backup before upgrading to Catalina, this Rocket Yard guide can help!

One of the best ways to increase the amount of free space on your startup drive, and better manage your media libraries, is to move them from their usual home to an external drive. This allows you to use a large but relatively inexpensive drive to house all the data.

Consider this:

A new USB 3.0 external drive with a 2 TB hard drive installed can be had for less than $150, possibly even less if you already have an enclosure to use, or a hard drive kicking around.

That’s why one of my recommendations for controlling drive space issues is to consider moving your media libraries to an external hard drive.

Move iTunes Library to External Storage

In this tip, we’re going to show you how to successfully move your iTunes library from its default location on your startup drive to an external drive connected to your Mac. This method will result in a seamless move, with your iTunes app able to pick up right where it left off, with no hiccups.

The first step in the process is to determine how much external storage you need by finding out how big your current iTunes library is. This will help determine a bare minimum size for an external dedicated to iTunes, though I suggest you use this number only as a reference. I recommend choosing a larger size that will accommodate any expected growth in the library, as well as any additional media libraries you may choose to install on the external now or in the future.

Find Out How Large the Current iTunes Library is

The default location for the iTunes library is in your home folder, within the Music folder (~/User_Name/Music).

To find out how big the library is, perform the following:

1. Open a Finder window and navigate to: ~/User_Name/Music.
2. Right-click or command-click the iTunes folder, and select Get Info from the popup menu.
3. In the Get Info window that opens, make a note of the folder size found near the top left of the window, just under the General: section.
4. The size listed indicates the current size of the iTunes library.
5. You can close the Get Info window.

The size listed is just about the bare minimum. I say “just about” because you’ll need slightly more capacity on the external to ensure the library will fit. As an example, my iTunes library is about 49 GB, not very big as iTunes libraries go. It’s unlikely that my 49 GB library would fit on a 50 GB external (if you could still find such a small drive), due to the amount of space the external will reserve for itself during the formatting and partitioning process. It would be better to go up a size, from 50 GB to 60 GB, as the minimum space needed.

To this minimum, add space for expansion. Perhaps you’re an avid collector of new music and podcasts, or you like to install lots of mobile apps. All of these things will take up additional storage. I suggest going with the largest external drive your budget will tolerate. This will ensure you don’t need to expand the drive size in the near future, and you can always use any unused space for other data, perhaps your photo libraries, or to stream movies from.

Interface Speed

This is an easy one; a USB 3.0 or better interface should be all that’s needed for an iTunes media library. This should provide sufficient bandwidth to play back any current iTunes content. If you want to future-proof your investment, consider using a USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure, which provides twice as much bandwidth as USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 Gen 1.

You could also consider moving to a Thunderbolt-based enclosure if you plan to use the external drive for even more bandwidth-intensive storage, such as movie/video/image editing libraries.

Making the Move

Before you begin the actual process of moving the iTunes library files around, it’s a good idea to have a current backup. After all, this process includes moving and deleting files; if something goes wrong, you’ll be thankful you have a backup to use for recovery.

The easiest way to move the iTunes library is to ensure that iTunes is in control of managing the library for you. Essentially, iTunes can be set up to use media files scattered anywhere around your Mac, or it can be set up to gather all the media and place them into a folder structure that iTunes manages.

It’s this last configuration that we want to use, since it gathers all needed files under the iTunes folder, allowing us to copy just the content of a single folder to the new external drive.

• Launch iTunes, and select “Library > Organize Library” from the File menu.

• Make sure there’s a checkmark in the Consolidate Files box, and click OK.

• We’re going to assume that you haven’t previously changed the default iTunes library location. If you have, please substitute your iTunes library location in the following steps.

• iTunes will copy needed files and place them all within the iTunes folder; iTunes won’t move or delete the originals but leave them where they were. This process can take a bit of time if your iTunes library wasn’t previously consolidated. Play a game, take a coffee break. When you come back, the consolidation should be done.

• All of your iTunes media files are now located in the iTunes folder, within the ~/User_Name/Music folder.

The next step is to copy the iTunes folder to the external drive you plan on using.

• Quit iTunes.

• Open a Finder window and navigate to ~/User_Name/Music. An easy shortcut to use is to click on the Music folder in the Finder sidebar, if present. You can also select Go to Folder from the Finder’s Go menu, and then enter ~/User_Name/Music, replacing User_Name with your actual user account name. As an example, I would enter ~/tnelson/Music.

• Copy the iTunes folder by dragging it to your external drive.

The Finder will display a progress window as the files within the iTunes folder are copied.

Depending on how large the folder is, the copy process can take quite a while. This is another advantage of selecting a higher performance interface for the external drive; it can reduce the copy time.

Once the copying is complete, you need to tell iTunes where the new library is located.

• Hold down the Option key, and launch iTunes.

• iTunes will tell you that it needs an iTunes library. You can Quit, Create Library, or Choose Library. Click the Choose Library button.

• You’ll be presented with a standard Open dialog box. Navigate to your external drive and select the iTunes folder, then click the Open button.

• iTunes will finish launching and open with the new iTunes library selected.

At this point, you should ensure that iTunes is indeed accessing the new location and that you’re able to play back various iTunes media files.

To ensure the new library location is being used:

• Select Preferences from the iTunes menu.

• Click the Advanced icon in the toolbar.

The first item displayed under Advanced is the current iTunes library pathname. It should display a pathname similar to:

/Volumes/External_Drive_Name/iTunes/iTunes Media

If not, you can click on the Change button, navigate to the iTunes folder on your external drive, and then click the Open button.

Once you’ve confirmed that the correct library is being used and that iTunes is able to play the library’s media files, it’s time for some general cleanup.

Clean Up Old iTunes Files

So far, you have:

• Picked an external drive to store your iTunes library.
• Copied your existing library from your startup drive to the new location on your external drive.
• Told iTunes about the new location of the library.
• Verified that iTunes works fine with the new location.

Now it’s time to clean up the old library files to make room on your startup drive.

1. Open a Finder window, and navigate to the old Music folder at ~/User_Name/Music.
2. Select the iTunes folder and drag it to the trash, or right-click on it and select Move to Trash from the popup menu.
3. Once the files are in the Trash, right-click on the Trash icon in your Dock and select Empty Trash from the popup menu.

The old iTunes library, along with any other files that may have been in the trash, will be deleted, freeing up space on your startup drive.

General Tips

• If you’re using Time Machine to back up your iTunes library, make sure the external is not excluded from the locations being backed up. You can do this by opening the Time Machine preference pane and selecting the Options button.

• Make sure the new iTunes Library location is not in the Exclude list.

• If you use one of the other popular backup apps, make sure the new iTunes library location is included in your backup process.

• The consolidation process you used to put all the media files within the iTunes library means that if you have media files scattered around your Mac’s storage system, they are no longer being used by iTunes. If there are no other apps using them, you could free up additional space by deleting these files.

• Do not use an external Time Machine drive to store the iTunes library. It’s not a good idea to have both the original files, and the backup of those files, on the same drive.

• Choose an external drive large enough to accommodate your iTunes library as well as any other media storage needs, such as your Photos library.

And most importantly…

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