How To Move An iTunes Library

Moving an iTunes library is one of the simplest tasks around. Yet, many people are hesitant to move their library for fear of losing all their music. Plus, many people who have attempted to move their library have run into problems and error messages that appear to indicate their music has disappeared. Frequently these problems lead to frantic forum posts where readers plead for help like their dealing with a life and death situation. I think most of us have been there at one time or another. Even if for a split second, the thought of accidentally deleting your whole library is terrifying. Sure much of the music is replaceable but the time spent to rip a couple terabytes worth of music is gone for good. Fortunately Apple has made the process of moving an iTunes library very simple. In fact it's so simple that many people quickly look over-think the process and assume they need to recreate the wheel to accomplish the task. There are a few more ways to move a library that are not covered here. I've selected the easiest method of moving from point A to point B for this article. What follows is a short Computer Audiophile Academy how-to video and the official Apple documentation about moving an iTunes library.

From Apple at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Article: HT1449
Last Modified: October 14, 2008

First make sure that the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" option is checked in iTunes Preferences:

From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.

In the resulting window, click the Advanced button.

Select the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" checkbox.

Click OK.

Once you've done that, follow the next set of steps to change your iTunes Music library location to the new drive and then consolidate your library to the new location. This not only copies your audio and media files over, it also retains your ratings and playlists. Note: If you move your music and media library to an external hard drive, you will need to have that drive connected to access your files. No matter what, it's always a good idea to have a backup of the media you have in iTunes.

Open iTunes.

From the iTunes menu, choose Preferences.

Click the Advanced button in the Preferences window.

Click the Change button in the iTunes Music folder location pane.

In the Change Music Folder Location window that appears, navigate to the location where you would like your new Music folder to be created. Note: By default, your iTunes Music folder is a folder named "iTunes Music" in ~/Music/iTunes/ where the tilde "~" represents your home directory.

Click the New Folder button in the Change Music Folder Location window.

In the New Folder window that appears, enter the name of the new iTunes Music folder.

Click Create.

Click Open in the Change Music Folder Location window.

Click OK in the Advanced window.

From the File menu, choose Library and then Consolidate Library... A message appears that says: "Consolidating your library will copy all of your music into the iTunes Music folder. This cannot be undone."

Click Consolidate. Important: This action copies all of your music and media files to the new location. There must be enough hard disk space available to copy all of your music and media files.

Additional Information

If you move your library to an external drive, you'll need to power up and connect the drive before starting iTunes. If you don't, iTunes will prompt you to either locate the library or to create a new library (which will result in an empty library).