iTunes Library on Secondary Drive

[Stridder44]

I know this has probably been addressed several times already, and forgive me if it has, but I still haven't completely been able to solve this.


I have a MBP. I recently bought an SSD to make my main drive, and the old HDD is my secondary storage drive.

I want to keep my iTunes library on the storage drive of course. So far I've managed to get it to recognize the old Library folder, but the album artwork isn't all showing up in iTunes for some reason. The entire iTunes Library is there on the storage drive, and I've redirected iTunes to look for it in the secondary drive location.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by Stridder44

I have a MBP. I recently bought an SSD to make my main drive, and the old HDD is my secondary storage drive.

I want to keep my iTunes library on the storage drive of course. So far I've managed to get it to recognize the old Library folder, but the album artwork isn't all showing up for some reason. The entire iTunes Library is there on the storage drive, and I've redirected iTunes to look for it in the secondary drive location.

The artwork isn't showing up where? In iTunes or in Finder? Also, is your artwork downloaded by iTunes or is it manually added? What, exactly, did you move to the secondary drive?

[Stridder44]

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

The artwork isn't showing up where? In iTunes or in Finder? Also, is your artwork downloaded by iTunes or is it manually added? What, exactly, did you move to the secondary drive?

Sorry, should have clarified that (edited my original post to fix that). It doesn't show up in iTunes. I have the artwork folder in the original iTunes folder, along with everything else. I literally just dragged the whole folder over to the secondary storage drive.

[Stridder44]

So I've tried following this guide:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

But to no avail. The music will work fine, but the album artwork only shows up on some songs and not all of them.

[Stridder44]

I figured it out. I'll post my findings here since nobody else could seem to help.


Just for background, I'm on OS X 10.8.2 using iTunes 11.0.1.

If you have an old library like me that you've continually been saving over many, many years follow this step before move or copy anything. Open iTunes, go to File --> Library --> Organize Library. Check the "Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Music" box and hit OK. This will resort your library to the current iTunes folder format. See this article for more info.

After you've done that, close iTunes. Copy your library over to your second drive, and ensure that it's all there (by doing Get Info on the folder and verifying it's the same exact size as your current iTunes folder). Now re-open iTunes. Open Preferences --> Advanced --> and under the iTunes Media Folder Location section, click "Change", and then direct it to the iTunes Library on your second drive, and once you've directed it there, choose the "iTunes Music" folder. Click OK.

Now close iTunes. While holding down the "alt" key, open iTunes again. You'll be greeted by a "Choose iTunes Library" window. Select "Choose Library". Once again, direct it towards your iTunes library on your second drive, only this time when you get there, select the "iTunes Library.itl" folder. The .itl is crucial to this. Now your old library should show up and look great. Close iTunes again (just for good measure) and reopen it.

Play some music and verify that all the artwork is showing up next to the song title. Now you can delete the iTunes folder on your main drive since iTunes is completely running off the secondary drive!