Adding Second External Hard Drive in iTunes

[OldCorpse]

I'm on Tiger 10.4.11, and the latest iTunes. I have an external hard drive on which I keep all my music files, managed by iTunes. I'm running out of room on that drive. At some point, it is not practical to keep increasing the size of the drive, as the reliability goes down. I'd like to keep my drives to 1TB or so.

So, the other solution is to add a second external hard drive, where all new music files can go to.

How to do it, so iTunes doesn't freak out? Here's what I'm thinking - could you guys help make it work?

I thought to add the second drive and then in iTunes preferences -->Advanced---> iTunes Music folder location CHANGE to the NEW drive. That way, I'd have iTunes copy all new music to the NEW DRIVE.

Question: Now, how do I go about having iTunes reference files on the FIRST drive, so that the Library is up to date, and when I select something to play from the FIRST drive, iTunes knows how to find it?

OR am I all wrong and there is some better way of doing things?

 

[sal]

is all your music in one Place? or is it spread out?
if it's spread out, you have to "consolidate" itunes library first. This moves everything to one itunes folder.

Once this is done, you can move the entire itunes folder to the external drive. Under preferences, change the folder location to it's new location on the external drive. Everything should be good to go

 

[OldCorpse]

is all your music in one Place? or is it spread out?
if it's spread out, you have to "consolidate" itunes library first. This moves everything to one itunes folder.

Once this is done, you can move the entire itunes folder to the external drive. Under preferences, change the folder location to it's new location on the external drive. Everything should be good to go

Thanks, Sal. I can't consolidate all music onto one drive (NEW), because it won't fit. What I want to do is to KEEP the OLD drive and add the NEW drive, and for the library to know what is where. Right now, yes, everything is on the OLD drive, which is full. Adding the NEW drive, I want all my new music on the NEW drive, with the Library knowing that there's old stuff on the OLD drive, and knowing to reference it.

 

[ilovebananas]

This should work. Might not be the most efficient way but it works.

First open itunes preferences and go to Advanced

Uncheck the "copy music to itunes....." box

Change the "itunes music folder" to your newly connected drive.

Select everything in your library and delete it. Make sure you DO NOT move it to trash but keep the files at the prompt that should pop up. Delete a few replaceable files first just to make sure you get the prompt.

Now go to "file" and "Add to library". Now select your old drive (with music still on). This will now reference this music in your itunes database but not add it to the drive.

Hope this helps

 

[ilovebananas]

following on from my previous post.

You may be able to skip the whole delete/re add to library step.
Simply changing drive path and unchecking might well work.

 

[OldCorpse]

Thanks ilovebananas, I'll try it as soon as the new drive comes in.

 

[drichards]

(Watching to see how this one turns out.)

Good luck. I'm pulling for ya, my WD MyBook is full...

 

[txr0ckabilly]

any updates on this? i'm curious about how to do this too.