Can someone please help me move the location of my iTunes library?

[StephenCampbell]

I always hear about how simple this is to do, and I can never for the life of me figure it out. I set the itunes folder location in iTunes preferences to the new location, where I've put All the music, and it just doesn't read it, it doesn't pick it up.

I can of course manually re-drop everything into my iTunes library, letting it copy into my new folder location, but then I don't get playlists, and things just aren't quite the way they were.

I have in home/music/itunes a number of folders and files, such as "Album Artwork" "iTunes Library Extras.itdb" "iTunes Music Library.xml" "Mobile Applications" "iTunes Library.itl" and of course "iTunes Music."

I want that "iTunes" folder that contains all these files to simply be moved to my new hard drive, and everything in iTunes to remain the same.

How do I do this?

Thanks!

 

[StephenCampbell]

Nevermind, I think I got it. I guess all those other files have to stay on the startup disk, and only the library folder moves.

 

[Dhelsdon]

I am trying to do the same thing over a network share, so what your saying is that I need to delete everything except

iTunes Media
Album Artwork
Mobile Applications (iPhone Apps folder)

from the network drive, then iTunes will detect it and add all my songs?

Right now, I have the full library like you did at first, and I've set that as the library in iTunes prefs but it didn't analyze the tracks and stuff like it normally would.

 

[John T]

The correct way is via iTunes Advanced Preferences.

 

[StephenCampbell]

That's right.

You go into iTunes advances preferences, and change the location of your iTunes library to the new location that you want it to be at.

Do not put your library there first. iTunes will transfer it there for you, keeping everything intact.

Simply make sure "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" is checked, then change the location to your new location, click ok, get out of preferences, and then go into File -> Library -> Organize Library. That will get everything transferred to the new location, and then you can delete the "iTunes Media" folder from the original location. Don't delete any of the other stuff from the original location, only the main iTunes Media folder.