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Help with iTunes and External HDD

M

modest serving

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 16, 2010
34
0
I'm a new convert. :D I've looked around, because I know there are several guides out there for storing your iTunes library on an external HDD. However I have a question that I couldn't find an answer for, yet.

I took all of my music off of my Dell XPS m1530 and put it on an external HDD which I've hooked up to my Mac Mini. I didn't try to preserve my .itl or .xml library; instead I deleted the itunes folder and started from scratch by just pointing iTunes on my Mac Mini to my music folder and letting it look through them and import them. I did however grab my Mobile Applications folder and set it aside. In preferences I changed the location of the iTunes Media Folder to the External HDD. Once all the music had imported; I dragged the Mobile Applications folder from the desktop on my Mac Mini into iTunes. They imported and show up under applications. The problem is that iTunes put the *.ipa files into the old iTunes media folder on my Mac Mini instead of the one I designated on the external HDD. I have a lot of apps and my Mac Mini's HDD is small (60GB) so I want to keep as much of my media and various files on the external. How do I get iTunes to put the apps on the external and not in /User/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media ??

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> iTunes Media Folder Location

Uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to the library" if you want to manage the library by yourself. Otherwise iTunes does it for you automagically.
 
modest serving said:
It is unchecked, but from my experience that doesn't apply to .ipa files.
Click to expand...

I believe that it will leave that there so that it knows where to find the actual media files which will be stored elsewhere. Sure it grows with each file added to the iTunes library but not too big.
 
I think I found my answer:

1. Quit iTunes
2. Move the library files *.itl and *.itl along with the media folder on the local machine to the itunes folder on the external.
3. Shift Click to open itunes and point it to the new location of the library files.
 
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