Itunes Library...changing hard drive

[SolRayz]

I am swapping out my internal hard drive on my MBP and I want to know what is the best way of reassociating 200GB of music located on an external drive with Itunes after a fresh reinstall of OSX.

A method I used before was by physically dragging my music folder to an extra hard drive, deleting the original music folder on the original external hard drive...then dragging all 200 GB back into Itunes and back onto that original external hard drive to reassociate with iTunes on my internal drive...what a PITA!

Any better methods?

 

[Raid]

Maybe I don't get what you're trying to do... (sorry is your music already on the external or internal disk?)

If it's internal I don't think you're going to find an easier method than:

1. attach external hard drive
2. drag music folder from user account to external hard drive
3. wipe & reinstall on internal hard drive
4. drag music folder from external hard drive to user account on internal hard drive

If for some reason you want to keep your music on the external disk, the easiest way to keep it there and keep iTunes happy is to create an alias of the Music folder on your external and replace the Music folder in your user account with that alias.

 

[sunfast]

I think you could move your entire iTunes folder on the external and just change the location of your iTunes folder preferences after your re-install to point at the new drive.

 

[SolRayz]

Yes my music is on an external and I would like to keep it there. Can you explain the whole alias thing. I am not exactly sure what you mean.

 

[Raid]

Honestly if you're confused about aliases then it's best to do what sunfast recommends, and change the location of your iTunes folder under the iTunes preferences.

So maybe creating an alias wasn't the easiest method. ... it's just I do it and it was easy for me.

If you've always used the external and allowed iTunes to organize your music then you can make an alias of your music folder by holding down command and option keys while dragging the music folder from your external to the appropriate spot in your user account (I would assume either ~/username/music or ~/username/Music/iTunes). Without knowing the specifics it's hard to say, but it's important to put the alias in the right location so that iTunes can find your music.