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Moving iTunes (Music app) from iMac to external hard drive

G

GarethiMaclate2013

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 14, 2020
24
2
Good morning all!

I have just bought a new Samsung T5 SSD drive which I am intending to put my iMac from. However, I really want the option whereby if I disconnect the SSD drive I can still boot from the original hard drive built inside.(Just in case it all goes wrong!)

Just thinking about software on the iMac, I am thinking about moving the iTunes (music app) onto an external hard drive so regardless of if I am booting from the built in Drive or the SSD music will always be imported to my external drive and the iTunes / music app again will look to the external drive.

Has anyone had success in transferring the music library onto an external drive? I have seen a couple of ways how to do this, but reluctant to take the plunge without your good advice! Is there a preferred way to transfer the music to the external drive and then get iTunes to look to the new drive, before I clone my internal drive onto the SSD, and then boot from the SSD? (Looking to set this up Before I clone to save doing it afterwards)

Many thanks for your advice in advance!
 
I have a late 2009 iMac with High Sierra, so I don't know if anything changed, but I just took the entire Music folder and dragged it to my external HDD. The iTunes app I kept on the internal disk.
 
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There are things you haven't told us.
Which Mac?
What year was it made?
What OS is running on it?
What is the size of the internal drive?
What will be the size of the EXTERNAL boot SSD?

If the SSD is the same size and can hold everything that is now on the internal, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the new SSD.

The SSD will then be "an exact copy" of the internal drive, only it will run faster.

BOTH CCC and SD are FREE to download and use for 30 days.
Doing this will cost you nothing.
The internal drive will left "as it is now", still bootable.

In fact, you can keep using either CCC or SD to do "incremental cloned backups" from the SSD to the internal drive.
Do this, and the internal will remain available as a "second boot drive" if you ever have problems booting from the SSD.
 
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Fishrrman said:
There are things you haven't told us.
Which Mac?
What year was it made?
What OS is running on it?
What is the size of the internal drive?
What will be the size of the EXTERNAL boot SSD?

If the SSD is the same size and can hold everything that is now on the internal, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the new SSD.

The SSD will then be "an exact copy" of the internal drive, only it will run faster.

BOTH CCC and SD are FREE to download and use for 30 days.
Doing this will cost you nothing.
The internal drive will left "as it is now", still bootable.

In fact, you can keep using either CCC or SD to do "incremental cloned backups" from the SSD to the internal drive.
Do this, and the internal will remain available as a "second boot drive" if you ever have problems booting from the SSD.
Click to expand...
Fishrrman said:
There are things you haven't told us.
Which Mac?
What year was it made?
What OS is running on it?
What is the size of the internal drive?
What will be the size of the EXTERNAL boot SSD?

If the SSD is the same size and can hold everything that is now on the internal, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the new SSD.

The SSD will then be "an exact copy" of the internal drive, only it will run faster.

BOTH CCC and SD are FREE to download and use for 30 days.
Doing this will cost you nothing.
The internal drive will left "as it is now", still bootable.

In fact, you can keep using either CCC or SD to do "incremental cloned backups" from the SSD to the internal drive.
Do this, and the internal will remain available as a "second boot drive" if you ever have problems booting from the SSD.
Click to expand...
Thanks Fishrrman

It’s a 27” iMac, late 2013, (latest OS - I can’t remember which one! ??‍♂️), internal is 1TB drive, And new SSD is 1TB.

All I’m looking to do is move the music onto a separate standalone hard drive, so when I import music it is stored on the external hard drive, Regardless of whether I’m booting from the iMac internal drive or the bootable SSD. Drive the music is on a different external hard drive.

I’m just wanting to ensure if the bootable SSD drive fails I can disconnect, revert to the internal hard drive and the music is unaffected on a completely separate hard drive.
 
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I presume you understand that if you use Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the internal hard drive to the external SSD, you'll create a full bootable copy of the drive inside, right? And that would include a full copy of the iTunes music collection too.

Then you can boot from the SSD and- if your worry ever comes to pass- "fall back" to booting again from the internal drive. If you only buy music from the iTunes store, it should by synched to both copies of iTunes. However, if you rip some music from other sources like a CD, you'll need to rip it to BOTH drives or to one and then copy to the other.

If that's good enough for you, that will all work just fine and give you almost everything you want.

The one other thing I would do given your worry, it to fire up Time Machine so you have a dependable, extra backup just in case. Then you could lose the SSD and the entire Mac and still have a way to fully recover.

However, if you want to do EXACTLY what you say, there ARE several ways to do that... but the best might be to fire up any old Mac or PC you might have, make IT your iTunes music storage device the usual way and them use "family sharing" to share access to the music library with the iMac whether booted to internal HDD or external SSD. If you don't have an extra Mac or PC around, you might want to buy one used (for cheap) to allocate to this task. Think of it as your iTunes server and then your iMac booted either way as clients to that server. This will free up the space all that music storage is taking on the iMac HDD now, shifting it to the spare you set up to be this server.

If you ever add another Mac- like maybe a laptop- add it to family sharing and it too will seem to have a full copy of your iTunes library on it.

A great benefit to a centralized iTunes library like this is that you can turn off that iMac and/or take that laptop on a trip with you and anyone else on your personal network will still have full access to the library streaming from that central server Mac or PC.

However, all that offered, to do EXACTLY what you are wanting to do, here's pretty good step-by-step.
 
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Thanks you very much both! Some really good points and tips there! I could just leave iTunes on the internal drive, clone the drive to an SSD and if it fails I’ve got it on the internal drive. I suppose I can just rip a cd to the SSD drive, and when I’ve got a spare moment, detach the SSD drive, boot from the internal and rip the cd again! That was my original plan to be honest!
 
One other thing… when I connect the new SSD drive I need to erase / format. Do you know what format I need to set it to? I can’t quite remember how to check the format of the existing drive.
 
You could rip it twice OR, perhaps simpler, rip it once, select the new songs in iTunes, drag and drop them into a folder on another drive or USB stick. Then, when you boot into the OTHER drive, drag and drop those songs into iTunes to add them to the other library too. One rip: 2 iTunes additions.

Generally for Macs, APFS is THE file system for SSDs... unless you are keeping that 2013 iMac on- I think- macOS 10.12 or less. I think that starting with 10.13, APFS became THE ideal macOS file system for SSDs.

If you ARE clinging to 10.12 or less, you should use the OLD system: Mac OS Extended (journaled).

I looked it up and here's info about both
 
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Fair play, you guys are clever! ? you all seem to know what you’re taking about so thanks for all the advice!

That’s a good idea to save ripping it a second time! And a lot quicker too!

I’ll check the version of the OS, but I’m fairly sure it is still receiving updates so should be on APFS. But I will check!

Many thanks to all for your helpful advice!
 
I have looked on a few YouTube videos and there is another option to put up in safe mode – recovery mode by holding down command + R. It then allows me to restore the Samsung T5 SSD drive from the Macintosh HD drive. Is this way okay or is it better to do the carbon clone copy program?
When restoring from Macintosh HD It doesn’t also bring over the Macintosh HD – data file. If I do carbon carbon copy I assume it would bring that over as well?
 
OP:

You need to do a test.
Download the "Blackmagic Speed Test" (for drives).
It's free.

Run it on the internal drive.
Then, run it on the SSD.

Which is faster?
Post screenshots here.
(you should get read speeds around 420-430MBps with the t5)
 
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I’ll run a test this evening! The internal drive normally takes about three minutes to boot up until it is usable i.e. I am able to use Safari. On the SSD, just over a minute roughly and it’s ready to go! It is so fast!
 
From reply 12 above, looks like the SSD is considerably faster than the internal drive.

Assuming that the SSD is 1tb -- same as the internal drive -- my advice is to use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone the contents of the internal drive to the SSD.

Then, set the SSD to be the new boot drive (startup device preference pane).
Now, boot and run from the external SSD.
Let the internal drive become "your backup".

I predict you will be very pleased if you do this.
(there's really nothing to it -- not much more than "child's play"...)
 
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Thanks Fishrrman!

It is so much quicker than the internal! I’m just trying to imagine how much quicker again if the internal drive was replaced for an SSD! But I’m not risking breaking the glass screen! I’ve seen a few on gumtree & eBay for sale with cracked screens and upgraded hard drives!

Yes, it’s a 1TB SSD drive. And I’m currently booting up from it with a smile on my face as it’s so quick!

Is there much of a difference between carboncopycloner or the built in restore from Macintosh HD using the recovery software?
Obviously I want an exact copy of the internal drive so would the recovery software do that? I’ll download that software onto the Mac this evening. I’ll have to format the drive again using disk utility again prior to using carboncopycloner.
 
"Obviously I want an exact copy of the internal drive so would the recovery software do that? I’ll download that software onto the Mac this evening. I’ll have to format the drive again using disk utility again prior to using carboncopycloner."

Why do you they named it "Carbon Copy Cloner" ....?
 
Fishrrman said:
"Obviously I want an exact copy of the internal drive so would the recovery software do that? I’ll download that software onto the Mac this evening. I’ll have to format the drive again using disk utility again prior to using carboncopycloner."

Why do you they named it "Carbon Copy Cloner" ....?
Click to expand...
I understand what carbon copy cloner is, but I was referring to the “built in” recovery software within the Mac which you can access recovery mode.
 
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