How to Move Your iTunes Library to Another Location

So the holidays have nearly come and gone, and you’ve found yourself with shiny stack of iTunes gift cards. As a result, you’ve been feverishly adding to your music library when disaster strikes—you’ve taken up too much space on your computer’s hard drive.

Not to worry—it’s relatively easy to move your entire iTunes library to another drive (or folder, if you’re not yet scarce on storage space). Sure, you can also go through the more time-consuming task of burning your music collection to a series of CDs (you people still use CDs, right?) or transferring it to your iPod, but if you want to keep iTunes-specific data like play counts, ratings and other details, it’s best to move the whole thing.

Our friends at Lifehacker have outlined the steps involved in the process (and trust me—it’s not bad at all). Prefer the slightly OCD and more detailed version? Check out ArsTechnica’s tutorial, which is helpful if you want to transfer your library to an NAS. In the meantime, here’s a quick overview:

Open your iTunes Preferences and select Advanced. Make sure the Keep iTunes Media Folder Organize box is selected.

Under iTunes Media Folder Location, click Change and choose the new folder or location.

Go to File > Library > Organize Library, check Consolidate Files and click OK. This way, your files will be copied to the new location while preserving your iTunes library structure.

And there you have it—a shiny new home for your iTunes library. One last tip from Lifehacker? Once the relocation is complete, you can delete the files from your original iTunes media folder, but keep the other .itl and itdb files—iTunes uses these from their original location.

Now that we’ve got today’s housekeeping task out of the way, let’s talk tunes. What’s your one must-listen-to song of 2012? I’ll add it to my iTunes library (unless, of course, it’s already there).

Image by tombothetominator via Creative Commons