Moving your iTunes Media folder

You iTunes Media folder contains the files for all the music, books, ringtones, iOS applications and, in some cases, movies, that you have in your iTunes library. As you build up a large library, these files can start taking up a lot of precious space on your computer's hard drive. Today I am going to explain how to move those files to an external or secondary hard drive.

Setup

First navigate to your external drive and choose the exact location where you want to place the media files (where you want to move them to). This should be on an external or secondary hard drive.  Once you are there, right-click to create a new folder called iTunes Media.

Next, make sure that the Keep iTunes Media folder organized option is selected in your iTunes Preferences:

- Open iTunes
- Navigate to iTunes  > Preferences...
- In the next window, click the Advanced tab
- Make sure the Keep iTunes Media folder organized checkbox is checked
- Click OK

Next we need to tell iTunes where to move the media files to:

- Navigate to iTunes  > Preferences...
- In the next window, click the Advanced tab
- Take note of where the current location of the iTunes Media folder is (you will need to go to it later)
- Next to the iTunes Media folder location box, click the Change... button
- Find and select the iTunes Media folder you created earlier on your external (or secondary) hard drive
- Click Open
- Click OK

Move the Files

Now it's time to tell iTunes to actually move the files to their new location. Here's how we do that.

- Navigate to File > Library > Organize Library...

 - Check the Consolidate Files box and click OK

Please note... This action copies all of your music and media files to the new location. There must be enough hard disk space available to copy all of your music and media files.

At this point iTunes starts copying all the files to the new location. Depending on the size of your library, this could take some time. Please be patient.

After the folder has been copied, quit iTunes by navigating to iTunes > Quit iTunes.

Confirm the Move Worked

Confirming that the move worked is as simple as navigating to the new iTunes Media folder and verifying that  all the folders and files are there.

Once you are satisfied that your move was successful, navigate to the original iTunes Media folder (you should have taken note of where this was located) and delete it.

Your iTunes library media files are now moved to your external (or secondary) hard drive.