Best External Hard Drive For Itunes Library

Connect the hard drive that will serve as the new home for your iTunes library. Dec 15, 2020 The best external hard drives are a handy way to add lots of storage to your PC without the hassle of cracking open the case and messing with power and SATA cables. They're also a lifesaver if you're the sort of person who has already stuffed all the storage bays in your machine with internal drives, or if your PC lacks any additional bays by default (often the case with some of the best mini.

• Install Itunes On External Hard Drive
• Download Itunes To External Drive
• Best External Hard Drive For Itunes Library

Here is the usual way to get iTunes to work from an external HD.

On your computer's iTunes, go to Preferences / Advanced / and for 'iTunes Media folder location' set it to Users/Home folder/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media. Check the boxes for Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder. Back up your computer on Time Machine or in some other way. Quit iTunes

Now you can move the entire iTunes folder from your Home folder / Music to the external hard disk.

With the external HD connected, restart iTunes while holding down the Option key. You will get options to Create a library or Choose a library. Go for Choose a library and in Finder navigate to the iTunes folder on the external HD. Select that and iTunes should open with all your music there.

Aug 1, 2017 5:44 PM

If you're used to buy songs, movies, e-books, and other media from iTunes store, your computer would be getting full and become slower and slower with the increasing media files added to iTunes library; and in order to protect your iTunes library in case of data loss, it's better to backup your iTunes library. Here, we’ll show you how to backup iTunes library to external hard disk and how to transfer iTunes music & Apple Music tracks to External hard drive.

How to Backup iTunes Library to External Hard Drive?
How to Backup iTunes Music to External Hard Drive?

Method 1: How to Backup iTunes Library to External Hard Drive?

Part 1: Consolidate iTunes Library

To ensure that you copy everything from iTunes over to an external hard drive, you should first consolidate your library. Even if you think your library has all your information consolidated already, it can't hurt to do a manual check before moving any data.

1. Find iTunes Advanced Preferences:

To consolidate iTunes library, on your Windows, launch iTunes > go to 'File' > 'Library' > 'Organize Library' > tick 'Consolidate files' > click 'OK'.

Part 2: Drag iTunes Library to External Hard Drive

Install Itunes On External Hard Drive

After completed these steps, your iTunes library files are all in one place and are ready to be backed up to your external hard drive.

1. Quit iTunes and connect your external hard drive to PC via USB.

2. Go to 'Edit' and select 'Preferences'. In the Preferences window, select Advanced. And check 'Keep iTunes Media Folder organized' and 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.'

3. In the same panel, click 'Change' and you are guided to select a new folder in you external drive for you to store the iTunes library.

4. Drag the iTunes folder to your external hard drive. This will begin the iTunes backup. The amount of time the backup will take depends on the size of your library. When the transfer is done, your backup is complete and your external hard drive can be disconnected.

5. After the transfer process is complete, your iTunes library has been successfully transferred to your external hard drive.

How to Backup iTunes Music to External Hard Drive?

From the above-mentioned part, you probably have felt a little complicated to move iTunes library to an external hard drive. If you also need to backup your iTunes M4P music and Apple Music to an external hard drive or new computer, you'll need to remove restriction from these files firstly.

Sidify Apple Music Converter is an excellent all-in-one iTunes Audio Converter that is capable of converting Apple Music tracks, iTunes M4P music, and iTunes Audiobooks to MP3, AAC, FLAC and WAV format, thus you can transfer all your iTunes music to an external hard drive. In the following, we'll guide you to use Sidify Apple Music Converter to convert iTunes music & Apple Music and transfer them from PC to an external hard device.

Key Features of Sidify Apple Music Converter:

Convert Apple Music or iTunes purchase M4P music to MP3/AAC/FLAC/WAV;

Unlock from iTunes M4A, M4B & Audible AA, AAX audiobooks;

Reserve the original sound quality for converted music;

Up to 20X Conversion Speed; Keep ID3 Tags & all metadata;

Highly compatible with the latest iTunes and Mac/ Windows OS.

Download Itunes To External Drive

The user interface of the Sidify Apple Music Converter is very simple and user friendly. To convert Apple Music tracks and iTunes M4P music and Audiobooks, please make sure all the music are downloaded from iTunes to your local computer.

Step 1. Add iTunes Music with Sidify program

Launch Sidify Apple Music Converter and click '+' or the interface of program, all your tracks downloaded from Apple Music and iTunes will show out as below. Choose the music that you want to convert, then click 'Ok'.

Step 2. Choose Output Format

Clicking the setting button on the top right of Sidify interface, a setting window would pop up. Here you can choose output format as MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, set the converting speed up to 10X and adjust the output quality up to 320 Kbps. And the output path is also changeable if required.

Best External Hard Drive For Itunes Library

Tip 2: Mac version of Sidify Apple Music Converter can reach up to 20X speed under Mac OSX 10.8-10.12. To output the highest audio quality, currently Sidify program is limited to convert iTunes music at 1X speed under macOS 10.13 High Sierra and above.

Step 3. Start Conversion

Once all the settings are made, go ahead and click on the “Convert” button.

Step 4. Find the converted iTunes Music Files

Once conversion finished, click to find the converted Apple Music files under target folder.

Step 4. Transfer Converted iTunes Music from Computer to External Hard Disk

Now, all of iTunes music and Apple Music tracks are converted to common audio tracks and you can directly transfer all of iTunes files from computer to your external hard disk.

Note: The trial version of Sidify Apple Music converter has 3-minute conversion limit. If you want to unlock the time restriction, puchase the Sidify Pro now.

Best External Hard Drive For Itunes Library