Exporting Itunes Library To External Hard Drive Mac

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Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive.

Luckily I had a back up of mostly every important item which is all my music. What the problem is that within iTunes some of the songs listed are all grey with a dotted cloud like so (example posted below) and that means it's in the iCloud just 'waiting' to be downloaded.

Before you start, be sure to back up your library.

Drive

Mar 18, 2020  In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users username Pictures, and it's named Photos Library. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. Nov 14, 2019  Drag the iTunes folder to the external hard drive to copy the iTunes library to the hard drive. The size of your library and the speed of the drive determine how long the transfer will take. Make new backups regularly. If you frequently add content to your iTunes library, backup the library. If you’re restoring an iTunes library from a different computer, make sure your new computer has the latest version of iTunes. In the iTunes app on your PC, choose File Exit. Locate your external drive (in File Explorer), then drag the iTunes folder you backed up earlier from your external drive to your internal drive.

Prepare your drive

You can store your library on an external storage device, such as a USB or Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled).1 Find out how to check the format of your external storage device.

To prevent data loss, Apple doesn't recommend storing photo libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives that are shared on a network.

Move your Photos library to an external storage device

Exporting Itunes Library To External Hard Drive Mac
  1. Quit Photos.
  2. In the Finder, go to the external drive where you want to store your library.
  3. In another Finder window, find your library. The default location is Users > [username] > Pictures, and it's named Photos Library.
  4. Drag your library to its new location on the external drive. If you see an error, select your external drive's icon in the Finder, then choose File > Get Info. If the information under Sharing & Permissions isn't visible, click , then make sure the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' checkbox is selected. If it's not selected, click to unlock it, enter an administrator name and password, then select the checkbox.2

  5. After the move is finished, double-click Photos Library in its new location to open it.
  6. If you use iCloud Photo Library, designate this library as the System Photo Library.

Delete original library to save space

After you open your library from its new location and make sure that it works as expected, you can delete the library from its original location.

Export Itunes Library To External Hard Drive

In a Finder window, go back to your Pictures folder (or whichever folder you copied your library from) and move Photos Library to the trash. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash to delete the library and reclaim disk space.

Move Itunes To External Drive

Open another Photos library

If you have multiple libraries, here's how to open a different one:

  1. Quit Photos.
  2. Press and hold the Option key while you open Photos.
  3. Select the library that you want to open, then click Choose Library.

Photos uses this library until you open a different one.

Learn more

If you have a permissions issue with your library, you might be able to resolve the issue by using the Photos library repair tool.

Exporting Itunes Library To External Hard Drive Mac Pro

1. You can't move your library to a disk that's used for Time Machine backups.

Export Itunes Library To External Hard Drive Mac

2. If the volume isn't formatted APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), or has been used for Time Machine backups but hasn't been erased, this checkbox will either not be present, or won't be selectable after unlocking. Erase and reformat the drive for this option to be available.