How to Move/Transfer iTunes Library to an External Drive

iTunes library is a database which collects all of the music, playlists, movies, and other media you add to iTunes. iTunes library includes two iTunes library files (iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Library.xml) and an iTunes Media folder. It is a great fortune that you have a large number of songs, movies, e-books, videos and other media in your iTunes library.

It may be, however, a headache because it will take up much space on your computer and make your computer slower and slower with the increasing media files added to iTunes library. Well, here you may want to move your iTunes library to an external drive to release your computer space. In fact, there is a another advantage to transfer iTunes library to external drive that you can play all medias on many more servers, like Mac, PC, EVD players, Xbox 360, Smart TVs, and PS3.

In this case, the rest thing is how to move or transfer iTunes library to an external drive. This article aims at introducing several methods to transfer iTunes library to external drive on Mac and PC, as well as a perfect way to backing up your iOS content directly to an external drive without using iTunes.

How to move iTunes library to external hard drive on Mac

Be sure that iTunes library you plan to transfer is the latest library which covers all data files. Therefore, before transferring, you need to consolidate your iTunes library first.

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

Steps of moving iTunes library to external hard drive on Mac

1Connect your external hard drive to Mac via USB.

2Go 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."

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.

How to move iTunes library to external hard drive on PC

To transfer iTunes library to an external hard drive on PC is similar to handle on Mac. The only difference is the location of iTunes library folder. After updating your iTunes library, quit iTunes.

1Connect your external hard drive to PC with USB cable.

2Find your iTunes folder according to the standard storage path (Windows 10/8/7/Vista in \Users\username\Music\, and Windows XP \Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\). If you can't find the right folders at these location, click iTunes > Edit > Preferences > check for iTunes backup location.

3Directly drag the folder you find to your external hard drive.

How to back up and manage iPhone/iPad/iPod to external hard device

From the above-mentioned part, you probably have felt a little confused to move iTunes library to an external hard drive. Why don't you back up your iOS device directly to an external hard drive? Aiseesoft FoneLab is an excellent iPhone data recovery that is capable of backing up photos, music, movies, and videos, documents on iPhone/iPad/iPod to computer, or an external hard drive without viewing iTunes backup. Now, let us see how to use FoneLab to backup data files on iPhone/iPad/iPod to an external hard device.

1Download and install Aiseesoft FoneLab to your computer.

2 Launch FoneLab on your computer and connect your iPhone to computer via USB.

Once iPhone detected by FoneLab, Click "Recover from iOS Device" in the left list and hit on the "Start Scan" button in the middle of the interface to scan your iDevice.

If you back up iPhone to iTunes with encrypted password, here you will find the iTunes backup with the lock image. Before you start to scan such iTunes backup, you need to enter the password (iTunes password forgot?)

3 Choose the data categories.

Choose the data categories you want to transfer to your external hard drive from the left list of data categories on iPhone.

4Transfer the selected data file to external drive.

When you select the data categories you want to transfer to external drive, click the "Recover" button in the lower bottom right corner to transfer them. And then a new window pops up and asks you to choose a location to save these data files, click Open to choose the name of your external hard drive and click Recover to finish your data transferring.

How to transfer iPhone/iPad/iPod data to external hard drive

However, if not iTunes, but iPhone, you could also backup iPhone to external drive. The above software, FoneLab also can help you to transfer iPhone to external drive.

moreover, if you have a great collection of music or videos, you may also want to manage them before transferring them to other external devices. FoneTrans is a powerful iOS data transfer tool which not only supports to transfer all contents between iOS device to computer, iOS device to external drive, two iOS devices, but also manages the data files on your iOS device. With FoneTrans, you can view all your collections and delete the duplicated files with one click before moving them to other places.

1Download and install Aiseesoft FoneTrans to your computer.

2Launch FoneTrans on your computer and connect your iOS device to computer via USB.

3Select the data file you want to transfer to external drive.

After your iOS device is recognized by FoneTrans, you will see a list of file categories, including Media, Playlists, Photos, Books, Contacts, SMS, etc., from the left side of the interface. Just select the category you want to transfer.

4Preview and manage the selected files.

The software allows you to manage all contents in your iPhone/iPad/iPod. Here, you can add or delete the data.

5Move the selected category to your external hard drive.

As soon as managing the category you choose, click the Export to button and choose Export to PC. And then save the data files to your external hard device which you connected before.

After saving the iTunes backup to external drive, you could delete iTunes backup files to free up more storage and speed up on computer. Also, you can transfer photos from Mac to external hard drive.