Moving music files from one external drive to another

carvern shared this question 10 years ago
Answered

My existing external drive is getting full. I bought a new, larger drive. Should I just use TuneSpan to copy the music over to the new drive and then when I go to restore music that is currently on my internal drive, back to the external, will it know to put it to the new external drive, even though it was originally on the old drive and then spanned to the internal drive?

Replies (6)

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If your entire library is stored on the external drive, then you should probably do a manual transfer so that files that TuneSpan cannot span (such as Mobile Apps, iTunes Extras, etc) are transferred over. If your actual library files are on the existing external drive, that could add some complexity as well.


But, if the entire library is not on the current external, and all the files are spannable with TuneSpan, it could be easier to use TuneSpan to do the transfer.


As for files that have been spanned to the internal drive, I don't believe you will be able to use Restore Mode after the drive switch, but you can just span them to the new external drive when you want them on there.


If you want TuneSpan to recognize the files are restored once you span them to the new external drive, you can select the tracks in TuneSpans track list, right click them and select "Force Restore".


So, as you can see it depends on your setup, such as where you library files are, where your current default iTunes Media folder is set to in iTunes and how the files that are on your current external drive originally got there.

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The library files on on the internal drive. Just music on the external drive.


The internal folder is the default iTunes Media folder.


So, I guess I can use TuneSpan to move the music.


Thanks.

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Yep, if that's the case, it sounds like it would be easiest to use TuneSpan to do the transfer.


I would just recommend maybe spanning batches rather then doing them all at once depending on how many files you need to span as well as what the stats of your computer you are.


I would probably recommend doing batches of a few thousand tracks at a time, that is generally safe regardless of computer stats.

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I have a MAC PRO laptop (retina) with SSD running Mavericks.


Since the MAC only has 256G internal SSD storage, I live and die with TuneSpan (it is GREAT).


My iTunes Library is about 156GB total (my iTunes music and library file still reside on the MAC internal) with most of my movies/TV Shows spanned (media files only) on a 128G external SSD. (fast). But I was beginning to max that out. So I bought a new 256G SSD to use instead of the 128G SSD.


Soooo.... my question is how can I move all of my spanned files that currently reside on the 128G SSD over to the new 256G SSD?


Thanks

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Connect both drives to the computer and span from the 128GB to the 256GB just like you originally spanned from the internal drive to the 128GB :-)

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Most Excellent. Thanks very much!

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