Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Resolved Question

Old music on new PC

Aug 7, 2011 11:49PM PDT

My Itunes Music folder is on a hdrive other than C: -- actually an external drive that I always kept connected to my PC. So Itunes installed on C: and library is on D: I got rid of my old PC and have a new one with Itunes installed on C:. The old D: drive is connected to the new PC and I plan to keep using it as before--I'd like to keep all the music files on this drive. How do I make Itunes see all that "old" music on the D: drive instead of it's new empty library? New PC has Win 7. Itunes is latest version as of 8/8/11 Seems there should be some way to have itunes use all these existing music files without having to reimport all the CDs or copy all the files. I searched for help but seems that msot folks want to move their music files or merely change the location of an exiting library, which doens't quite fit the bill for what I need. Thanks in advance for any help. sh

Discussion is locked

shieber has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

- Collapse -
itunes
Aug 8, 2011 2:30AM PDT

iTunes can easily handle having its music library on an external drive.

Fire up iTunes while holding down the option key. This should prompt you to locate a library.
Navigate to the external drive, and the library on it, and choose it.

That should be all it takes.

However, if you had the library on the C: drive of the old PC, you may have problems and may have to reimport all the tracks again because you threw away the iTunes library.

P

- Collapse -
yes
Aug 8, 2011 4:14AM PDT

Yes, I'll ihave to add all the files again even though they are in the location I want them in. I have to force ITunes to put them in it's database. Been totld best way is to jsut drag and drop or use Add Files from the menu bar.

thanks,
sh