How To Store Your Music On an External Drive

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to setup the Music app on your Mac to have your music stored on an external hard drive.

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If you're not using Apple Music and your storing all of your music as files on your drive you may want to put those files on an external hard drive especially if your internal hard drive has limited space and it's easy for you to hook up an external drive to store your large music library. There are several different ways to setup the Music app on your Mac to do this. Let's look at three different methods.

So the first method we're going to use is to keep all of your music exactly where you have it. Here I have a My Music folder on an external drive and in there I've got folders that I've created myself and I've place MP3's in there myself. Maybe I've downloaded them from different sites, purchased them from different services and I've arranged them all as files. They're exactly like I want them. So I don't want the Music app to change any of that. I want to keep them on the external drive. 

In the Music app here I've got a completely blank library starting from scratch. I'll show you later on how to get back to this blank clean music library if you need to. Now go to Music, Preferences and under Files I'm going to uncheck Copy files to Music Media folder. If that is checked every time I add something to my music library it's going to put a copy of that file into the Media folder on my internal drive. I don't want that. I just want one copy of my music and I want it on the external drive where I already have it. I don't want the Music app to mess with that. So I've turned that off. Now I'll hit OK.

Now I'll drag just one of these albums in here to test. So I'll drag this first one in. It adds it to the library. Now if I look in the Finder under my Home folder under Music, there's a Music folder and there there is a Music Library folder. That's a really small file and there's a Media folder. If I look in that it's empty. This folder is for special scripting use. The rest of it is empty. It didn't add that album into the Media folder. So it didn't make a copy of it which is exactly what I want. If I look in the app here and I click on the three dots next to the song there and do Get Info I can go to File and see that the location of that file is, indeed, that file here on my external hard drive. So it's referencing the file on my external hard drive and hasn't duplicated the song and hasn't added it to my internal hard drive or anything.

Now I can go ahead and select the rest of these albums, drag them in and it will do the same thing for those. It's not going to add anything new to the Media folder there and the music library folder on my internal drive is only going to increase by a tiny little bit. So this is a great way to do it to keep your library on your internal drive and simply reference the songs on your external drive without moving them or copying them or anything. 

If you purchased music from the iTunes Store or you rip CD's into the Music app then it will appear there in the Media folder. So you end up having purchased music from iTunes in the Media folder on your internal drive. Then anything else that you put on your external drive and arranged like you want will stay where it is as it is as you add it to your library. As you can see it is really simple to set things up this way.

Now here's method #2. This time we're going to set the Media folder to be on an external drive and keep the library folder on the internal drive. So we're going to go to Music, Preferences and we're going to go to Files and leave on Copy files to Music Media folder because we're going to use the Media folder. But we're going to change the location. Right now it's set to my internal drive. I'm going to hit Change. So here I've created a folder called Media and it's sitting on my external drive. You can see it here on the drive called Archive. It's just a blank empty folder that I've setup ready to be the Media folder for the Music app. 

I'm going to hit Open to select it. You can see now it's set to Archive/Media. I'm going to leave on both these checked boxes to keep things organized and to Copy Files there. Then I'll hit OK. Now I'm going to copy this first album in here just like before. Add it there. The difference is that now if I go to the Finder and I look in the Media folder you can see I've got a Music folder in the Media folder and under that I've got the Artist Name and then a folder for that album and then all the files under that. If I go in and add more, I'll add all of this, then it's going to add all of those. You can see it builds it here inside that same media folder. So this is all on my external hard drive. It's a nicely organized Music app media folder. 

In my internal hard drive the Media folder is still empty and I've just got that music library file there. There are two advantages to doing it this way. One is you can use the Music app's ability to keep things organized. It creates some nice folder names for you. Also any music that you bring in by either ripping CD's or by purchasing in iTunes will be added to this folder also which will be on your external drive. So all of your music will be on your external drive. Now I do end up with two copies of everything because it's copied everything to my Media folder but my original music is still there. So at this point if I was using this method I would want to select all of this and delete it so I'll only have one copy in the Media folder remaining.

Now let's look at a 3rd option which is to put the Music Library itself and the Media folder both on an external drive. In order to do that we're going to have to quit the Music app. Here I've created a folder on my external drive called Music Library ready to handle this new responsibility. So it's just on my external drive. A new folder called Music Library and it's empty. When I go to launch Music I'm going to hold the Option key down. Doing so will bring up this choice. I can Choose a Library if I have multiple ones or I can Create a Library. I'm going to hit Create Library.

But instead of just having it saved to the default location I'm going to click here to Expand. I'm going to go to the external drive and to that Music Library folder. I'm going to change the name so it's just Music and hit Save. So now I've got a new Music Library. If I look under Music, Preferences I could go to Files and see that the location for the Media Folder is indeed on Archive Music Library under Music and Media. If I look in the Finder in that Music Library folder I've got music for the Music app and underneath that I've got Music Library and a Media folder that's empty and ready for music.

So now I can go back to the Music app. I'm going to leave on Keep Music Media folder organized and Copy files to Music Media folder. Hit OK. Now I can drag and drop all this in there. It will make copies of all that and it will appear in my Media folder. So like method #2 I'll now have duplicates. So I can go in and remove all of the original folders with my music because everything is nicely organized under the new Media folder on my external drive. So in this case I've got the Media and the Library both on an external drive. 

I think for most people who want to store their music on an external drive method 2 is the best. It keeps your Library where it should be in your main user folder but it stores all of the media externally including the music you buy or rip from CD's. 

So one last thing I want to show you is how to clear out your Music Library. So say you already have your Music Library setup. All the music is in your internal drive under media. You want to move to your external drive. So in that case either you want to make sure you already have all of your music on your external drive like I do here. You want to be 100% sure that that is the case or if it's not the case you want to copy it there. So this My Music folder is on my external drive and it's empty. I'm looking at my internal drive under my Music folder, in the Music app folder, under Media and there I've got all of my folders with all of my music in it. So I'm going to select all of those and copy them to my external drive. 

So now I've got my entire music library on my external drive as well as still in the Media folder on my internal drive. I want to make very certain that I've got all of my music here because I'm going to delete all the stuff off the internal drive. Once I know that everything is safe on my external drive I can delete here what's on my internal drive and start my Music Library fresh.

The first thing I want to do is I want to Quit the Music app. So then in my main music folder here I'm going to select the Music Folder and I'm going to Delete it and drag it to the Trash. So this is where it gets a little dangerous because now if you don't have everything, absolutely everything, on your external drive you're going to be deleting music that you might not be able to get back. So I'm going to now empty the Trash and now I've got no Music Library here. 

But that's not good enough because I still need to launch the Music app holding the Option key down. When I do that it's going to ask me to Choose Music Library. I need to say Create Library. I need to make sure I'm looking at my Music folder and then I'm going to save it as Music. It might want to try to save it as Music 1. Make sure you change it to Music and hit Save. That will create a completely new music library.

So now that you have a fresh new music library and all of your music is on an external drive you can use either method 1 or method 2 to rebuild your music library keeping those files on the external drive.