Family Media Library Storage

She:kon Monica,

What is the best way for my family to store and share our music and video files?  We have thousands of files and we do not want to store them on our computers and laptops.

Nia:wen,

Too Many Files

She:kon Too Many Files,

It’s common for anyone to have tens of thousands of songs, videos, podcasts, movies, TV shows, books, apps, and more.  A large media library could easily take up space on a 1 Terabyte external hard drive.  Running iTunes from a 1 or 2 Terabyte hard drive might make it easier for your family to store and share files.  Just keep the new external hard drive in the same spot for everyone to use when they need it, to make sure it does not get lost from many different people using it.

Connect your new external hard drive to the computer with your iTunes library and back up your iTunes library to the external hard drive.  The speed of your computer and of the external hard drive will determine how long this backup will take.  Quit iTunes.  Then hold down the on a mac or the on windows and launch iTunes - keep holding down the key until a window pops up that asks you to choose your iTunes library.  

Click to choose your library and navigate your computer to find your new terabyte external hard drive.  Navigate to where you backed up your iTunes library and click to choose it.  It will be a folder on a mac and an .itl file on windows.  iTunes will load your library and automatically adjust the settings to make it the default folder while you use it.  Now you can use iTunes from your external hard drive.  

You can delete the iTunes library off your computer’s main local hard drive after you saved your library on your new external hard drive.  Disable the auto-sync feature in iTunes to avoid messy problems with syncing your iPhone and iPod in the future, if the external hard drive is not connected.

Always connect the external hard drive to your computer before you connect your iPhone or iPod to sync with iTunes.  If you buy, download, or sync iTunes to your local main hard drive, you can add them to your external hard drive the next time you connect it.  To connect the external hard drive, hold down the option or shift key when you launch iTunes.  Choose your iTunes library on your external hard drive. Go to File > Library > Organize Library.  Check the box next to Consolidate Files.  Click OK to copy the new files from your local main hard drive over to the iTunes library on your external hard drive.

Each of your family members can share the external hard drive or just use their own external hard drives.  Storing files on an external hard drive can help to keep your laptops and computers running efficiently for a longer time.  You also remove the risk of losing all your important files if anything should go wrong with your computer.

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