OK so i need to move my whole library off my mac onto my external hard drive for all the obvious reasons…but it is damn confusing for me.
So all my music is stored either in the obvious itunes locations OR in a giant really unorganized folder of things I have downloaded.
Moving all the itunes stuff seems simple enough but I don’t know if it will relocate the music in the other folder also.
It gets tricky when I throw traktor into the equation. I’m assuming my track collection is just a way to look at all the music files on my computer and that the itunes thing just shows the library. Will traktor make me relocate all the files on my external HD? I really don’t want to deal with relocating every single song but i have a feel traktor will do that to me…
Also, will I have to use the “explorer” in traktor to view all my music because it is in a different drive?
Once you have moved everything, open Traktor and check consistency. It will tell you tracks are missing. Select RELOCATE and point it to the new folder and it should update your library with the new location.
Yes. I recently did the opposite to what you want to do and moved my Traktor music from an external HD to my MacBook’s internal HD and it’s all working fine after telling Traktor the new location.
Move the whole enclosing folder to the new location, then change the path in the “Music Folders” section of the “Data Location” tab in the preferences. Then right-click your collection and select “Check Consistency”. IIRC, you then just have to select the option to relocate and it should check the new folder location and find all of your tracks.
I understand how it works with traktor but what about iTunes reading from the external? Shouldn’t you go in and copy the whole music folder from your user folder so it keeps your data settings? (I have the consolidating setting on in iTunes that moves all my music into this folder)
That also makes me wonder… traktor reads from this folder and the collection is simply traktor remembering where it came from, right? Or does it consolidate and move files to a folder as well?