Advice needed - Moving large iTunes music Library

[RickDastardly]

Hi,

My iTunes library is rather large and I need to move it to a new external HDD which should arrive tomorrow. I know people have had issues in the past by not doing things properly, so I was hoping someone could give me their advice on the best way to do this and hopefully avoid any mishaps.

I am currently using a mid 2011 Mac mini. My iTunes media (all of it music in ALAC/AIFF format) is located on a WD Thunderbolt duo 4TB external HDD (I'm using it in RAID 1 configuration) so have 2TB capacity. I also keep additional audio files (some DSD and DXD) that are not in my iTunes media folder on this HDD. I got a decent price for a new 8TB WD Thunderbolt HDD that I want to start using in place of the existing one, which I will use as a back-up drive for the main music library and hopefully for a 2nd Mac mini for an audio system for listening to music on my headphones in my office.

What is the best way to start using this new drive as the main source of my iTunes media files?

a) should I hook up the new drive, configure it to RAID 1, and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to just copy everything on my existing drive onto the new drive? Once complete, then point iTunes to the copied iTunes media folder on the new drive?

b) should I hook up the new drive, configure it to RAID 1, and then immediately point iTunes to the new HDD and allow it to copy over my media that way? The DSD files etc. could then be moved over once this is complete. Are there likely to be fewer mishaps if I allow iTunes to copy itself across and keep itself organised?

Sorry for the long winded post, but thanks to anyone that takes the time to read and reply.
Rich

 

[ianbuckley]

Definitely option b). Using the import and consolidate options to copy the files across.
Option a) will mean the iTunes library files library.itl and library. xml will not be in sync and contain the wrong location information.

 

[RickDastardly]

Definitely option b). Using the import and consolidate options to copy the files across.
Option a) will mean the iTunes library files library.itl and library. xml will not be in sync and contain the wrong location information.

Great that's what I thought. I went with option B. It all seems to have gone smoothly. I used a couple of Dougs scripts to check everything was ok once the move was completed. No issues so far. I am presently setting up CCC to do a daily backup onto my old 4TB Thunderbolt drive that I've got set up as JBOD. I'll use 2TB for backing up iTunes, and will partition the other 2TB and use it for other backup duties and TimeMachine.

Thanks for your advice Ian.