iTunes & Photos Libraries on external drives — no SymLinks

[mikehalloran]

Since Mojave and iTunes 12.7, it is now easy to store both iTunes and Photos libraries onto an external without the hassle of using Symbolic Links. Why Apple didn't do this years ago is beyond me. Neither app is any slower this way with the libraries on a USB 3 external connected to my iMac Pro. Here are three articles that show you how:

These first two cover iTunes. I think this just requires iTunes 12.7 and is not dependent on Mojave.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...v ... rnal-drive

https://support.apple.com/guide/itunes/ ... ns2999/mac

Photos
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

Here's info about new, lower cost SSDs for this use and your VIs.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=66394

[mikehalloran]

For those on older OS wanting to do offload your libraries, here's an article on creating and using Symbolic Links on your Mac.

https://www.howtogeek.com/297721/how-to ... -on-a-mac/

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Thanks, Mike. I’m on Sierra.6 and have had my iTunes and photo libraries on an external spinner for about a year (or a bit less) without issue.

[mikehalloran]

Thanks, Mike. I’m on Sierra.6 and have had my iTunes and photo libraries on an external spinner for about a year (or a bit less) without issue.

Yep. Old school and reliable.

Using Terminal scares so many so I was glad to see that Apple finally made it unnecessary for the two big library sets that most users should offload if they do what we do.

[mothra]

iTunes has been that way for quite awhile now. I was doing it about 6-7 years ago with my 2006 Mac Pro so it showed up in either Snow Leopard or Lion at the very least. I had my iTunes library on an old 80GB Maxtor Diamondmax PATA hard drive stuffed inside an old Lacie d2 firewire case back then. That was my good old Lacie's last job before it finally died once and for all (the drive that came in it died ages before that haha).

I wonder if iPhoto or Photos or whatever its called now has had it too and people just didn't touch the option? I dont mess with that though, I just use it to backup my pictures and that's it hehe. Id bet its been there for awhile too, Apple even changed Logic Pro in the last year or two so you can finally move the factory content to an external as well.

[monkey man]

I've never used the boot drive for iTunes libs (not once since 2000) and have been using external USB portables for the laptop-iTunes lib since 2012, where the former serves as my home-entertainment unit in the living room.

All I've ever done is point to the folder in iTunes Prefs, having never needed to use symlinks, so I don't understand this "revelation", Mike. Am I missing something?

[bayswater]

I've never used the boot drive for iTunes libs (not once since 2000) and have been using external USB portables for the laptop-iTunes lib since 2012, where the former serves as my home-entertainment unit in the living room.

All I've ever done is point to the folder in iTunes Prefs, having never needed to use symlinks, so I don't understand this "revelation", Mike. Am I missing something?

I was wondering the same thing. I don't think I've ever had iTunes, Aperture or Photos libraries on the startup drive, and haven't used symlinks for any of them.

Symlinks can be pretty useful though. I've used them to move samples when hosts expect them to be in specific folders. Logic was like that for a long time.

[monkey man]

Indeed, I love SymLinks, Stoivo, but they've never been necessary for iTunes, at least in my (and your) experience.

This is why I asked the question. I mean, why would iTunes 12.7 be required when I've been doing this since the year 2000 and iTunes 6 or something?

[mikehalloran]

Apple announced it as a feature of iTunes 12.7 and Mojave. I was just the messenger.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Apple announced it as a feature of iTunes 12.7 and Mojave. I was just the messenger.

Well you know what they sometimes do to the messenger!

[monkey man]

Thanks Mike.

[bayswater]

Apple announced it as a feature of iTunes 12.7 and Mojave. I was just the messenger.

Maybe this was somehow linked to the similar message on Logic where they added an option to move the included sample libraries to an external drive.