Gigantic Library split over two locations

Got a new MacBook Pro M3 in Dec 2023 that has been pretty reliable. We made the switch from a Seagate 16TB USB external drive that was constantly ejecting to a RAID set-up that has been stable. This happened

in March 2024. The majority of the library (~11TB) is on the RAID unit (~20TB), but all the music that has been imported since March 2024 is on the local HD. Music plays everything without issue. Is there a good way to fix this without a giant headache? The internal HD has gone from 1TB down to 350GB left, so it's a significant amount of albums.

Drag the "Music" folder from the local HD to the RAID unit and point each album over there? Delete the folders (there are a lot) and re-import them once library knows to look at the RAID again? We use all the music for work and don't want to lose days or weeks fixing this if there's an easier solution.

Should the media file that tells music where everything is be on the RAID or the laptop?

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.5

Posted on Oct 4, 2024 8:37 AM

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Posted on Oct 4, 2024 11:05 AM

Use Music > Preferences > Files to set the media folder location to the folder containing your content on the RAID drive. You may be prompted to consolidate to that location when you set it, or you can do so via File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files. This will create copies of the files that are currently on the local HD and update the library such that it points to the new copies. Once the process is complete you can manually clean up the old media folder location on the internal drive.

There is an advantage to having the .musiclibrary package in the same folder as the media folder as the library can then be easily cloned to another drive for security. Reading the library from a RAID location may be less efficient however, so there may not be any benefit in going through the steps to rearrange the library into this shape.

tt2

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31 replies

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 16, 2024 11:59 AM in response to turingtest2

Consolidating the library (if it works) will then change the directory in the playlist for the error songs? It should all just work then?

Gigantic Library split over two locations