Home > Questions

Can I access iTunes folder on an external hard drive used for Windows on Mac

If you transfer your iTunes library from PC to an external hard drive, can you use iTunes, from the external hard drive when you plug it into Mac Book Pro? I'm very confused about this! All my music is on PC and I want to save it to my external hard drive. But I will no longer be using that PC afterward. I would like to use iTunes on my Mac but it only has 128 Gb, not enough storage for my iTunes library. So, can you use your transferred iTunes library from the PC to an external drive on your Mac? Another question I have is, when your iTunes is on your external hard drive can you still sync, make playlists and add new songs? I don't know very much about external hard drives, but I need the space.

Best Answered by

Amanda Wong

Answered on Monday, April 29, 2024

Whether you can access the Windows external hard drive that contains the iTunes folder on Mac depends on the file format of the external hard drive, if it is FAT32 or exFAT, then you can read and write it on Mac. In case it is NTFS, macOS only supports reading but not writing.

You can check the file system info of the external hard drive on Mac via Disk Utility:

  1. Connected the external hard drive to your MacBook.
  2. Open Disk Utility from Finder > Applications > Utilities.
  3. Click View and choose Show All Devices.
  4. Select the external hard drive and click Info.
  5. On the pop-up window check the file format of the drive.

If the file format is shown as MS-DOT(FAT) or exFAT, then you can directly access the iTunes folder on the external hard drive on your MacBook. In case the file format is NTFS, you can only read the current iTunes folder on the drive and can't add new items to it. If you still want to use the NTFS drive on Mac, you will need to NTFS driver for Mac such as iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, which enables you to use the NTFS drive on Mac with full access.

 Download

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac

Rating:4.8

     

In case you want to sync the current iTunes folder on your Mac to the external hard drive, the best way is to format the external hard drive to Mac OS Extended or APFS, so that you can back up your Mac with Time Machine. You should copy the previous iTunes folder from the external hard drive because reformatting erases everything!