How to Move Personal Files from Your Network Space

From ITS Wiki

by Kristi Jenkins

Hmm.

Have you encountered an error message when trying to save to your network drive? It may be that you are reaching your quota for storage. The most likely culprit is your “My Music” folder which may be holding the bulk of your space on your U: drive (Where your My Documents is located) with music files.

ITS doesn’t recommend, nor do we support, personal items on your network drive. In the next few months, we will be sending out a message about a massive cleaning of the network storage space, giving you an opportunity to remove your personal music and picture files from the network.

I thought I’d give you some instructions on how to protect your personal files by moving them locally or backing them up elsewhere, as well as get a jump start on helping us clean up the network space to provide each person with adequate space for work-related storage.

1. Open your U:\ drive (Where your My Documents is located) and locate your My Music folder. (May be listed under “My Documents”)

2. Right-click on the folder and select “Copy”

3. Open your C:\ drive right-click in an open/blank spot in the window and select “Paste” It may alert you that a “My Music” folder already exists and whether you want to merge the folders. If you get this message, click yes.

4. Once the transfer has completed, return to your U:\ drive and delete the My Music folder on the network share.

Repeat the above process for My Pictures, My Videos, or any other personal data that you would like to preserve.

If you have an iTunes library, iTunes will need to have settings changed to map to the correct (new, local) folder.

Here are simple, step-by-step directions to relocate your iTunes library to your C: drive

• Launch iTunes, click Edit > Preferences > Advanced tab > General tab

• Click the 'change' button to redirect your iTunes Music Folder to C:\My Music on your hard drive.

• Select both options to "Keep iTunes music folder organized" and "copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library" and then click OK

• Click your Advanced menu and choose Consolidate Library

This copies your library files onto the hard drive and ensures that iTunes looks there for the files. Once this is completed, and you've verified iTunes is reading the files from the hard drive rather than the network drive (you can right click on the file and click Get Info, then click the Summary tab, and at the bottom it'll say "Where" and show you where your file is stored) you can go into your My Music folder on the U: drive and delete the iTunes files.