Is it a good idea to create a "soft link" from iTunes Library to an external hard drive to release hard drive space?

Solution 1:

It's a better idea to copy the iTunes Media folder to your external hard drive, then go to iTunes Preferences > Advanced tab and change the iTunes Media folder location to the one on your external disk.

You can also move the library file itself (in ~/Music/iTunes/ on my system), but I don't recommend doing both at the same time. There're other questions around here that go about explaining how to use a different library location.

To more-directly answer your question, I don't know of any downsides to using symlinks, but that's because I've never done it. I have done the approach I described here and it's generally better to avoid going behind an app's back if you can.

Solution 2:

I tried many techniques and the symlink is the one I prefered for my library located on a NAS. Using any of the copy techniques, with auto-mounting and the like, you will eventually run into the situation where the mount or NAS is temporarily unavailable for X reason, and iTunes will reset its media folder location. You will then have media in two locations. With the symlink, it will at least throw an error at startup.

Solution 3:

Or you could switch iTunes libraries at will by holding ⌥ during iTunes launch. This will give a dialog where you can select another library location, or create a new Library. I use this all the time.