How does Catalina handle external drives for iTunes movies in transition

[celliott]

Not sure if that header was clear. I'm on Mojave and uncertain about making the move to Catalina.

I have my iTunes library stored on an external drive with all of my purchased, ripped music, movies, music, home movies, etc, scattered over 4 external HDs. I'm not using my internal drive for any iTunes storage since it's a 2018 Mac mini with 256 SSD.

I know with Catalina, iTunes gets separated out into different apps. I'm wondering how does Catalina handle the 4 external drives. Does it divvy out everything to the various apps? Does it still access everything? It seems like a major undertaking and I'm wondering if I'm going to really screw things up.

I can't find any info in my searches. A couple of places said to consolidate the media to the internal drive- like that's going to happen.

[cyclemax]

I have my iTunes folder on one external drive with all of my music, movies, etc. in that folder. All the apps see the appropriate files.

[deckeda]

There's no functional difference. That said, I can't guarantee any update will ever go great.

If you have iTunes media on more than one drive, you're referencing them in the database. iTunes (and now, Music) access them to play them. You're describing a static database where no new files are added.

Neither will know where to store new imports necessarily, apart from the one location you have specified for that.