iTunes can't locate files - a script to do this?

[cb911]

i've just transferred my files from an old external HD, to a new one. these files included some music from my iTunes Library. this is a hassle - but i've got my music split up into two parts on my internal drive, and the rest on an external drive...

i suspected this maybe a problem - but i've renamed the new external HD to have exactly the same volume name as the old one - i thought that this would keep iTunes working fine. i have some of my songs that are on the external HD working fine - iTunes didn't have a problem with them. but others that are on the external HD get the "!" next to them - and the old "original file cannot be found" message.

so i'm wondering if there's a script to go through and leave my tracks where they are in the library - with ratings and all - and just find the file that belongs to it.

i've got this "Bring Out Yer Dead" script from here:
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=bringoutyerdead
but that only re-adds the files to your library - it doesn't link up the original with it's music Library entry.

does anyone know of scripts that can do this? this would take me a long time to manually find all the files... so thanks for any help.

 

[Sedulous]

I thought that is what "Consolidate Library" did?

 

[cb911]

wow... i never knew about that...

thanks for the tip... i just checked it out, but that would move all of my music into my music library folder.

that's not exactly what i had i mind.

if i knew a bit about AppleScript... maybe i could make one myself. i imagine it would do something like find all the missing songs (the ones with "!" beside them) then automatically do a search for the original file - and maybe give you a chance to check that it's found the right file would be good.

so the search continues...

 

[Sedulous]

But you could set your music library folder anywhere you want in preferences. Then consolidate.

Ugh. Never mind, I didn't get what you were saying until just now. But it begs the question - Why not store your music in one location?

 

[cb911]

yes, but i've already got my music folder set to where i want it - on my internal HD. but the reason i've got other music on an external HD is because of space restrictions.

i could move everything to my internal HD...

if no one finds a script or knows of one - i'll just do that.

but can anyone confirm - Consolidate Library will locate the original songs and not modify my library? is that right? it won't re-add the songs to the library? because i sort my songs by 'date added' and that would really mess things up...

thanks for the help.

 

[TBi]

Consolidate library will copy all files that are in your itunes data base into your itunes folder. The easiest thing to do is modify your itunes preferences so that it doesn't copy all files to your itunes store folder. Then highlight all your songs in the itunes window and clear them. Make sure you don't move to trash, just remove them.

Then find both music folders and import the songs back in. It's not pretty but it will work

EDIT: Although this will screw up your date added thing. Sorry but the only way to fix this would be to locate all the songs by hand again. I don't know of a script which does this and unlike other programs you can't just modify the path in the library file on the drive.

What you could do... although it is hard... is to copy all your songs to the external drive and mount the folder to your itunes folder on the drive. I can't remember the command for this right now but i'll look it up when i go home, if you can wait

 

[broken_keyboard]

It's strange that it should work for some and not others, are you sure the files are actually there?

Anyway this may work:
1. Quit iTunes
2. Move "iTunes Library" and "iTunes Library.xml" out of the ~/Music/iTunes/ folder.
3. Open iTunes, the library should look empty.
3. Choose Import... from the File menu and select the iTunes Library.xml file from wherever you moved it.

Hopefully importing from the XML file will just use straight filenames and not try to be clever about locating things. If the new drive has the same name as the old one, it should work.

If it doesn't, just close iTunes and copy the two files back and you should be back where you started.

 

[funkychunkz]

Maybe you could put links in your music folder to the one's elsewhere, this might work.

 

[cb911]

thanks for the tips everyone.

i am sure that the files are in there... i just added them to my iTunes Library after i'd moved then to my external HD. then i had to move everything to the new external HD. i have manually located some of the songs.. and they're right in the same location as they were when i added them. this is strange...

i also tried your suggestion broken_keyboard. but i got the error:

Some of the songs in the file "iTunes Music Library.xml" were not imported because they could not be found.

i opened up the .xml file in TextEdit and it lists the full path to each song. so i'm thinking - if somehow there's any differences or errors in the path names, i could use the "find & replace" function of TextEdit to fix it... well i'll keep working on it. i might also post over in the Apple Support forums and see if they know what's going on...

edit>>

okay - i think i've found my problem...

i had re-named my old drive, after i changed the name of my new drive to what the old drive previously was, so i didn't get confused. but i must have opened up iTunes along the way somewhere... i've checked the .xml file and some of the file paths have the name from my old, re-named HD. i've been doing a find and replace - so hopefully that will fix it all.

 

[cb911]

okay - so i found out what originally caused this... but i still can't fix it. i've tried editing various properties of songs in the .xml file - but this hasn't worked.

so far i've started manually locating the lost songs...

but if anyone can think of a way to do this faster, at least semi-automatically - that would be great!