I moves my iTunes Music folder onto an external USB2 drive and left the library file itself on my local machine. Now, none of my music can be found in the iTunes library (they are listed but give error when opened that they cannot be found). I changed the pointer in the preferences to point to the new location on the external drive. What have I done wrong? Does the actual iTunes library file have to be on the same external drive?
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iPod Problem after moving library!
- Thread starter carrollf
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I think that what you should have done (and what you may have done) is move just the "iTunes Music" folder (normally found in Users-->(username)-->Music-->iTunes) from the "iTunes" folder to the new location, leaving the "iTunes" folder and all its other contents in place.
Then in iTunes preferences, under the Advanced tab, set the location to your new location so that the path reads: "(drivename): (foldername): ... :iTunes Music:"
You may many or no "(folder name)"'s, depending on how deep you buried your "iTunes Music" folder, but wherever it's stored the new path in preferences should end in ":iTunes Music:", which is the folder that actually contains the music.
Try setting it up that way and see if it works. I just moved my library as described above and it worked fine. If this is already what you did, I'm not sure what the problem may be.
If that still doesn't work, you can always go into iTunes and select "File" --> "Add to Library..." and re-add the existing music to your library to get it back. And you can re-set the path in Preferences or de-select "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder..." (in Preferences) to control where the music goes when added.
Ummm, you might not wanna put too much faith in what I said in my previous post. I thought it was as 'simple' as I made it out to be, and I swear that method used to work in previous versions of iTunes, but there seems to be more to it now. I copied my "iTunes Music" folder to a new location, then specified that location in iTunes preferences, and all was working fine. I even renamed my old iTunes Music folder so that I could be sure iTunes wasn't still using it. Since everything was working ok I deleted the old, renamed iTunes Music folder.
Suddenly iTunes started complaining it couldn't find any of my music. I'm getting the same error the OP is getting. Crap. It's all there, in the new iTunes Music folder, but iTunes can't find it. I tried using "add to library" on a test album, only to find the songs now show up twice in the library, one instance that would play and another that wouldn't.
I should have just deleted everything from the library and just re-added it all, and in fact that's what I'm doing, but I started doing it piecemeal and now I have to finish doing it that way (or risk deleting something that's already been legitimately added, and losing it for good). It's not that big of a deal, I'll get everything added back in, but the bad thing is it'll wipe out all my playlists, playcounts, etc, etc. Oh well, at least the music's not gone...
Suddenly iTunes started complaining it couldn't find any of my music. I'm getting the same error the OP is getting. Crap. It's all there, in the new iTunes Music folder, but iTunes can't find it. I tried using "add to library" on a test album, only to find the songs now show up twice in the library, one instance that would play and another that wouldn't.
I should have just deleted everything from the library and just re-added it all, and in fact that's what I'm doing, but I started doing it piecemeal and now I have to finish doing it that way (or risk deleting something that's already been legitimately added, and losing it for good). It's not that big of a deal, I'll get everything added back in, but the bad thing is it'll wipe out all my playlists, playcounts, etc, etc. Oh well, at least the music's not gone...
If your library of music is on the external HD and the files with the path names are on your Mac and your iTunes app won't see the music but gives you exclamation marks yet in Advanced you have the path to the iTunes library mapped properly then one way around this is to delete all your entries in your iTunes app, but don't move tracks to wastebasket, then select all the tracks on the HD and drag them into the iTunes window BUT BEFORE DOING THIS DE-select 'Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding new library' (sse screengrab atached.
You will lose all your playlists I think though, but at least this method works very quickly as you are no copying all the music backk on to your computer, just the file names.
You see, what you've done is moved the iTunes folder and then are telling iTunes to find it, rather than, as the Apple instructions say, tell iTunes to move the folder to the hard drive via Consolidate Library. If you do it this way iunes knows where it has put the music (on the external HD) and you can then deletes the music on your Mac.
My head hurts.
You will lose all your playlists I think though, but at least this method works very quickly as you are no copying all the music backk on to your computer, just the file names.
You see, what you've done is moved the iTunes folder and then are telling iTunes to find it, rather than, as the Apple instructions say, tell iTunes to move the folder to the hard drive via Consolidate Library. If you do it this way iunes knows where it has put the music (on the external HD) and you can then deletes the music on your Mac.
My head hurts.
