How to Move Music Library from one external HD to another

I had about 60GB of music on an external hard drive, nicely organized and "linked to" from iTunes (just upgraded to version 5). I recently purchased a larger external hard drive and basically copied the contents of my older external drive to the new one, preserving all folder structures from the root of the drives down (but the name of the drive itself is different.) I was hoping I could just do a search/replace of the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file in my Music/iTunes folder, to replace the name of the old drive (volume) with the new one. I did, and iTunes launches fine, preserving my playlists, song ratings, etc... but whenever I try to play any of the songs, it says it can't find it (I can manually point iTunes to it, but I don't want to do that for 15,000 songs...) Strange thing, though, is that if I quit out of iTunes and re-open the Library XML file, all the paths have been reset to their original location!! What am I missing? Thanks in advance,
Jesse

I just want to add that the iTunes folder (with the library xml file and such) is on my local hard drive, in the typical Music/iTunes location. I don't want to simply re-import the songs 'cuz I'd lose playlist contents and ratings, and I don't want to "consolidate" the library because I want to keep my music folders and filenames as I currently have them. Basically, I just want iTunes to realize the songs have simply changed location from one external drive to another... thanks again.

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How do I move an iTunes library from one external drive to another?

I need to move my iTunes library from one external disk to another, because the original disk is about to fail. So, I went into iTunes Perferences --> Advanced, and set the library to a new, empty folder on the new drive.
Nothing changed. I expected all my music to vanish from iTunes, so that I would have to re-import it. However, all the music remained, still on the old disk. At this point, if I were to recreate the library on the new disk, I would have all of my music twice.
Is it possible to move an iTunes library from one external drive to another, or am I stuck with my original choice until I buy a new machine? If I can move it, can one of you clever folks explain how it could be done?

Paul Seymour1 wrote:
However, those are all dealing with old versions of iTunes that still contained the Advanced --> Consolidate Library command which is no longer part of the app. (I'm on iTunes 10.6.1.)
Consolidate is still part of iTunes.
It is in iTunes menu File > Library > Manage library > Consolidate.
The article you linked to is old and it is (and was) a hacky way of doing it.
Just copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to new location, hold Option (Mac) or Shift (Windows) when launching iTunes.

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How to move music library from old pc to new Mac air

Here's an Apple article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527?viewlocale=en_US

I have a Windows 7 laptop using I tunes 64 and all my music files are on an external disc. I rarely use I tunes and at one point moved all my files (including the music files) from one external disc to another without considering what affect this wou

I have a Windows 7 laptop using I tunes 64 and all my music files are
on an external disc. I rarely use I tunes and at one point moved all my files
(including the music files) from one external disc to another without
considering what affect this would have on the I tunes library. When I eventually
attempted to use I tunes, every selected a song from the library resulted in a
message stating that the file couldn't be located. After following some of the procedures
explained in this community I was able to reconnect the library back to where
the associated music files are presently stored. However, there are still 2
problems that need to be corrected. 1) Every song file now has a duplicate. One
file works and the other file will result in the same message stating that the
file couldn't be located. Before there were 4,000 songs in the library, now
there are 8,000 songs. I need to eliminate the 4,000 dead song files. 2) All
the playlists are still associated with the dead song files which makes the
playlists unusable. Can the playlists be reconnected to the usable files
without manually having to recreate them? Thanks in advance for the help.
sdkr

So am I understanding correctly?
You used your iPod as a hard drive (drag and drop) instead of having iTunes install the music?
If you used drag and drop your choices are different than if you used iTunes to transfer.
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Moving a music library from one external hard drive / disk to another

My music library is already on an external hard drive and I want to move it to another external hard drive (along with the music filkes). I have follwed the standard setps of chaning the itunes folder location, keeping my itunes folder organised etc. When I come to consolidate my library it doesnt find anything or copy anything accross? Is it just looking on my MAC drive do you think? How can I get it to look on my 1st external hard disk?
Getting fed up with this now - must be the 4th time I've had to move libraries from one machine / disk to another and each time I always end up having to re rate music, or have lots of duplicates etc.

Hey,
There's a really good guide to moving your iTunes Library to an external hard disk on Lifehacker...
Here's the link... http://lifehacker.com/238296/ultranewb--how-to-move-your-itunes-library-to-an-ex ternal-drive
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proposed | solution

How do i move a file from one external drive to another

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mediamagnate03 wrote:
This is my first Mac computer and I have no idea how to move/copy a file from one external hard drive to another? It won't let me drag and drop from one Finder window to another and there is no copy/paste option on the left mouse click.
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Copying aperture library from one external disk to another fails with error -36

I am trying to duplicate my aperture library (449 GB) from one external hard disk to another. I get an -36 error and the copying fails before 1 GB is copied. I have repaired permissions and repaired my aperture library and have repaired both the source and destination disks. I am using a MB Air with a 256 GB HD (155 GB free) to perform the copy operation. Any help will be appreciated.
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Rahul,
I have also used the Aperture First Aid to repair the perminssions and the library (just the first two options out of three provided).
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Sorry, I overlooked that you already had done the repair options.
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Yesterday I tried to move all my music from an external HD to a new bigger one.
Well, I encountered various problems, the most important one is that the “iTunes Music Library” file messed up.
I transferred all files and both “iTunes Music Library.xml” and the “iTunes Library” file in the new HD. I have to say that I didn't know so much about those two files and I thought that it was enough to move them in the new location; I discovered that those files included the information about where the music is located (among other infos), so it still redirects to the older HD.
However, now I’m trying to recreate the previous situation on the older HD, and I’m trying to “rebuild” the iTunes Library (I have a back-up of the xml file, even if it is not the running one).
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Stefano

Sorry, I wasn't responding to you, just the original poster. I didn't look at the date on that posting and didn't realize that you'd added a post that wasn't quite the same problem. In future, you'll find you get better answers if you start your own thread. You're issue really is a bit more complicated.
If iTunes currently recognizes all the music on both internal and the external drives, it should work. You have to make sure that both drives (old and new) are mounted. Make sure you have both "Keep iTunes music organized" (you probably already do) and "Copy files to iTunes..." (you probably don't) checked.
If not all of the music is currently in your iTunes library, perform the procedure with the music that is a part of the library and add the other stuff afterwards.
Best of luck.

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See this post on making a split library portable.
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How to move iphoto library from one account to another?

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OT

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How to Move Music Library from one external HD to another

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