Putting some music files on an external drive, but keeping only one library

I know how to keep two libraries, one on an external drive, and one on my HD...but I'd like to know how to do this:
move some of my music files off of my HD and to my external drive, but maintain the same library (and only one) on my HD. So...when iTunes opens, I see all of the music files in the database, and if I choose a song that physically resides on the HD, it plays it from there, and if I choose one that physically resides on the external drive, it plays it from there. I want to free up space on my HD, but I don't want to have to keep two separate libraries.
Any help is appreciated!

It's easy. After you split the music you can add the music from the different locations to the library and it will play them from wherever they're at. The important thing to do is to go into *System Preferences* in iTunes Advanced and uncheck the *Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library* or iTunes will put duplicates in what ever iTunes Music folder you have iTunes pointed at. This folder is only important when you are adding content that you do want copied to the Library, such as from a CD.
I use this for my iTunes music and movies that is stored three different drives. One is a network drive.

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I have been backing up iMovie 08 files to my external drive, but for some reason I can't open these files in iMovie. I used drag and drop to copy them.

I have been backing up iMovie 08 files to my external drive, but for some reason I can't open these files in iMovie. I used drag and drop to copy them.

You really should be doing backups with an actual backup application, especially one that will work automatically, and, if your external HD is large enough, back up your entire system. These can automatically back up only what's changed since the previous backup, and some will keep "archive" copies of things you've changed or deleted, also.
Too many things can go wrong, such as your internal HD failing, and you'll have a major project to reinstall everything.
You already have Time Machine, built-in to OSX. You might want to review the Time Machine Tutorial, and perhaps browse Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.
#27 in the second link mentions some alternatives, too.

Linking music files on an external drive to a new mac

Hi,
I have recently bought a new macbook, replacing my old ibook, all my music tracks are on an external hard drive, I want to keep them there, but I want to be able to play them on my new macbook, how do I do this?
I have changed the folder so itunes is looking at the right one, but my new itunes is empty. do I need to copy the track listings somehow into the new library?
I can only find instructions for physically moving the media, which I don't want to do.
I had wanted to be able to hook up the hard drive to both computers, is that possible?
thanks very much
vbw

You should be able to do a File -> Add and then point to the iTunes music folder on your external drive and it should fill in the iTunes library for you. Since you are already telling iTunes to use that location, there shouldn't be any copying or moving of files about.
As to hooking it to two different computers, while you can probably get away with it, each iTunes treats the library as its own, so you could end up in trouble when one library alters the library somehow that the other one might not be happy about.
Patrick

Storing most of music on external drive but keeping library on local drive

As I think many have experienced, my hard drive is filling up. I would like to but most of my music on an external drive. This I know how to do. But I would like to keep the library itself on my local drive. This is so that when I am not home with my external drive connected I can still use iTunes to download and update podcasts and download new purchased music from iTunes Store.
I know that I can store some media files on another disk than the library, I do this with a few large video files. But I would like the music folders to stay organized, just on another drive.
Is there anyone with a solution like this? Apologies if I missed this in another thread...

I just found the following tutorial on moving iTunes music:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive/48
and it seems to answer my question. I can just change the preference for the location of the music folder, and new stuff will automatically download to my portable internal drive when the external isn't connected. Seems a lot of people have questions about external drives but it is hard to search for them because of so many different ways of posing the questions.
Anyhoo it would still be nice for a separate preference in iTunes to determine a separate location for podcasts. I will have to send in a suggestion.

How do I delete the files on my hard drive but keep all the applications?

I have an old MacBook Pro. By old, I mean abiut three or four years. I recently upgraded to Lion, but I have so many files that my system is forever showing thte rainbow spinner. I copied everything to an external hard drive, and would like to erase everything but my applications. Is there an easy way to do this?

Ok....Here we go.....
First open disk utility - then hit verify your disk.
Once that's done, verify your disk permissions - hit repair disk permissions if there are errors.
Once that's all done, restart your macbook.
Now you've done all those, delete all the files you've copied over to your backup/external drive.
If you've made folders for them, you can safely delete them. Only do this if you've made copies of those files in your external drive.
most of those files will probably in your document/movies/pictures folder. If you've copied them over to your external then you can delete them. Be sure you have copies before you delete them.
also delete anything in your download folder.
once you've done those, go to the appstore and download ccleaner. it is a small yet effective hard drive cleaner. no advance settings to mess around with. it will just delete your cache files and old log files.
good luck.
PS - to delete some of them you must move your mouse over it, tap once then keep your finger in the shift button then use your arrow keys to highlight them. once you've highlighed those files, right click on them then move to trash.

ITunes cannot find music files, confuses inodes, external drive

I have all my music on an external drive, which is not always connected to the Mac. When I start iTunes w/o the hdd connected iTunes occasionally marks some of the songs as not found. Which is ok so far. BUT if it finds the same inode (of the original file on the external hdd) on the internal hdd it changes the location of the songs to the internal hdd. In my case to files like /Previous System/<some path>/Info.plist. So iTunes thinks the files are still there and cannot play them. After deleting all the Previous Systems files iTunes marks all those files as not found, that is, it does not search for the inode on the external hdd again. Very confusing.
Yesterday I started from scratch with an empty iTunes Library (I moved the original one) and the problem reoccurred instantly after I imported all my music, quit iTunes, disconnected the external HDD and started iTunes again. So some of my songs are lost, iTunes will never find them again w/o me reimporting them. Also the problem might occur anytime in the future and I seem to not be able to cure it, because iTunes tried to be intelligent. But how it can confuse inodes w/o looking at the device ID and why the songs did not return after I removed the /Previous Systems folder I cannot image.
I checked the inodes on the internal and external hdd for some of the songs and they were indeed identical. So iTunes seems reset the path/location in the Library DB if it can find the inode of a song which it cannot find by path. Why it does not look at the device id in combination with the inode# is a mystery.
Some additional details:
iTunes Music Folder Location: on external hdd
The Library files are on the internal hdd at ~/Music/iTunes.
I hope someone can answer that. I do not want to start from scratch every week. I hope my iPod which holds all the songs synchs meta info like play count and rating back as well.
Kind regards, soryu2.

And further....
I went into iTunes to try to download all my purchased music. Some, but not all, is showing up under iTunes>iTunes Media>Music. It looks like the library thinks some if the music is there, but it actually is not.
Seems like my library is corrupted (or something).
Since I have to upload all music from CD anyway, should I delete my iTunes library and start over, first by downloading all purchased music.

ITunes unable to locate music files saved on external drive

Hi all,
This is proabably something incredibly simple but my iTunes was installed on to my laptop wih music added till my memory was all used up.
So I bought an external drive, and re-added all my music saving it to the external drive, my iTunes however remained installed directly on my laptop.
This worked fine initially as long as my external drive was selected in the Preferences section of my Itunes, but recently all my albums are available but it says that Itunes is unable to locate the files, even though none of them have been lost or deleted from the external drive.
Ive tried everything I can think of - does anyone know how to rectify this?
Thanks....

I switched computers and tried to reload all my backed up itunes files. It loaded the files fine the first time. After I logged off the files disappeared from my Itunes. Apple tech told me to add itunes folder to library. It worked fine until i logged off again. I tried it several times because my files never stayed on itunes. Finnaly I added two new CD's into my library and I went to file Libray and I entered consolidated Library. This brought everything I had before and then some to my itunes library. I logged off, shutdown and even hibernated and my files still remain. I was able to create playlist, my movies, podcast, there all there. Hope this helps.

Original file cannot be found for most music files, w/large external drive

Hello.
I am getting the error message "original file cannot be found" most times that I play a song in iTunes 6, though I am always able to locate the music file in my iTunes Music Folder. This is infuriating!
My music collection is large -- 90.08 GB, and is on an external FireWire drive.
Can somebody help me?

mgallope,
welcome to Discussions.
Everytime you turn your ext hd off, iTunes reverts your library to its original location, which is within your mac HD.
In order to locate the music files, turn your ext hd on, plug it into your mac and wait it be recognized in Finder. After that, open iTunes Preferences>Advanced and change the location of your library from the original location to the new one. Wait until iTunes reorganizes the library and try playing any song.
Unfortunately, you´ll have to do this every time you shut your ext hd off.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Paulo

Getting files from old external drive to a new one

I have a dying Acom ac powered 80gig external drive on my eMac and a powerbook that is running out of drive space.
The Acom has one USB and two firewire outputs, one firewire is hooked up to the eMac . The Acom is all itunes music (none from the Apple Store) .
I had an ex-friend set it up so I don't know squat about using external drives . I think I'll get the LaCie Mobile firewire . From what I've read it seems the best . Any other suggestions are welcome .
Is there a good tutorial somewhere on how to do this ? I would like to transfer all the music from the Acom to the new drive and be able to use it like I did the old one AND use it with my powerbook to do the same thing .
Will there be a problem with library ? In iTunes (4.7) I have "Create file names with track number " checked but I don't have "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library" I don't really know what this does but it sounded like it took up space so I haven't ever checked it .
as mentioned the eMac is iTunes 4.7 using Panther and the powerbook is iTunes 6.0.2 using Tiger .
G4powerbook tiger- G4eMac panther Mac OS X (10.3.9)

What you like to do can be done, but not using different main versions of iTunes.
The reason for this is, that the 'iTunes Library' file has different structures with different main versions and is not downwards compatible.
Unless you have a reason not to upgrade iTunes on the eMac, my advice would be to upgrade.
If you purcase music at the iTMS, using iTunes 6, you won't be able to play them on previous iTunes versions.
If you have MIDI files, don't upgrade to the latest iTunes 6.0.4, unless you own QuickTime Pro.
iTunes 6.0.3 and 6.0.4 are having troubles with them (iTunes: MIDI files cannot be converted in iTunes 6.0.3 and 6.0.4).
I have an G4 iMac running iTunes 6.0.4. and an G3 iMac DV running itunes 6.0.2.
My music is stored on an external drive and it is no problem at all to use it on both computers.
There are a few requirements however (more about that later)
My advice would be to take the next steps.
• Purchase the mobile drive and transfer the music to it, using the instructions in the 'Moving your iTunes Music folder' article.
You will still have a backup on your Acom (as long as it still is running) in case something might go wrong.
• Upgrade iTunes on the eMac
• Copy the 'iTunes Library' file from eMac to the new mobile drive, attach the drive to the Powerbook and copy the 'iTunes library' file from mobile drive to Powerbook. Read "What are the iTunes library files?" to find the exact location of the file.
• Run iTunes on the Powerbook. you should see the entire library as you saw it on your eMac.
A few things to consider and take int account:
Decide which computer to use to add and import music. This will make things a lot easier.
You can of course add music on both computers, but you have to swap the 'iTunes Library' over and over to keep the libraries on both computers synchronized.
Always attach the mobile drive to the computer, before running iTunes. If you fail to do so, iTunes will reset the 'iTunes Music folder location' to the default location on the internal drive on the computer. Unless you 'point' iTunes to the location on the mobile again, songs you add and import will then be stored on the internal disk.
Let know if you have further questions.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

Deleted Files disappeared from external drive but space is still occupied ( iMac )

Hello all...
I have this problem.
Whenever I delete items from my external hard drive, using iMac (running mavericks), the files disappear from the drive window but their space will be still occupied. if i format the drive using my mac, everything will disappear & the whole drive capacity would be available for use.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Luk

Unless you empty the trash while the external is attached, the files will remain in the trash. You will gain back your space after you empty it.

Transfer my MAC files to a external drive, but didn't save space

I have a Mac desktop: MAC OS X 10.6.8; 2.5 GHz Intel, Memory 4GB and 500 HD
- I cut and paste a folder with 200 GB from my computer, to an external driver (wd my book).
- I can see the folder in the external file, and it is not in the HD anymore; as expected.
However, I still have only 20GB space available in the computer.

When you copy anything to second hard drive, the original remains on the first hard drive until you drag it to the trash and empty the trash.

How do you read a large ( 100Mb) 3-D matrix from a file and make sure that you keep only one copy of it within the LV program for future use?

I have to deal with large 3-D, I16 matrices that are stored in files. This data represents the density of an object at a sample point in 3-D space. I need to be able to display a 2-D section through the cube in an Intensity Chart. Since I want to update images in the intensity chart in real time to show different sections on demand I cannot adopt the approach of reading a section from the file when required - the I/O time assocaited with the disk read is way to long.
The solution, is to keep EXACTLY one copy of the entire data set in memory at all times and then just get the required section on demand.
This changes the disk I/O time to a memory access time, which is fast enough for my puposes.
Here is the problem. Since the matrices are so large, I want to be very sure that I only keep one in copy of the data in memory. After a couple of weeks discussioin with Tech Support, and the development of several sample programs, they have agreed that it is not possible to do it with less than two copies of the data in memory.
This additional memory requirement is a real problem for me and I am hoping someone is ingenious enough to come up with a way of doing it with only one.
I can send a sample program illustrating the problem if necessary.
Many thanks.

Jean Pierre,
Thanks for your reply - most kind of you to take the time. But.....
This is exactly what I thought, and is similar in concept to the way I wrote my code. But it doesn't work. I modified you llb slightly by setting the variables to be I16's and setting the default array size to 54,000,000 and the default action to be initialize. ( I'll enclose a copy of my modified llb for you.)
Here's what happened. I start the windows task manager, loaded LV and the program and looked at the memory shown in the task manager. It shows about 28Mb before I start to run the program. I then single step through the program. When it gets to the output of the Initial Array the memory usage jumps to about 134Mb, indicating the creation of the first copy of the array. As you continue single stepping it jumps to 239Mb as you leave the Case loop and head for the Shift Register. This memory does not drop down again.
After talking with Platinum Tech Support, they agree and tell me that they cannot see a way to have just one copy of the array. That's why I posted it on the message board to see if there was anyone out there who had come up with an ingenious solution. It seems to be a serious limitation to labview.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks once again.
Attachments:
HugeArrayMod.llb ‏92 KB

I backed up with an external drive, but it only backed up part, do I erase the complete back up and start again?

My system is OS 10.8.5 Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3, storage available 375 GB out of 500 GB. Yesterday I tried to back up with the Seagate Backup Plus Drive with 1.5 TB using the Time Machine. The backup started, said it would take 3 hours, but ended at 2 hours when the computer went to sleep when I had to leave the desk.When reviewing "About this Mac",it appears under Macintosh HD the amount of GB for Audio 20.53GB, Movie18.66 GB, Photo 4.56 GB, Apps 11.92 GB, Backups zero KB, Other 64.54 GB on the same menu below, appears the External Seagate Back up plus but with Zero KB on Audio, Movies, Photos, Apps, Backups 74.48 GB, zero KB in Other zero KB.I believe that for some reason the back up was not finished complete and only copied 74.48 GB. My question is how do I erase this and start over so I can have a complete first back up with everything. If I did something wrong, I do not get where it was. Thank you so much.
I
o
Capacity: 499

You let the computer go to sleep. When it did then so did the backup drive. The first bit of advice is do not use the software provided with the Seagate backup drive. The second bit of advice is to completely re-partition and format the drive.
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Clone Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Finally, get a good backup utility to incrementally update the clone.
Suggested Backup Software
1. Carbon Copy Cloner
2. Get Backup
3. Deja Vu
4. SuperDuper!
5. Synk Pro
6. Tri-Backup
Others may be found at MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

My MacBook Pro crashed and need the files on my hard drive, but I only have a Windows PC. How can I get then out?

I got my MacBook Pro in 2004.
Over the years, I have put many files in it.
And now that it crashed, I need help to get then back.
The only problem is that I don't have another Mac, only a pc..
Please help...

Hi H,
The first MBP was produced in 2006, so you either don't have a MBP or it's from 2006 or later.
You have no backup?
What "crashed?"
If the HD is good, you can put it in an external enclosure and access it with a Mac from there.

ITunes can't see my music on My Book external drive

HI
Have just had to have the hard disk on my Powerbook G4 replaced and am now trying to restore contact between iTunes and my music library that lives on a My Book external drive (set up, formatted and updated over many months by this Powerbook).
I have changed the settings under iTunes Advanced Preferences to point to the music folder on the My Book, but the Library stays empty. I can access and play (using Finder) all the music files on the external drive, I just can't get iTunes to see them. Dragging and dropping doesn't work and though I've tried to Import the files the menu won't allow me to choose them (or the folder).
Any thoughts? Please!!

I don't know if this will help, but I'd suggest you update to iTunes 6.0.5. That will run on 10.2.8 and is much more current and complete. You'd also want QuickTime 6.5.2. Worth considering, anyway.
Another thing to try would be to delete the iTunes library and library.xml files in your user -> Music -. iTunes folder to make sure you start clean and then try the Add To Library command again. You might want to use Disk Utility to verify the external drive, just to make sure that there aren't any drive errors (doubtful since you say that the tracks will play through Finder, but worth checking).
Hope this helps.

Putting some music files on an external drive, but keeping only one library

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