Why has iTunes seperated a album which I have copied over from my external hard drive into iTunes? How can you pull all the songs back together into one album again?

Why has iTunes seperated a album into indevidual songs, which I have copied over from my external hard drive into iTunes? How can you pull all the songs back together into one album again?

Steve MacGuire a.k.a. turingtest2 - iTunes & iPod Hints & Tips - Grouping Tracks Into Albums - http://www.samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp (older post on Apple Discussions http://discussions.apple.com/message/9910895)
Quick answer: Select all the tracks on the album, File > get info, and either give them all a single "album artist", or check the "compilation" flag (as in https://discussions.apple.com/message/17670085).
If these are from multiple-CD sets you may also need to enter the appropriate information in the disc number fields. If they are not a multiple CD set you still need to make sure the disc number fields are set correctly or all empty.

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Can i show and play music from my external hard drive in iTunes without adding it to my Mac hard drive?

I have more music than I can keep on my Macbook hard drive by over 200GB. I'm hoping to be able to show and play all music from my external hard drive in iTunes without having to add any of it to my Macbook Hard Drive

Hello B3NN13,
If you would like to add the music from your external hard drive to iTunes without copying it to the iTunes Library on your internal hard drive, you may find the following article helpful:
Add files to your library without adding them to your iTunes folder
When you add an item already on your computer to your iTunes library, iTunes places a copy of the file in your iTunes folder. The original file remains in its current location.
You can change this setting so that files are added to your iTunes library without being added to the iTunes folder. You might want to do this, for example, if you prefer to store video files on an external disk but still want to view them in iTunes.
Choose iTunes > Preferences, and click Advanced.
Deselect the checkbox next to “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.”
From now on, when you drag a file to your library or choose File > Add to Library, the item appears in iTunes, but the actual file isn’t copied or moved.
Tip: You can temporarily reverse this setting by holding down the Option key while you drag files to the iTunes window.
iTunes 12 for Mac: Change where your iTunes files are stored
Sincerely,
- Brenden

HT1386 I have a new computer. I have copied Itunes library from an external hard drive. Itunes now tells me I cannot sync with my Ipod as it thinks the 20gb on the computer are different to the 20gb on my Ipod touch! What have I done wrong? How can I fix

I have a new computer. I have copied Itunes library from an external hard drive. Itunes now tells me I cannot sync with my Ipod as it thinks the 20gb on the computer are different to the 20gb on my Ipod touch! What have I done wrong? How can I fix it? Alan

See:
Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive: Apple Support Communities
Sync Your iOS Device with a New Computer Without Losing Data - How-To Geek

Why Can't I Copy Files from an External Hard Drive or SD Card?

Major problem here... Why when I try copying files from an external hard drive or an SD card onto my internal iMac hard drive, it doesn't work? The status bar that pops up, shows that it completes the transfer of the files to 100%; however, when it does in fact finish, the files actually do not appear on my hard drive.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is one of many problems I have been finding with OS X Lion and am very much on the verge of going back to Snow Leopard.
Thank you.

Have u tried the usual? Safe boot. Delete finder plist files? etc. And the drives are formatted for mac yes?

I imported files from an external hard drive to Itunes on a new computer. they imported & play fine, but the ratings & playlists are gone & i am unable to update any info. I found a file name playlist on old drive & imported now most files are missing!

I imported files from an external hard drive to Itunes on a new computer. they imported & play fine, but the ratings & playlists are gone & i am unable to update any info. I found a file name playlist on old drive & imported now most files are missing! Help!

Can you locate the iTunes Library.itl file on the old drive? Ideally you would have simply copied over the entire iTunes folder structure from <User's Music> on the old computer into <User's Music> on the new one to transfer the library will all playlists, ratings, play counts etc. intact.
tt2

How do i transfer music from an external hard drive to itunes on my macbook pro?

how do i transfer music from an external hard drive to itunes on my macbook pro?

easy just open iTunes and Finder together and drag the songs into iTunes
George Karakadas, hope this helped u. if it helped u PLZ RATE MY AANSWER AS: "CORRECT ANSWRER" thnx

Erasing all music from iTunes and starting over from an external hard drive

Hello,
I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
Well this backfired big time probably because I did not follow any sort of instructions.
1st I backed up Finder > music > iTunes > iTunesMedia folder to two seperate external hard drives just in case.
2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
3rd I finally decided to erase content from iTunes Media Folder
4th I deleted the iTunes Media folder because I felt it was stupid to have a "iTunes Media folder" and "iTunes Music Folder" in the same place but not actually have anything in the iTunes Music folder (probably really stupid of me in retrospect)
5th I unchecked the box under iTunes > Preferences > Advanced "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"
6th I believe I changed the location of "iTunes Media folder location" in the Advanced area under Preferences thinking this should be pointing to my external drive
I then believe I tried to run iTunes and play my content, but when I did all it did was copy my music/media back to my MacBook Pro hard drive but I did not realize it was doing this until later the next day when I tried to play some music and realized I had 3 copies of everything in my iTunes program (ie music movies podcasts tv shows etc) however, I could play all three versions of whatever it was I selected there was no "error message" saying that iTunes could not located that file, would you like to try and locate.
So I checked Finder to see if there were 3 copies of everything (by the way at this point I stopped connecting my external hard drive for the sake of making more copies on iTunes) but there wasn't??? So I tried to go through Option+View > Show Exact Duplicate Copies and delete all but one of the items. When I would delete them and it asked if I wanted to move them to my Trash Bin I clicked yes and all the 2nd and 3rd copies were gone!!! Yeah, so when I played those songs/movies that remained they would play!!!!!
Than I realized that my Internal Hard Drive was almost full and went looking around for things I could delete to help make my MacBook run better, and realized that my Trash had a large amount of data in it and that emptying it would significantly reduce space on my Internal Hard Drive, but when I went back to iTunes and selected music or movies to play it placed the infamous "!" next to that track or movie and it could not locate those items anymore?
Long long long story short hopefully, can anyone help me set up iTunes so that it only can play content/media off of my external drive and not take up space on my internal hard drive? Is this even possible to do that or will always start to copy those files from the external hard drive back onto the internal hard drive? and second is there anyway to use the Apple router external hard drive to use as the source for all my media?
PS I am running Mac OS X Lion version 10.7.5 and iTunes 11.1.3 (8) 64-bit

2012EVOL wrote:
Hello,
I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external. Don't only copy the iTunes media folder.
Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
This is all you need to do.
Everything for iTunes (except the application) is on the external.
2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
Make a shortcut to this folder on your desktop.
Nothing should be in this folder. When you put a file here, it will get moved by iTunes and added to the library.
The reason it had files in it is because you moved it.

I can't load some content from my external hard drive to itunes,

I can't load some content from 1 of my external hard drive to itunes, it can see it and try to load the folder / files but it doesn't appear, these files worked recently as some of them are currently on my ipod touch - I had to factory restore my laptop this week (virus) so have been trying to put everything back on to sync ipod - any ideas???

To delete files from your external HDD, attach it to your MBP and drag the unwanted files to trash and then empty trash.
Then you select the files that you want to transfer by 'drag and drop' to the external HDD and trash the files on your MBP.
Ciao.

Due to a broken laptop I've loaded my itunes from an external hard drive my itunes wont play unless i leave the the exteral hard drive connected. what is the problem?

My laptop working Vista H Premium broke, I now have laptop working Mindows 7 H Premium. I reloaded my itunes from an external hard drive but they wont play without the external hard drive left plugged in

The media is on the external drive. If you want to be able to play it with the extrenal drive disconnected, this will require moving or copying the media off the external drive to the computer's hard drive.
Importing the media via iTunes may automatically accomplish this, depending on the settings in iTunes.

Why can't I download songs from an external hard drive onto iTunes?

So I have an external hard drive with some songs on it that I wanted to get on iTunes so they can be synced to my iPod. I plugged my hard drive in and then went to iTunes where I clicked on "File" (in the top left corner) and scrolled down to "Add folder to Library". I then found my external hard drive and selected the albums/songs that I wanted.
They loaded onto iTunes just fine. Everything looked right and the songs were all on the list. I even managed to get album artwork on most of them.
Then I went to "sync iPod" and an alert message popped up saying "Some of your songs were not synced to your iPod because they could not be found." (Or something very similar to that)
So none of the songs made it onto my iPod and when I checked the Library list again, all of the songs I had just put on iTunes had exclamation points in front of them.
What am I doing wrong and how can I fix this? Any answers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Sounds like you
1) added the songs to the itunes database, but did not copy the acutal files to the PC's internal HD
2) unplugged the exHD and now itunes doesn't know now to find them anymore
If you plug the exHD back in, and it has the same drive letter as it did when you added the songs to itunes, it should work.

My computer with my original library has crashed, how can i keep all the songs on my iphone, but still add new songs from my new library?

My computer has died and will not be working ever again. Problem is, i have all of my songs on that computer in my itunes library as well as on my phone. Now i want to add some songs to my phone from some new cds and it tells me i will loose all my songs on my phone right now when i perform the sync. How can i keep all of the songs on my iphone because now i do not have copies of these songs anymore except on my iphone?????? From what i have read, itunes is a joke because it only goes one way apparently. Not happy with itunes right now, more then a bit of a joke

It has always been very basic to always maintain a backup copy of your computer for this very occasion. Use your backup copy of your computer to put everything on the new one.
If for some reason you have failed to backup, big mistake, then you can transfer itunes purchases from the iphone to the computer: File>Transfer Purchases
You may be able to buy a 3rd party program to get any other music off of the iphone ( not supported by Apple).
When you sync the iphone, it will erase the current content and replace with content form the new computer.
"Not happy with itunes right now, more then a bit of a joke"
Not itunes fault that you did not do the very basics and maintain a backup copy.

When i put a cd into my itunes library sometimes it does not get stored under the same cover. sometimes stored under 3 or 4 different icons. what can i do to prevent this. how do i get all the songs back under the same kicon in one place? help would be a

sometimes when i put a new cd into my itunes libray all the songs do not end up under the same icon. sometimes it will go into the library under 3 or 4 different icons (album artwork) and sometimes if there are for example 12 songs on the cd each song goes under a separate icon.this seams to happen more frequently with cd's that have different artists on one disc and not just one artist performing all the songs.
is there anyway to prevent this from happening?
is there a way to go into my library and get them put back under one icon as it should have been? i have tried drag and drop and it will not work.
thanks to anyone that can offer some help

The sort fields should generally be empty unless you've putting in custom values to sort solo artists by their surnames. You can apply common changes to thousands of tracks at once, just don't apply the wrong change because there is no undo.
It is a good idea to backup before undertaking large scale changes. See this backup tip for a suggested approach.
tt2
Message was edited by: turingtest2

I lost my laptop I didn't back up and I just bought a new one .How can I get all the songs I bought in itunes store back to my new laptop??

can someone help me please?
I lost my laptop on Monday and I didn't back up. I just bought a new macbook air so I know I have to install all my applications and softwares again but I was told I could get my old itunes library I mean all the music I bought back in my new laptop. can someone tell me how to do it or if I can?

Sorry, but officially Apple does not allow redownloads of purchased items other than iPhone/iPod touch applications and iBooks. It's your responsibility to make backup copies (as iTunes itself advises) in case something goes wrong with your system, as unfortunately it apparently did in your case, and you lose all the information on your hard drive. The official statement of their policy can be found here, among other places.
For apps, look here for instructions on redownloading. For songs, movies, and videos, if you don't have a backup of your purchased items, either on external media or another computer and don't have them on an iOS device (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), you're probably out of luck and will need to repurchase your content.
If you have your content on an iOS device, post back and someone here can help you get them restored. Otherwise you can try contacting iTunes Store Customer Service (select the "Music Purchases" or "Video Purchases" category, as appropriate, then "Lost or Missing Items". You'll find either an "Express Lane" button - just follow the instructions to get to the contact form - or an "Email Us" button) ") and explaining what happened. Reportedly in some cases Apple has allowed redownloading on a one-time basis. But don't count on it.
Regards.

Why can't I copy files from my external hard drive - error code -50.

I sm trying to back up an external hard drive to a network drive. Some files copy but not all;. SOmetimes a folder seems to have copied but then I see that most of the files inside have not. And sometimes I just get 'An unexpected error has occurred'. Error code - 50.
I need to have a back up copy of the files on this hard drive. How can I stop this happening and copy files properly and securely?
The external hard drive is a LaCie bought from Apple, share formatted FAT32.
The network drive is a WD MyBookLIve Duo which WD tell me should work equally well with any operating system.
Please advise. I need to archive a security copy of this data urgently
John Wood

Have u tried the usual? Safe boot. Delete finder plist files? etc. And the drives are formatted for mac yes?

How do I import songs from my external hard drive to itunes

I have all of my music saved on my external hard drive (75 gigs worth) that I need to import to itunes. My computer only has 40 gigs worth of space, so I really want to leave the music on the external drive and just link the library to it. How can I do this?

Niel,
I had to reformat my Windows partition and I backed up all of my iTunes to my external hard drive and I need to transfer them back. Also when I backed them up they were created in 8.0+ version. Would I need to get iTunes to the most current version or would it be fine if I didn't. Thanks.

Why has iTunes seperated a album which I have copied over from my external hard drive into iTunes? How can you pull all the songs back together into one album again?

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