300 gig of music on external drive how do I access from Itunes

I bought a new 500 gig external drive and it came loaded with 300 gigs of music. It was supposedly installed with itunes, but I cannot access it when I install itunes on my machine. How to open an alternate iTunes Library file link, but it does not recognize the files. Am I going to have to create another folder on my external drive and then import the music into it a bit at a time (since I don't have enough room to do it all at once), or is ther a way to just index what I have into iTunes?
Thanks
Doug

I did an add file to library with the entire music library and after all day of processing it is now showing up and did not duplicate the setup. I had changed the save location to the music folder under preferances first. Thanks for the help. I guess it is time to figure out playlists next. Then go buy the iPod.
Doug

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Itunes music on external drive - how to get it back onto mac.

hi - some time ago I transferred my growing itunes library to an external hard drive. The database remained on the mac. My mac was an old powerpc imac. So far no problem. Things moved on and I have just bought a new imac i3 etc. I would now like to transfer my itunes content to the new mac as it has loads of space. Alternatively I would be happy to keep the music on the external drive. I transferred the contents of the old mac to the new mac without any difficulty. The database on itunes arrived seemlessly on the new mac. I plugged in the external hard drive and nothing worked. I had forgotten that the old mac was power pc and the new mac was of course intel.
My question is now, how do I get the library on the external drive back onto my old mac so that I can transfer it to the new mac? Any ideas. I am sure it is simple, but am not the best on computers. I can follow instructions.

mdockrell wrote:
will make sure both machine are running the same version and try again
again, the version shouldn't matter - the worst that could happen is that the newer version would need to update the library (which may take a while).
if you still have access the the PPC, try copying its iTunes folder once more to the intel. you can use a thumb drive or connect the two Macs with a firewire cable, boot the source Mac in _*Target Disk Mode*_, and copy the entire iTunes folder from <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music on the source to <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music on the target (overwriting the iTunes folder in place there).
connect the external to the intel and wait for it to mount, then launch iTunes.
what happens ?

Moved music folder to external drive, how do I get Match/ITunes to recognise it?

Hi guys,
I've been rather stupid in restoring my computer. I moved all the music to an external harddrive before I restored my PC but forgot to bring the Itunes library file with it. I've got ITunes Match so I can stream all my songs, but is there anyway to get it to recognise the songs on my external drive? I've tried re-importing them into ITunes but it adds each song as a duplicate, so I have the Match version and then my harddrive version, I really don't want duplicates of all 7000 odd songs! Likewise I'd like to try to avoid having to download everything from Match as this will take ages and be a bit of a pain! The only reason I care is so I can use my Sonos system with my laptop, otherwise I'd just leave them all on Match. Any ideas?
Thanks, Luke

You will need the iTunes Library.itl file which generally lives in ~/Music/iTunes/. You can recover this from the backups you were making before the HDD died. Otherwise, you cannot recreate the library.

ITunes music on external drive how to get iTunes to see them

Hi
I am using iTunes 9 and I have had to archive and install, but the problem now is that iTunes on my hard drive can't see the tunes on an external drive.
Ta

Open iTunes with the Option key held down, click on Choose Library, and point it there, or drag the songs or a folder containing them into the open iTunes window.
(47590)

How can I download my iMac iTunes library to an external drive and reload the library to iTunes on a PC?

How can I download my iMac iTunes library to an external drive and reload the library to iTunes on a PC?

Hi Niel. Can you be move specific for those of us not tech savy? 1 - Can you provide steps to back up the library? 2 - How do you organize the library? 3 - When you move the entire iTunes folder, does it include iTunes paid for music along with downloaded music from CDs? Thanks

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

My MacBook Pro hard drive is almost full and I wish to store my Aperture Library on an external drive, how do I do this and is the use of USB2 suitable or do I need to use a Firewire external hard drive?

You'll get better performance if you use a Firewire hard drive (especially if you buy a 7200 RPM drive). Firewire's IO speed is significantly faster than USB 2. USB 2 has a theoretical max speed of 480 Mbps except that it has extremely high over-head. The fastest speeds you can typically get are about 300 Mbps. Firewire, on the other hand, has very little overhead. The fastest speeds you can get are very nearly 800 Mbps. You will typically be constrained by the maximum read/write speed of the drive, not the speed of the I/O on the Firewire bus. Now if you had one of those nice shiny new Macs with the Thunderbolt I/O and a Thunderbolt drive (Light Peak) ... I think they alter space and time so that your data arrives before you know you want it.
Also... unless you want to buy a solid state drive (very expensive), try to keep your hard drives from becoming much more than about 60% full if you want great performance. A nearly "full" hard drive is, on average, only about half as fast as the same hard drive when nearly empty.
USB 2 will work perfectly fine... just not as fast.
Also... it's much safer to move the entire Aperture library than to "relocate masters". Your images must be managed. You can Aperture manage them, or you can manage them. But someone has to manage them. If you "relocate" them so that they are no longer stored inside the Aperture library then you'll need to work out a system of how you decide to organize things and it's critically important that you don't start moving files around or deleting things without Aperture's knowledge. If you do, you'll break the links to your masters and start having problems with missing masters. If you have Aperture manage the library then you don't need to worry about any of that stuff.... it's safer.
Do make backups (use the Aperture Vault or use some other backup program, but make sure you back up your work if you care about it.) There are only two kinds of hard drives in the world: (1) those that have failed and (2) those that are going to fail. There are no exceptions to this rule. Hard drives are cheap. Backup software is built into Aperture and into your Mac.

Finding music on external drive

We moved all the itunes music to an external drive and did the "shuft your itunes library" instruction set. Everything works fine until someone forgets to turn on the external drive, then this error message pops up when trying to access almost any song:
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I believe changing in Preferences is only for where the music will go now when you download or rip. To get all your tunes from the external drive go to File > Add Folder to Library and choose the top level of your folder structure from your external location. Depending on how many files you have it could take a bit to get all loaded in.
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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.
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I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

Hopefully you moved the entire iTunes Media (or iTunes Music) folder to a new path on your external drive. Copy your iTunes library folder out to the root of the external drive, e.g. X:\iTunes (where X: is your external drive), then move the media folder inside it. Hold down shift as you start iTUnes and keep holding untila asked to choose or create a library. Choose the library at X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl. Should all be good.
Failing that, download and run my FindTracks script and point it at the new location of your media folder.
tt2

I have a MacBook Air w/ 64 GB. I have hours and hours of music/vids/etc. Is it possible to have an external drive specifically set-up for my iTunes? If so, what do I need to do? Thanks!

I have a MacBook Air w/ 64 GB. I have hours and hours of music/vids/etc. Is it possible to have an external drive specifically set-up for my iTunes? If so, what do I need to do? Thanks!

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I have 300 albums of music on my ipod how can I random every song

I have 300 albums of music on my ipod, how can I random the entire list?

go to your songs not genre or albums DO NOT USE GENIUS then shuffle or if you want to listen to the songs on an album go to your albums and click on the one you want and shuffle (BTW what iPod gen is yours?)

How do I copy from ITUNES (30 gigs) to a flash drive (32 gigs). Help

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Drag the files from the Music item in the Finder's sidebar.
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Music on external drive, trying to import to new user

I've always imported my music to an external drive and set pref's on my TiBook to find music there. I'm having probs with my laptop and want to update my iPod for a trip. I hooked the external drive up to my desktop and set prefs on iTunes to see the external drive. Nothing shows up in iTunes.

The iTunes Music folder location setting doesn't enable iTunes to find music. It just tells iTunes where to put new music files that are ripped or added to the library.
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HT4236 I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto. I want to sync both from my ext drive and new albums in iPhoto. No dice. Help!

I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto. I want to sync both from my ext drive and new albums in iPhoto. My photos on the devices get wiped out when I sync to iPhoto since I deleted all the albums. But when I sync to my hard drive (where I maintained the album structure) the photos are copied to my iPad but lose all the hierarchy and folder structure. Now I have to scroll through thousands of photos to try to find the one I'm looking for. Before I sync any more devices I want to know the following: 1) can I restore the album structure on my iPad by using the photo cache? 2) is there a way to sync both new iPhoto albums AND pictures in the folders in my hard drive? And 3) how can I keep the photo hierarchy structure from my hard drive intact on my devices?

TigerMom28 wrote:
I've run out of room on my hard drive. I bought an external drive and exported all my albums to the external drive then deleted the albums from iPhoto.
Don't do that.
Copy /Photos/Photo library/ to the external.
Hold Option and launch iPhoto.
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External Drive with Time Machine, booting from external drive with utilitie

I'm using Time Machine now with
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Everything works fine.
But, I've been wondering:
Can I place a program like TechTool
on the external drive (that Time Machine uses)
and boot from that external drive.
I would like to be able to do that,
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iMac, Leopard, Time Machine, Lacie Quadra 1TB drive.
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Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?

pitou wrote:
P.S. Stupid question: If my computer crashes, and I reboot from Time Machine
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Isn't there many versions of the OS on the Time Machine backup taken at different times?
As V.K. says, you can't boot from TM backups.
But you can restore your entire system from any one of them, per the procedure in #14 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
You can also selectively restore from them, while running normally. See #15 in the FAQ Tip.
You might want to review these:
Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine
and perhaps browse the rest of the FAQ Tip.

300 gig of music on external drive how do I access from Itunes

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