After moving itunes library paths are still set to old drive

Question

I have moved my itunes library from my hard drive to a network connected NAS drive. The problem I'm finding is that itunes now can't find the songs in the library as they still show (when looking at 'Get info') the path to the old location).
I have done the following:
1 copied all song files in the 'itunes music' folder as well as the files in the folder above (including 'itunes library.itl' and 'itunes library.xml') to the new location
2 Checked the boxes in Edit > Preferences > Advanced that read 'Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized' and 'Copy Files to ITunes Media folder when adding to library'.
3 Changed the iTunes Media Folder location to the new location (the same folder as the 'itunes library.itl' file is held.
4 Re-started iTunes while holding the shift button so that I can 'choose' the library, then browsed to the new location and selected the 'itunes library.itl' file in the new location.
None of this has any effect. This is what I've noticed:
a - The individual files cannot be found and when I right click and choose 'get info' it shows that the path is still set to the old location
b - The 'itunes library.xml' file still shows links to the old path for each of the individual songs.
c - I can manually 'point' the songs individually to the new location so that they can be found - although this is not an option for the whole library which is several thousand. I do this when I get the error message 'The song 'xxxx' cound not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?'.
d - I import a new CD or buy a new song from iTunes, the songs are correctly located on the new drive and play with no problems.
Can anyone tell me if I've missed a step? If I was to guess, I'd say that the 'itunes library.itl' still has all the old paths for the individual songs, but I don't know how to get iTunes to re-create or update that file and can't edit it myself.
Regards, Steve.

Answer 1

Thanks for that R. I'd seen a few of those posts but none of them seemed to match my query exactly.
However, I seem to have found a solution to my own problem. Whether it will help with yours I don't know (looks like you're a Mac user) but here's what I've found:
* The basic problem was with the file itunes music.itl' which was still pointing iTunes to the old location of the music files. I don't know why it didn't update this file when all the 'consolidating files' was done but there you go. This is not in a format editable by ordinary mortals, but you can re-create it if it gets corrupted by editing another file called 'itunes music.xml', which is in an editable format.
* It seems the .xml file basically contains all the .itl file information and is used essentially as a backup (my guess, don't know if it's correct). So deleting the .itl file and then re-creating it by telling the system to import the information from the .xml file is the thing to do. Here's how I did it:
* Go to the new drive and path where you've copied your itunes library to. I copied both the two files above first just in case to my desktop (doesn't really matter where). They're in the 'Music' folder above the folder where all your music files are kept (music files are kept in 'iTunes Music' in my setup).
* Edit the 'itunes music.xml' file. You'll need a good text editor with search and replace functions to do this as you'll have to do the same number of replacements as you have song files - in my case a number of thousand. Even better than a standard text editor would be an XML editor as that will make the text file easier to read (I used Dreamweaver just because I already have it on my system).
* If you look through your xml file you'll see all your songs listed with lots of other information such as track id. At the end you'll see a line that says something like:
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost//EDNET01/Users/Steve/My%20Documents/My%20Music/iTunes/iTunes%20 Music/Bob%20Dylan/Modern%20Times/01%20Thunder%20On%20the%20Mountain.m4p</string>
If you're in the same position as me you'll notice that the path name is wrong (it's still showing the old path and drive). So the job is basically to edit and replace each of the paths to show the new drive and path.
*To do this with a single search and replace you don't need to change the album and file name, nor should you need to change the folder containing all the song files. This is the search and replace change I made then:
Search (all instances, hopefully if your text editor will allow it):
//localhost//EDNET01/Users/Steve/My%20Documents/My%20Music/iTunes/
Replace with:
//localhost/X:/FamilyMusic/
which is the drive and path where I've moved my itunes music to. The song folders are in the folder below that called 'itunes music'.
* Once you've saved this file (and having a backup copy of the old .itl and .xml files saved somewhere just in case) delete the two old files from the new folder where you've copied your music
* Open iTunes. Go to File > Library > Import playlist.
* Navigate to your newly edited version of 'itunes music.xml'. Select it and you should find that itunes begins rebuilding your library with the new paths and creates a new 'itunes music.itl' file in the process.
Once that's done you should have your music, podcasts and playlists back.
** Disclaimer ** I'm no iTunes expert so I don't know if this is the 'proper' way to do things. If it doesn't work you should be ok to replace the copied files back into your music folder and no damage done, but in any event I'm not responsible for any problems. Make sure you've got backups is my advice!