Cannot consolidate library

When I try to consolidate my library on I get the following error message:
¨ Copying music failed. An unknown error occurred (-50). ¨

You don't use "Consolidate Library" to get songs in the library. When you use "Consolidate Library" what that does is COPIES all the files listed in iTUnes to the "iTUnes Music" folder.
To add songs to iTUnes you need to hit file>add folder (or file) to Library OR drag and drop the file/folder to iTUnes

Similar Messages

  • Cannot 'Consolidate Library" : Copying music failed , the file name was too

    Hi,
    I am trying to move all the music library to my new computer ( this is my 3rd time of changing my PC). I tried to consolidate the library... but the message was
    Copying music failed , the file name was invalid or too long"
    I already moved the Itunes to my new pc, but my new Itunes cannot "Relocating my file"
    Please help me

    To find out which file it was, look at where you were
    copying them too and see which was the last file
    copied - and then go back to your source, and go to
    the next one - it should be that one.
    I just wanted to add that I had the same issue (failure to finish copying and "invalid or too long" error msg) and at first didn't see how looking for the last file copied would work since iTunes is copying into folders.
    Duh.
    Reverse sort by date modified (newest folder at the top of the list) then drill down to the folder containing the files being copied. Voila. There was the (missing) culprit, and I knew which file to rename in the source folder.
    Thanks for the kick in the brain pan.
    Sony VAIO PCG-V505ACP Windows XP Pro

  • Consolidate Library command doesn't work--how can I import my library?

    I've transferred my music from a back-up disk and want to import it into iTunes on my new machine, but the Consolidate Library command does nothing. Import Folder only works one folder at a time and I have hundreds of folders (40+gb of music). Anybody have any ideas how I can import it all into iTunes without having to spend a weekend tediously importing one folder at a time? Thanks in advance!

    Consolidate only works on music already in your library.
    What it does is to copy any music in the library database but not in the iTunes Music folder into the iTunes Music folder.
    It cannot be used to add music to your library.
    File>>Add folder to library ought to be able to add a music folder containing multiple folders in one go.

  • Consolidate library?!?!?

    what does this do, when I click it I cannot get it to import any files into i-Tunes is this what is this function for? is it not for consolidating all of my music on my computer into i-Tunes? I have no music in my itunes right now but like 2500 songs stored as mp3.Please help I really don't understand this program. I am useing a dell by the way

    'Consolidate Library' only applies to tracks that are already in your iTunes library. It simply moves all of your iTunes content into one specific folder.
    If you want to add new content to your iTunes library, you need to use the 'Add to Library' function in the 'File' menu. When you select that function, then you'll just browse to the folder where your MP3 files are located and choose that folder.

  • Consolidate Library - why is this bad?

    Article 1751 says to consolidate library, to back up library to an ext hard drive. Why is this step bad? I see that it copies to another file and in the future new music goes to the new file. So what? When i click on library will it go to that new file?
    Thanks for the clarification.

    It's always advisable to keep a back of of your songs and library files before you make any irreversible change to iTunes. Consolidating cannot be undone which is why Apple advise you to back everything up in case you need to manually revert.
    When you consolidate, any songs in the iTunes Library that are not in the iTunes Music Folder are copied to the Music Folder and the Library is updated to point to those new files. Files already in the iTunes Music Folder have no changes made to them: Consolidating your library - Windows
    Once you have consolidated your library, if you want to make sure anything you add to your library is always copied to your iTunes Music folder in future the go to Edit>Preferences>Advanced and check the box "Copy files to Tunes Music folder when adding to library.

  • HT1449 Help! This all runs quite smoothly until i get to 'consolidate library'. Then, tracks start copying, then stop followed by a pop up saying 'Copying files failed. The disc could not be read from or written to.'  Any suggestions? Thank you!

    Help! This all runs quite smoothly until I get to 'consolidate library'. Then, tracks start copying, then stop followed by a pop up saying 'Copying files failed. The disc could not be read from or written to.'  Any suggestions? Thank you!

    I had similar problems, it was a nightmare and on a 3 month ipod too!. I use a Powerbook G4 at home and a G5 at work - both were returning the same problems. so I sent it off to apple, they quickly sent it back saying there was nothing wrong with and it didn't need to be repaired. I tried it again and the same problems occurred "disc cannot be written to or read from." I could copy 20 songs onto it at the very most. A couple of guys at my work suggested updating it on a PC, then adding tunes via my mac as normal - guess what!? it works a treat!?. How ridiculous is that!? an Apple product works best on a PC. these generations of ipods are obviously designed to work best on Intel based Macs. What is wrong Apple? are you abandoning the G-generation!? still, atleast my ipod works for now - it will prove a problem when I have to update the iPod's software since I don't own a PC or an intel-based Mac.

  • Itunes cannot consolidate

    I am using Windows Vista and cannot consolidate my itunes music. When I select the consolidate option, nothing happens, although there is music on the harddisk.
    Any clues what I am doing wrong?

    Are all the songs you are trying to consolidate already in your iTunes library, consolidating doesn't add songs to iTunes that happen to be on your hard drive. When you consolidate, any songs in the iTunes Library that are not in the iTunes Music Folder are copied to the Music Folder and the Library is updated to point to those new files. Files already in the iTunes Music Folder have no changes made to them: Copying all your iTunes files to one location - Windows

  • What is "Consolidate Library"

    What is 'consolidate library?" Under my previous OS my ITunes library showed categories such as 'genres' now it's all gone...all music remains, individually in my 'playlists' but nothing appears as before. It would show me EVERY "MeatLoaf" cd in the entire library....does anyone know how to restore that capability....careful, I'm a "ROOKIE" at this cyber-stuff but any guesses will be appreciated. If "Consolidate Library" doesn't do what I'm after, does anyone know what will? Also, the message "cannot be undone" shows under "Consoli...."
    h e l p ? ?

    WHen you use iTunes with the default settings, as you add content to your library, those media files are copied into the iTunes folder from where ever you added them from (Desktop, CD, media card, etc.).
    However you can turn that off and when you add files to iTunes, it will add them to the library and simply use them from where ever you added them. So next time you play them it will go to that location for the file. For example you might have some songs in your My Documents folder, others might be on an external drive, & still others in a folder called "Songs" on your C: drive or another internal drive. Some people like this better because then they can organize their files any way they want and not have iTunes make copies into the iTunes folder and use its own structure.
    Which brings us to consolidate library. All this function does is copies all the media files that are not in the place iTunes would normally put them and copies them into the iTunes folder, thus consilidating everything into the same folder. This would be useful, for example, if you were getting a new computer and wanted to move everything from the old computer to the new computer. Rather than trying to find everything spread all over your old computer system, you can consolidate the library then everything will now be under one folder on the one drive and you can now easily move that folder to the new computer knowing everything has been consolidated into it.
    Patrick

  • Consolidate Library Error

    Hi,
    I'm looking to migrate my iTunes library to another hard disk on my laptop.  I have followed steps on Apple's website where I reset the library location to the new drive and am now using the consolidate library function.
    I'll highlight 20GB of files and select consolidate library however it trucks along for a while until it seemingly finds a file it doesn't like and iTunes hangs for 20 minutes then gives me an error message "Copying files failed. The disk could not be read from or written to.".  While it's hung the copying progress bar shows the file it was supposed to be copying so I can identify the problematic song and skip that artist however I then find it hits same issue with another file along the way.
    I've got about 170GB of media so it's not really practical to go through this process of bypassing files it doesn't like so I wondered if anyone has any idea why these files are causing problems for iTunes?
    I have run chkdsk on both the source and destination drives and no errors came back and I don't think it's an issue with the drives as I copied a load of other stuff to the new drive without issue.  The source drive is my Windows drive and I don't see any errors there.
    So, I have my original library files on C: and some copied files on D:, which is now set as the library location.  Can I potentially have my 'old' library as is on C: and have any new files running from D: concurrently so I've got it in two locations simulataneously?  This way I can 'consolidate' what iTunes will let me copy to D: and leave anything else on C: and have any new files imported into D:, would this work?
    Any help would be much appreciated.

    I assume you ran chkdsk with the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option? One failure would be annoying to transfer would be annoying. Repeated failures suggest there may be an underlying problem with one of the disks. I'd be keen to get another drive and start backing up to it.
    iTunes will work OK with the files in the split locations, but you have to manually check what can be safely deleted from drive C. Normally I'd recommend that you move the entire iTunes folder as a unit and then hold down shift as you launch iTunes to choose the library in the new location. Given that you are part way through consolidating this isn't so simple now, but see my post make a split library portable for more information.
    tt2

  • Error message (-48) cannot save library

    I have the library saved on a network drive and it was working fine until I just started getting the error message "cannot save library error (-48). But the library is still there and it appears that new songs/pods are being saved. Any idea what this error message is? Thanks

    That error is referring to the iTunes Library.itl or .xml file, as explained in this article:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93732
    WHen are you seeing this error, when you try to close itunes?
    Can you rename that file? Because if you can't, the operating system is confused and thinks something has a lock on it. Restarting your PC should clear that situation.

  • How to Consolidate library + Keep Playlists

    Hi
    I've unsuccessfully searched for a solution to my problem and could find it in this forum. Would really appreciate any help!
    I've collected a large amount of MP3s (over 300 Gigs) from different sources and got spread out in different hard drives and folders...My itunes library was linked to all these separate folders and then I bought this new hard drive to consolidate all of them into one place. When doing that I made a stupid mistake and renamed an older hard drive... therefore thousands of Itunes tracks got unlinked to their original files (the annoying ! sign).
    I'd like to be able to do a "mass relink" to the all the files now consolidated into a single hard drive, but I'd like to keep all my library and playlists intact (since I worked on them for years). Any ideas on how to do that easily? Obviously I won't manually relink song by song, that would take an eternity... so if any of you know the solution to this you'll be my life savior!
    Thanks to all in advance, an help will be greatly appreciated!

    It has been moved, Som2k7.
    In iTunes 8, go to the iTunes File menu > Library > Consolidate Library.

  • How to consolidate library in new iTunes

    Since the new iTunes with the Genius, I don't know where the option to consolidate the library is. It's really annoying, anyone know?

    It has been moved, Som2k7.
    In iTunes 8, go to the iTunes File menu > Library > Consolidate Library.

  • Cannot Attach library

    Hi, I am getting an error Cannot attach library webutil when running a Form from Form builder, I have checked all the path entries and everything seems to be correct, I have also checked the permissions on the files and nothing seems to be wrong, Can someone please let me know what could be wrong ?
    Thanks

    Hello,
    Compile the webutil.pll, then move the .plx to one of the folders pointed by the FORMS_PATH variable.
    Francois

  • Consolidate Library, Not enough Space, itl files, genuius, external drive,

    In the interest of putting something back, thought I would post this
    Objective
    To have a single iTunes Library, on a Server PC, (Windows Home Server) so that if a change is made while on PC (a) or PC (b) we see the change.
    Setup
    PC (a) living room
    PC (b) kitchen
    Windows home server, on 24 x 7
    In doing this I made a number of errors, and hope you learn from this, and also found a couple of 'features' that made life harder.
    Standard approach
    1) in iTune preferences, alter the position where you want to store your data, so this could be
    //Server/Music/iTunes/Alison/Library
    You need the subdirectory as the Library is where your itunes will reside, and your internal itunes file one directory up.
    This process will change pointers in te internal itunes files, but still references the music in the various locations it is stored.
    2) Now go to the File Menu/ Library / Consolidate Library
    This will move all your music to teh location you specified above.
    At this point I ran into my first problem, despite having adequate space on the Windows Home Server (WHS) I would get the error 'not enough space to copy files'
    I believe the reason I was getting this error message was that some of the files paths were over 256 chat in length. There is also a limitation in WHS on this, but I believe the issue in this case was with iTunes, not WHS.
    To get around this issue, I changed the location of where I was going to consolidate all the files to, to an internal disk on the PC where my itunes library was. so Instead of;
    //Server/Music/iTunes/Alison/Library
    I used m:/iTunes/Alison/Library
    This worked, so I had all my data (now duplicated effectively, but consolidated) on the same PC.
    The reason people say use consolidate is that it makes the move easy and changes all the internal files, but as I couldn't consolidate to the location I required due to the error, I now have to move all the rest of the data manually.
    3) Copy the Library file on the local PC drive to the WHS Library Directory;
    Copy m:/iTunes/Alison/Library => //Server/Music/iTunes/Alison/Library
    4) I then edited the internal itunes files, so that it pointed to the WHS server location. I edited the itunes internal file;
    Settings\Alison\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.xml
    I did this in notepad, with a find and replace command,
    Find 'm:/'
    Replace '/Server/Music/
    The above bit does require some thought and if you have made it this far, have a look at the xml file structure, and you will be able to figure out how to alter the path.
    This has the effect of pointing the iTunes file at where the music is now stored, you can confirm this by starting iTunes and getting it to show the track it is playing in Explorer. If it is pointing at your new location you are good to go.
    Remember I only had to do this, as I was unable to consolidate to the location I really wanted to go to, due to the space error.
    Also note that I had 2gb memory on the machine I did the find and replace on, as Notepad is not memory friendly.
    5) Apple has some other internal files that need to be corrected as well;
    iTunes Library.itl
    iTunes Library Genius.itdb (if running genius)
    iTunes Library Extras.itdb (believe is genius related)
    sentinel (no idea, but saw this file !)
    To get these all corrected to the new WHS (or external drive) I created a iTunes Library.itl file with zero bytes in the directory Settings\Alison\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\, did this in notepad. I then started iTunes, and it created all of the above files with the new file locations. You can't edit the above files, apple encrypts them
    6) you now move all of the corrected internal files to the WHS home server location;
    //Server/Music/iTunes/Alison
    iTunes Library.itl
    iTunes Music Library.xml
    iTunes Library Genius.itdb
    iTunes Library Extras.itdb
    sentinel
    7) Now you repoint the itunes to the new location for the internal files, specifically the correct itunes library, there are a number of references on the net to do this that you press the shift key(PC) or the option key (Mac)
    I am running a PC, and pressing the shift key while clicking on the itunes icon on the desktop does not work. You have to hold the shift key while starting itunes from the Start Menu, Programs, Itunes. This will then give you an option of which library to look at, and look at the library on the WHS drive (or external drive)
    Thats it
    Hope this helps someone who has to battle with iTunes like I did. Due to the variosu errors, size of the library (200gb) and other issues, whole process took 2 days, if doing this again would have taken a couple of hours.
    DGW

    Hiya, that's sweet to post what you went through!
    I have a question, though - are you able to have both PCs running itunes at the same time?
    When I try this, I get an error message that the ITL file is locked on the 2nd instance I try to open. I'm using an exHD, not a server.
    Also - all that editng of the XML file doesn't save ratings, date added, and some other metadata. If you'd just moved the ITL file, that metadata would be intact.

  • Keep getting Cannot save library file error -50 message on my PC

    I keep getting "cannot save library file error -50 when I open up iTunes on my PC
    Won't download music purchased on iPhone4 to iTunes in my PC

    Same issue here. Running Windows Vista Home Premium Edition and newest version of iTunes. Normally happens when I am ripping a CD into iTunes and by chance multi task or the screen saver kicks in.
    What ***** is if you walk away while ripping a CD(because it takes 3 times as long in iTunes vs any other ripper), and it will halt your ripping until you click "ok". I have not tried the "dont tell me again" check box just in case it is a problem I need to know about. This happened about 2 or 3 days after upgrading to Vista and I got an empty library the next time I opened the library. Somehow it got corrupted. Luckily I back up the xml file and just restored that one file from last back up.
    (off subject but also getting the maxed our processor still in the newest version for Windows Vista. Wish they would fix that!)

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