Consolidate Library, Copying Files Failed

I am trying to consolidate my library and when I run it I get an error message that says "Copying files failed, because you don't have permission to change your iTunes Media folder or a folder within it.
Can someone tell me how to track down exactly where the problem is and where to fix it so I can consolidate my library?
Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization is greyed out as I apparently have already done that sometime in the past.
Thanks
Carolyn

I'm having similar problems, but Katrina S's suggestion didn't work for me. From my desktop, I'd transferred my music files to an external USB hard drive and the library database files to my laptop. iTunes plays perfectly, but I get the same error message when I try to consolidate. I changed permissions on the external drive and on the iTunes library folder, when needed, to make sure either my user logon or an administrator (which includes me) had full permissions. Still can't consolidate, though. CarolynOtt, did you find a solution yet?

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Itunes wont consolidate becuase "copying files failed...."

itunes wont consolidate because "copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long." why to i get this error message and how do i fix it? I am using itunes 9 on a dell windows xp laptop. i am trying to consolidate the library but it does not work becuase of the error message. please help. Thank

I'm having similar problems, but Katrina S's suggestion didn't work for me. From my desktop, I'd transferred my music files to an external USB hard drive and the library database files to my laptop. iTunes plays perfectly, but I get the same error message when I try to consolidate. I changed permissions on the external drive and on the iTunes library folder, when needed, to make sure either my user logon or an administrator (which includes me) had full permissions. Still can't consolidate, though. CarolynOtt, did you find a solution yet?

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

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.

Moving library to external hard drive and get the error "Copying files failed. The disk could not be read from or written to"

Hello,
I'm moving my library to an external hard drive.
I've made sure to use the 'Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized' option when pointing to the new library location.
I select 'File'->'Library'->'Organize Library', I select to 'Consolidate Files', click 'OK' and get ther error message "Copying files failed. The disk could not be read from or written to".
I've read elsewhere that there may be a corrupted file that I need to sequester somehow and perhaps add it back however I'm not certain how I can locate that file because the status window doesn't indicate which file it's attempting to transfer when the error appears.
Any tips?
Thank you,
Greg H
iTunes 10.6.3

OK I figured it out!
It was a dodgy file....I sorted the file folders by date, and as it turned out within the "compilations" folder there was a CD where only about half the tracks seemed to have been copied over. Could not have identified this simply from the time indicated on the finder folder sort, because there were several CDs copied over in the that same minute.
I went back to the original itunes folder, deleted all the files from that CD in itunes, then also deleted all those files from the original disk and the target disk.
Tried the "consolidate library" again, and it completed nicely. 200megs of music and videos.
Very happy to solve this problem after 3 weeks.

When trying to 'Consolidate Files' via iTunes I get the message "Copying files failed. The name was invalid or too long."

I am trying to copy my entire iTunes library and everything in it from my PC Desktop to my PC Laptop using the "External Drive" method as shown on the Apple website. On Part 1 (5) I am told to consolidate files. When attempting to do this I get the message "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long."
How do I resolve this?

I have just been having this problem and it has been driving me mad. The error message doesn't tell you which file is causing the problem so you can't fix it and it leaves your libray in a state of limbo with some files copied into the new location and some in the old location. After many hours I found a surprisingly quick and simple solution.
1) in iTune create a smart play list that includes everything that was added before tomorrows date. This will include everything.
2) Right click this playlist and export it as a text file to produce a tab delimited file.
3) Import this into a spread sheet, or just view it in a text editor with line wrap turned off. What you are interested in is the last column (or end of the line in a text editor). This gives you the path of the file associated with each entry in the library.
The path of the files that have already been copied successfully will start with the new location for your media files you specified. Scroll thru the rows until you get a blank path. If you start getting paths starting with the old Media file location then you went to far and start scrolling back.
The row with the blank path was the file that failed. Move back to the start of the row to find out more about it. In my case it was a podcast with a very long name. I just deleted that podcast from iTunes.
4) Restart the consolidation by choosing File, Library as you did before and the process starts again where it left off.
5) If it fails again on another file just repeat the process

Consolidate Problem. Copying files failed. The File name was invalid.

Hi to everyone,
My system is 10.5.8, iTunes 9.2.1 (4)
I tried to consolidate my iTunes library to an external HD. After about 100GB of copied music, I got the message : Copying files failed. The File name was invalid.
Now everytime I try again to consolidate, I get immediately this message. I am looking everywhere for a solution, and I only find the same problem for Windows iTunes users.
Actually I found very useful this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1708372,
which talks about with which order iTunes consolidates the media, so by digging a little in the folders to find which track has the problem and make the fix. It says that consolidate start copy the files by the date added order. So I can go in my new iTunes media folder and find the latest added track, then go back in iTunes, sort by date added the songs and locate the next song, to make the fix. However in my case, all previous and next songs (by date added), have been copied in the new locations.
I am stuck. I have a remaining 300GB of music to consolidate and dont know how to proceed.
Any help would be much appreciated..

Finaly, I managed to solve it by myself...,
following the help I found from the post of the thread I mentioned on my question...
What was the problem that made things more difficult in my case, is that a big amount of songs have been added at the same time, with just a few seconds time distance. So it was tougher to locate what was the last imported song, and where iTunes consolidation had stopped. Actually I had groups of about 100 songs with the same timestamp of date added and the consolidation was following the rule of the "date added" but not exactly with the order the songs was showing in the iTuned library. So I started checking all the songs very close to the last added in the media folder one by one with the "show in finder" command, and then I managed to found what was the one with the problem.
Regarding the problematic file, that was a midi file that had been imported in my iTunes.
I hope this will help anyone else that might have the same problem as me in the future.

HT1751 I did all of the above and at the "Consolidate files" screen I clicked "ok" then it sayd "copying files failed. the file name was invalid or too long" and I had to click "OK" I cannot consolidate the files to transport to my external harddrive -h

I would like to backup my itunes to my external hard drive
I did all the steps up to "organize Liberary" which at this point I checked the box and the clicked"ok"
it then said "copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long" "OK"
It will not let me consolidate the files so I can transfer to my external hard drive
what am I doing wrong - any suggestions?
thanks,

Are you using consolidate files to bring in stray files to your main iTunes Media folder before backing up, or to copy the media folder to the external drive as part of backing up? If it is the latter then you are taking the wrong approach. See this user tip.
Run my script Unconsolidated on the library. It will show you the remaining unconsolidated files which might give a clue as to which files iTunes is having a problem with. You can consolidate selected files in batches (select, right-click) as opposed to trying to do everything in one go. Alternatively you could try moving the remaining unconsolidated files with ConsolidateByMoving as long as this step is a precursor to a backup..
tt2

I am using itunes 10 and trying to consolidate my files. I keep getting the error "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long". How can I indentify what file is causing this problem or resolve this issue?

I am using itunes 10 and trying to consolidate my files. I keep getting the error "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long". How can I indentify what file is causing this problem or resolve this issue?

BUMP
Yes, I just get that message. I don't see how I could investigate this problem.
I didn't mention that this happened when I was consolidating my library, not copying files to another computer.
In other words, I'm using a "normal" itunes procedure, itunes won't complete it, and won't tell me exactly why or how to figure out how to fix it...
Is there at least some easy way to tell which files were successfully copied to my itunes music folder so I can work on moving the uncopied files?
Can anybody help me?

HT1751 Consolidating ITunes Library Failed - message received: "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long" . Please help - how to i fix this issue?

I consulted your website for details on how to back up my ITunes Library on my PC-found the article very helpful-I reached step 7 - clicked ok and the following message came up: "Copying files failed. The file name was invalid or too long." Please can you help and advise what I should do or how to fix this issue. My pc operating system is Windows 7 Home Basic

You can select a group of tracks and consolidate from the right-click context menu. You coud try consolidating in batches, say all songs by artists beginning with A, then B, etc, then the other media types, until you can isolate a problem track and then try moving that by hand and fixing the broken link.
I also have two scripts that could help you, Unconsolidated and ConsolidateByMoving. The first can make a playlist of all unconsolidated tracks, the second can consolidate a selection of tracks by moving them instead of copying.
tt2

ITunes library consolidation error: "Copying files failed. An unknown error occurred (-50)."

My iTunes library has outgrown the HDD on my iMac, so I've started to migrate it over to a Synology NAS. The iTunes Media folder is set to the NAS, but when I attempt to consolidate the library the operation fails each time with the error: "Copying files failed. An unknown error occurred (-50).
I have found this references to this error in the communities from Windows users, but I only use Macs.

Just trying to give this topic a poke as I am having a similar issue.
I am rebuilding my library that was on an external drive. I had a backup of much of the files, but not a direct backup of the iTunes media folder, as well I am now moving it to a new iTunes Media directory on a Synology 1813+ NAS running DSM 4.3 vs. a USB attached drive.
I have followed all of the correct procedures to move the media directory by using the tools within iTunes, and that all worked perfectly.
So far iTunes has been able to locate most of the music files through its own processes. Once it completed that process I then initiated "Consolidate files" to move the found files to the new iTunes Media directory on the new NAS.
I am led to believe that the issue is with a specific file that causes the copy process to stop, but I don't know how to capture what file it might be.
I am not seeing anything relevent in the console log.
Hoping someone can throw me some ideas...
iTunes 11.1.2 (32) - iMac 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM - OS X 10.8.5

ITunes v10.6.1.7 "Copying files failed. The File name was invalid or too long."

I'm trying to organize my music files using iTunes 10.6.1.7 and I keep getting the error message "Copying files failed. The File name was invalid or too long."
I've got music folders by artist in both the iTunes Music folder and the iTunes Media/Music folder. When I add certain files by drag/drop they sometimes get lost and I don't want that to happen anymore. I used to just consolidate my music files using the File/Library/Organize Library option and that worked, however now when I do that, I get the error message.
I'm a novice and the only online stuff I see is both confusing and refers to earlier versions of iTunes.
My concern is that I have heard that people lose entire libraries of their music when they trry to fix things like this and I don't want that. If this is of any importance, I have several files called iTunes library and temp library. I have no idea what that all means but I'm scared to death of it.
Also, I can't get to the "re-organize library" link at all. It won't let me.
One thing that be of some interest is that when I pull up the properties of the music and media/music files they are marked "read only" I'm also afraid to touch that!
Please help and please know that I am a dummy. Be kind and be clear. Step by step would be great, with images even better. Thanks.

Perhaps nobody knows the answer? We're fellow users here answering questions in our free time when we think we've something useful to contribute.
You can choose to *Consolidate selected tracks* with a right-click menu. Perhaps if you can identify a specific track that won't consolidate and examine the full path to the file & the path that iTunes would create when it consolidates the problem might become apparent. For example iTunes may not be able to move files if the source or destination path length exceeds 255 characters.
tt2

Copying files failed. An unknown error occurred (-50)

I currently have a PC (Samsung Q330 running Windows 7) and I am getting a Macbook Pro in a few days! Therefore I am transferring my iTunes (10.6) library to an external hardrive (Hitachi X250). While I was doing this I received an error message that read “Copying files failed. An unknown error occurred (-50)”. Therefore I was wondering, how the heck do I fix this???
What I have done.
I have gone in to “Advance Preferences”.
I have changed the “iTunes Media folder location” to my external hardrive.
I have the following two option selected “Keep iTunes Media folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library”.
Then I go to File> Library> Organize Library. Then I select “Consolidate files” then I press the “OK” button.
Then about half way in or so I get a pop up that reads “Copying files failed. An unknown error has occurred (-50).
As you can see iTunes is not working. Could anyone help me???
Thanks in advance, Donald Louch!

Hmm... you may find iTunes is still connected to some files in the original location rather than the new one. You can check with my script Unconsolidated. If that is the case the script ConsolidateByMoving ought to switch the connection to a file already in the correct place however I'm currently working on a new build so the behaviour of the live version might be slightly different.
tt2

I'm getting error "copying files failed. the required file is in use". How do I find the file?

I've found this question is elswhere but no answers. I'm trying to consolidate my library to an external hard drive since I'm pretty sure my current drive is about to fail. The entire process has taken me days due to one error or another. This is my most recent error and so far there is no way around it since it does not show me what file is in use.
Help?

I used "Carbon Copy Cloner" to copy my library from one external disk to another.
The "library" consists of a bunch of files and folders (see links at end). You don't need CCC to copy it, just drag the whole iTunes folder in your Home > Music from one drive to the other.
I pointed my iTunes library to the new location under iTunes preferences.
No, don't do it with preferences. Once you have moved the folder as above, start iTunes with the option key held down and guide it to the library.itl file on the new drive. This is assuming you have been using iTunes's default settings and haven't been managing your media yourself.
I used iTunes to "Consolidate Library" to verify that all files had been moved.
Okay, in doing that you have moved just your media to the new drive but left all your other library files on the old drive.
iTunes succesfully copied/re-attached a lot of files before giving me the error that the disk could not be read or written to.
Try it with my method.
I began to troubleshoot the hard drive by checking the cables and scanning for errors.
This disk checked out fine.
I identified the failure and subsequent error was due to corrupted files.
I watched the consolidation process and was able to see which file it was trying to copy before it errored out.
I deleted the corrupted file and restarted the process (I repeated this numerous times).
When the process seemed to be just about over, I got the error "Copying files failed. The required file is in use."
I'm sure this is likely another corrupted file, however, it happens so fast that I have no way to identify what file is causing the problem. I tried making sure no other processes were running and no other windows or media players were open. I also tried to look for an error log but was unsuccessful.
Any ideas?
Disk Utility will scan for a corrupt directory but I don't think it works on the file level if it is a single file that was corrupted. I know I have seen Carbon Copy Cloner pick up on single file error when I had one sitting on a bad sector of a drive several years ago. If you can identify the corrupt file this way then you will have to use a backup copy since it is unlikely it can be rescued.
If you have Diskwarrior it has a file check utility.
You have, of course, restarted your computer before doing all this, and keep other computer activity to a minimum (don't play music while copying the files and don't use other applications that coupld potential be trying to get access to your files)?
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847

HT1449 copying files failed. the disk could not be read from or written to.

Im moving my iTunes to an external hard drive. Its moved about half already and Im now getting this error. I have no idea what file its getting stuck on so I cant remove that file. When I restart it it will say preparing to copy then I get the error right away. I dont want to delete the extrenal and start over if I dont have to.

Ive already changed the location for my itunes media to my extrenal hard drive so when i click to consolidate files Im getting the error
copying files failed. the disk could not be read from or written to

Consolidate Library, Copying Files Failed

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