External hard drive music folder

While upgrading to iTunes 6.0.2 I must have done something wrong. iTunes kept giving me the message "The song "xxxxx..." could not be used because the original file could not be found". I have about 10,000 songs on my external HD. I followed the directions on moving your iTunes music folder as suggested by the Apple info article. I created a new folder, selected the Keep iTunes music folder organized, consolidated, etc. However, many of my songs did not copy over the new folder. If an album had, for instance, 14 songs in its folder, only 6 or 7 songs copied over. Some of the folders that contained an artist's complete album / cd did not copy over at all. I went through my previous music folder and the new one I created and copied everything over manually. I hope I got all the music. Now that I hope that all my music is in one place / folder on my external HD, is there anything I can do to get iTunes on my mac mini to recognize the path to the external HD and recognize all the songs there?

Main Menu>File>Add to Library...?

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New PC, I want itunes to open up in my external hard drive (music location) but it opens in the icloud. Itunes file location is correct but it navigates to the cloud, help!

I have a new PC, Iwanted to direct itunes to my external hard drive (music location) but nothing seemed to work. I've now uninstalled and re installed itunes locating it in my external hard drive, however when I open itunes it directs itself to the icloud. I've checked the file location and it is in the external hard drive. How do I direct it to the correct place?

Setting the path to the media folder only tell iTunes where to put new content, not which library file to open. If you moved your entire library to the external drive then hold down shift as you start iTunes and browse to the iTunes Library.itl file. If you only copied the media folder you'll either need to redo the migration from your old computer, or import the media folder into a fresh library.
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Use existing external hard-drive music library with new laptop.

I moved my I-tunes library to an external hard-drive on my previous laptop. That worked fine. After a hard disk crash I am now configuring a new laptop (installing I-tunes) and I would like to keep my music on the external hard drive: How do I proceed?

Depends on whether you had your complete library (including the iTunes database) on the external drive, or just your media files and folders. If the former, you can just hold down shift as you start iTunes, and when you get this is prompt:
click on Choose Library... then navigate to and select the iTunes Library.itl file on the external drive.
In the other case - and assuming that you can't copy or retrieve the database file from your old machine or a backup of it, create a new library in X:\iTunes (where "X" is the drive letter of your external drive, make sure the settings in Edit > Preferences > Advanced are as follows:
and then use File > Add Folder to Library... to add your existing media folders.

Why is external hard drive music deleting?

I have 11,000 songs - they are all on an external hard drive. Itunes knows to look to that hard drive. However, when I download new music, I have noticed if I don't save the new music to the hard drive, it will erase all 11,000 songs and only show the new.
I downloaded 40 songs, saved them to the downloaded folder and later drug them into Itunes. All 11,040 songs showed. The next morning I woke up and there were only 40 songs in my library. Where did my 11,000 go?
This has happened before and I have redirected Itunes to the external, but have had to wait for all 11,000 to download again and then had to resync my ipod. That is not practical.

Each time you start iTunes it should show you all the content it has last time you ran it. At present some users running AVG are finding that sometimes when they start iTunes most of their content is missing. What remains listed is their iTunes purchases, though these are in fact links to the stream or download those songs from the store. iTunes doesn't selectively display or not display media based on location, though it may fail to play media that isn't where it is expected to be. This can happen if an external drive letter changes.
If iTunes starts up showing less media than you expect it to then the obvious conclusion is that the library has become corrupt. The media is likely to all still be in place on the hard drive. You should be able restore an earlier version of the library in the way described in this post. If something completly different is going on I'd be interested in the details. I may be able to offer useful suggestions. If you don't already do so you ought to backup against such problems.
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ITunes can't find my external hard drive music

Hello, our computer crashed recently and I have restored Windows Vista and iTunes. All of our music is stored on an external hard drive (drive I). There is a main "iTunes music" folder, and then there are a ton of folders in there that are named by music artist. I went to iTunes and changed the preferences to the I drive iTunes music folder, but it will not import the music. If I go to "computer" and open the individual songs, they will play on iTunes. Please tell me I don't have to go in and click on every single song; there are thousands of them. How do I get my songs back in the iTunes library? Any help is appreciated.

Hi, I'm sorry, I don't have an answer, just to be clear immediately, but I do have the same problem and I'm looking for an answer as well.
Because of a problem with the computer I had to re-install everything yesterday. Also my music is on a separate disk, not on the computer itself. I forgot to save or copy the separate iTunes-library-document, because I never use the bloody file, I only use iTunes and sometimes I copy something from the G:\-drive (with the yellow folders with the names of the artists) to the H:\-drive to back-up my music.
So my music is all there, all 60 days of music, so a h e l l of a lot, but I don't know how to get to open everything as one big action, instead of one by one which will be weeks of work. To be clear: because of the re-installment I downloaded iTunes again. The music is for sure on the G:\-drive.
I googled my problem of course, but then problems turn up like people who don't know how to install music on their iPod and stuff, but that's not what my problem is.
Just like Lauren & Mikes mom I changed in 'Preferences' the C:\-drive (the computer says C:-drive automatically) to the G:\-drive, but no action was undertaken by the computer. Of course I tried it several times. In vain.
I don't understand why I can't find the solution by googling this problem. I'm sure Lauren & Mike's mom and I aren't the only ones having this problem...
Thanks in advance for an answer.
Message was edited by: Majesty
Message was edited by: Majesty

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.

How do i get itunes 11 to stop adding music played from external hard drive to itunes library

I use itunes 11 to play music from my external hard drive and when i am finished using the hard drive and disconnect it the artist and songs appear in the itunes libary and when i click on it to play them it cannot locate the file and i assume this is becuse under the advanced prefrences tab i unchecked the auomaticly add played music to itunes library. I do not want my external hard drive music to be added to itunes library which at this point it does not but it is still showing the music in the library even though it cannot be played this is very fustrating please help. how do i get the artist and songs played from the external hardrive from appering in the itunes library.

Do you have a working copy of the library anywhere? The key file is called iTunes Library.itl and normally exists inside <User's Music>\iTunes. This is the file that knows what is in your library and each of the playlists, and holds ratings, play counts etc. Changing the media folder path in preferences tells iTunes where you'd like it to store media in future. It doesn't magically connect iTunes to any media that might already be there, or fix links to media that has been moved, or make it pick up a non-existent library file. If the worst comes to it you will need to import the media into the new empty library.
See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device if you have any of these to recover ratings, play stats and playlists, and to associate your device with the new library.
tt2

How do I get iTunes to access music files on external hard drive?

We moved all of our music to an external hard drive. The hd is always on and I connect to it wirelessly. I don't know how to get iTunes to use the library that is on the hard drive, can anyone help me please.

iTunes expects to find its library in the ./Music/iTunes folder. To get iTunes to see music on another drive, you first have to create the library on your internal drive. Once you've done that, you copy the iTunes folder over to your external drive, and redirect iTunes to that drive, using an alias. (I originally did this in Tiger and it continues to work fine in Leopard. I don't know if doing it originally in Leopard would make any difference.)
Note: If your external drive library is already too large for your internal drive, simply use as much of it as you can to create the original library on your internal drive. You can add the rest of it once you've got iTunes looking at the external drive. In this case, remember to name any "iTunes" folder on the external drive to something else, so you don't erase everything in the following procedure.
Load up as much music as you can on your internal drive, making sure it appears in iTunes.
Quit iTunes and copy the iTunes folder from your internal drive to your external drive (be sure you don't erase whatever's already on the external drive). Copying that folder to the root of the external drive is OK.
On your internal drive, rename the 'iTunes" folder to something else (like orig_iTunes) -- or move it out of the Music folder.
Open your external hard drive to the directory containing your iTunes folder.
Cmd-Option drag the iTunes folder from the external hard drive to the internal hard drive Music folder, creating an alias in the internal drive's Music folder.
Launch iTunes. You should now see the music from the external hard drive. If necessary, you can now add back any missing music, and it will automatically create the necessary music and library files inside your iTunes folder on the external drive. Once you've got them all added, you can delete both the orig_iTunes folder, and the folder on your external drive that served as the source for adding your library back in.

How do I get my iTunes to reference an external hard drive folder?

I don't want to put all of my music on my laptop. I would like iTunes to reference my external hard drive iTunes folder for my music rather than the default folder on my computer. I have tried to change the iTunes Media folder to my "iTunes - External," but when I then re-open my iTunes, there is no music there. Help?

The only work around I have ever figured out for this problem is to create a new library with a different name and then add the music folder on your external HD to iTunes, Depending on the size this may take a while but it has worked for me. Good luck!

How can I access iTunes; the songs are on an external hard drive?

I have had an iBookG4 for almost 4 years now, and I recently had to get it updated to Leopard because the operating system was so out of date. Now though, my computer has no spare memory because the hard-drive is full with Leopard. So I have to keep my iTunes files on an external hard -drive. The problem is that when I want to play songs though iTunes, the file copies itself to my hard-drive, which I have no space for. Either that, or iTunes tells me that the files can't be found. In store when I got the operating system updated, I was told to press 'alt' before opening iTunes, so that the songs would play through the hard-drive, but this doesn't seem to work. Is there any way of being able to play the music through iTunes and the external drive only? This is very annoying because I recently got an iPod, and I can't seem to put any music onto it.
Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks very much for that!
I have an extra question. While I was on the advanced settings, I changed the location of my iTunes folder from my computer harddisk to the external drive, so I could avoid having to go through my hard disk at all. Now when I have looked at my external hard drive, the folder with my music has disappeared, and I don't know where it is. Also, some song files aren't there any more because my computer only had room for the majority, but about 700 are still missing. However, all the songs seem to be playing through iTunes. What has happened?
Many thanks,
C

Problems with itunes 10 and external hard drive

Hi
I was recently forced to change the internal hard drive on my G5 Tower, and the external hard drive where I keep my music library.
The new external drive had all my music files copied to it. I reloaded my itunes library files (that I had backed up from old computer) into my music folder and I named the new external drive as the media folder in Itunes preferences. The first time I used itunes it asked me if I wanted it to locate all files to which I pressed OK. itunes quickly found the majority of files and I cleaned up / organized the small mess left behind.
Trouble is a few problems have occurred. Firstly, itunes seems slow – there’s a sluggish pause flicking between tracks – where as before it used to snap into response. Occasionally I’m asked to locate files which I thought was a task it had already done - and every now and again when I check the external hard drive music library I find files have been moved from there album locations to ‘untitled’ folders, etc. I can only assume itunes is doing this. I’ve also noticed I can’t remove the external hard drive from the desktop without closing itunes first which never happened before.
This is getting somewhat frustrating. Can anybody advise?
Much appreciated.
K

Hi Nick,
Avoid the WD files completely, not needed & often a problem.
You need to erase the Drive, & to use it on both Format it MS-DOS/FAT32, on the Mac or PC, but will have a 4 GB filesize limit, as well as other limitations.
One option not mentioned yet is MacDrive for your PCs... allows them to Read/Write & Format HFS+, so no need to reformat it...
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

How to move media and librar[ies] to external hard drive, when 'Keep organized' de-selcted

Newbie to mac, sorry for being so dense. I am nervous about my understanding of iTunes and from the many posts I’ve read realize how easily I could screw this up. Can someone point me to step by step directions for moving the actual media ‘files’, ie the mp3s, as well as the necessary library files, to an external drive, when ‘keep media organized’ and ‘copy files to media folder’ are NOT SELECTED?
I am running OS X 10.6.8 and iTunes 10 [and prefer a solution which does not require updating software …so far that never goes well for me. (:
For myriad reasons, I prefer to maintain my own customized folder and file structure for my mp3s; and have therefore de-selected
1] Keep iTUnes Media folder organized and 2] Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.
All the directions in the various posts seem to require selecting these options. Is this critical for success?
From the many posts I have read, it seems there’s more to it than just drag and drop, that I need to ensure that iTunes is ‘pointed’ to somewhere? Not the mp3s themselves, but to a ‘library” [is that yet another copy of the mp3s? somewhere on my hard drive?].
Additionally, over the years I have moved about 45GB of mp3s to ‘storage’ external hard drives to create more space on my laptop. Not ideal interim solution. I am again low on space and have decided to buy new external drive for holding all of my mp3s, ie the 45 GB in ‘storage’ and the remaining 75 GB from my laptop. Ideally, I would like to also keep all my artwork, playlists and ratings and the like [which I guess are in the ‘libraries’???]
Am I correct, that I will need to also move to the new external hard drive that folder which holds the .itl and .xml files and which is named ‘iTunes’??? and then there is another step to link the ‘media’ to the ‘library’ to ‘itunes’????
Again, any clarification is greatly appreciated. Thanks very much.

Unfortunately you have the worst possible situation for doing this. If you let iTunes organize files you could simply let iTunes relocate them by consolidating in advanced preferences and it would all be done with a few minutes effort on your part with nothing getting lost. Organizing your own media means when you move things to a different drive iTunes will lose track of many if not all the links.
First, try simply dragging the whole iTunes folder to the external drive and start iTunes with the option/alt key held down. Guide it to the iTunes Library.itl file on the external drive. If you are lucky it will move as a package. If you are not, the link locations will all be bad because it will still be looking for the files on the internal drive. It may look like it is working but get info on a file or two and see if it is still referencing the file on the internal drive or if it is really using the external drive.
When you move the files from the third drive to the new external I can almost guarantee you every single link will break. Again because you do not let iTunes organize media you can't use iTunes' own repair link feature. One solution will be to take the old .xml file and open it in a text editor. Do a global replace of the old drive path with the path to the location of the files on the new drive. Now if all your old links broke for the main library you will have to do this for both the main library on the new drive as well as the relocated files from the main drive. Now this is really starting to get messy and I am going to fade at any minute now because it is getting late. If you needed to do this for all files go ahead and create a new library using the option key method mentioned earlier, then import the .xml into the new library. If you only need to edit the third drive files then remove any references to the old main library files in this edited .xml and import just the edited third drive file references. See? Isn't that all nice and clear? Oh, realize that the .xml does not contain 100% of the information in the .itl (you cannot edit the .itl). You will lose ratings, play count, date added. Ratings and play count can be saved using other tricks which would take about as much typing as I have done already so I won't go there unless they are absolutely critical to you.

How do I fully import my itunes music from my external hard drive to my new HP computer so that I don't need the external HD attached to listen to my music? It won't promt me to fully import songs when I import the folder from the EHD.

When I select File> Add folder to library and then press "select folder" after finding the iTunes music folder I wish to import from my external hard drive, it does not promt me whether to fully import it or not. After the importing is complete, the external hard drive must be attached in order for me to listen to my music. I do not wnat this; I wnat my music fully imported so that I don't need my EHD. What can I do? Thanks!

To import music into your iTunes library on the computer go to iTunes>Help>iTunes Help>Add items to iTunes and follow the instructions

HT1473 Help I just moved my music files to a external hard drive and am using the new crappy version ( i know my opinion) of itunes and cant add the files to my libray it gives me the add file to library option but not the add folder to library option wha

Help I just moved my music files to a external hard drive and am using the new crappy version ( i know my opinion) of itunes and cant add the files to my libray it gives me the add file to library option but not the add folder to library option what am i doing wrong?

In iTunes 11 uncheck the preferences setting in in the iTunes Preferences panel "Advanced > Copy Files to iTunes Media folder when adding to Library"

Error message when moving iTunes music folder to External Hard Drive

I have followed the instructions in Apple support to move my iTunes music folder to an external hard drive. During the consolidate library step, only half of my music is transferred before I get the error message "Copying music failed. The disk could not be read from or written to."
Has anyone gotten the same message, and what was your experience correcting the issue?
15" Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

In Windows, you go through File >> Library >> Organize Library. here you can choose to consolidate your library. this should do the job.. alternatively you could take a look at this blog..
http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/19/how-to-keep-your-itunes-library-on-an-external-ha rd-drive/
Even though its step by step on mac you should be able to figure it out from there.
Message was edited by: MuldVarp3N

External hard drive music folder

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