External iTunes drive crashed, media paths now mixed up
I guess this is a pretty specific scenario but stil...
I moved all my iTunes media to an external drive after running low on space on my internal drive.
I set up time machine to back up the new external drive (to another dedicated Time Machine drive).
This external media drive crashed, I have bought a new replacement drive and managed to restore the data from the TM backups to the new drive (ended up doing it manually from the TM drive since TM crashed every time I tried it).
In the meantime while the drive was broken, iTunes have now started to save new and updated files to the internal drive again.
It has also updated the paths to all my old files (that used to be on the now crashed external drive) to point to my internal drive as well.
So my library is a mish-mash of working and non-working paths.
The external drive holds a lot of iTunes data (over 500Gb).
I dont want to start a brand new library since I have iphone + ipad synced to it.
Can someone please advice how to get back to a state where all my media is on the new external drive?
OS X 10.6.8 + iTunes 11.0.4
Thanks
Matt
What happened all those times I was backing up?
We can't possibly know what happend or where your backups are. But you can indeed search all of your available hard disks and see if there are any files named *.LRCAT with recent dates.
By the way, I would be extremely wary of using that Lacie drive any more. If it was me, I'd replace it.
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Photos.
They are on my macBook, backed up on time machine. There are 19,000+ of them, some rescued from a pc crash- which I used the nifty iPhoto to put back into date order.
I want to take them all off my laptop, now............as I need to use it for WORK!!
Copied them (hours and hours) to another external hard drive.
They are now in alphabetical order (all 19,000+ of them) NOT IN THEIR EVENTS or date order. (-They have also been taken with different cameras over the years and some of the generic camera numbering remains.)
I have tried to copy them (only a few as an experiment) one event at a time, but that again "opens up" the Event "folder" and tips them out as individuals and therefore just lists image letters and numbers alphabetically.
How can I copy
the whole library still in "Events" to an external hard drive?
the folders/albums I have already made on to this hard drive?
and how can I add to this back up monthly, again keeping events and folders separate and updated?
Mac is so user friendly - there must be a way.........
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Am I correct ? Please advise before I do something I will regret.
Thanks, Sean. -
External Hard Drive crashed with all songs on it. HELP!!!
Hello. My kids have used my work PC as their itunes playground for over the past year. I added a Lacie external hard drive to help them save thier music and had itunes on it, as well as my pc. The external hard drive crashed and won't communicate with the pc at all so when we bring up itunes on the pc it shows exclamation marks next to almost all of the songs and won't play them. I still have almost all of our music on my ipod, except about 170 songs that they purchased since I last plugged in my ipod, they have their own mini's. I want to know how to get the songs back to my computer. I am afraid if I connect the 60GB ipod to the pc all of our songs will be wiped out since my ipod is on autosync. Can anyone give me a reliable way to get everything back to normal? PLEASE!!!!
Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual and use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Also when using a lot of the utilities your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button: Managing content manually on iPod
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. If you have any iTMS purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers has been introduced with iTunes 7. A paragraph on it has been added to this article:: Transfer iTunes Store purchases using iPod
The transfer of non iTMS content such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there's a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to your Mac. The procedure is a bit involved but if you're interested it's available at this link: Two-way Street: Moving Music Off the iPod
If you prefer something more automated there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve music files and playlists from your iPod, this is just a selection. I use Senuti but have a look at the web pages and documentation for the others too, you'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos and games as well. You can also read reviews of some of them here: Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Senuti Mac Only
iPodRip Mac Only
PodWorks Mac Only
PodView Mac Only
iPodAccess Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac & Windows
PodUtil Mac & Windows
iPodCopy Mac & Windows
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync. -
Post external hard drive crash, imovie6 files no longer open despite all data being present
my external hard drive crashed.
Thanks to ontrack, I recovered most if not all of the data, and this included the iMovies, I was told, but not one iMovie will open.
The data size is the same as when they were functional. Yet, when clicking on the icon for the movie, it opens and then I see a prompt that says, "A project file is missing..." If I ignore all, the movie never opens. I dont ignore all, the movie does not open.
My questions:
(1) can I fix these files myself? If so, how?
(2) If this is too hard for a novice, is there a company who can look at priceless imovie files and fix themquestion
(3) is this a lost cause?
I've lost upwards of 15 imovies (and the countless hours and love put into each). I'm willing to go to some lengths to fix them, including paying someone.
Thoughts/advice/suggestions?
Thanks.
DamonI'd like to amend my original post... This should be helpful to anyone out there...
my external hard drive crashed.
I DID NOT have documents backed up properly.
....I KNOW....
sigh...
Thanks to Ontrack, I recovered most if not all of the data, and this included the iMovies, I was told. Yet, when trying to open each file, none will open.
I've tried almost everything, including:
(1) show package contents (and trying to drag and drop "TimelineMovie.mov from cache to new iMovie)(nothing happens when dropping it into the new iMovie--quicktime opens but then nothing)
(2) show package contents (and clicking on the backup copy with ~ in the file name)(again, nothing happens)
What I know is the following:
(1) The data size is the same as when they were functional.
(2) Yet, when clicking on the icon for the movie, it opens and then I see a prompt that says, "A project file is missing..." If I click "ignore all", the movie never opens... i see it loading, loading, loading, and then it stops about 3/4 in.
(3) If I dont "ignore all", the process is the same.
(4) when I go into the media file, i see that all of the data is there
(5) while my new external hard drive(S)...lol... have plenty of space, my current macbook pro is maxed out and I operate with just under 1gb of available memory
My questions:
(1) do I have any hope here?
(2) If so, how do I fix these priceless files myself? I know, if priceless, why not backed up? again, sigh...
(3) If too hard for a novice, is there a company who can look at priceless imovie files and fixes them?
Again, I've lost MANY imovies (and the countless hours and love put into each). I'm willing to go to some lengths to fix them, including paying someone.
Thoughts/advice/suggestions?
Thanks.
Damon -
Can i use my time capsule to wirelessly backup my macbook and its external hard drive, which up until now was it's time machine and storage? How?
The external drive must be connected to the Mac using either USB or FireWire
You must remove the external hard drive from the list of items that are "excluded" from backups in Time Machine Preferences.
Here's how:
Open System Preferences (gear icon on the dock)
Open Time Machine
Click Options
Look for the name of the hard drive in the list of "excluded" items and click on it to highlight it
Click the -- (minus) button at the bottom of the list to remove the hard drive from the list of "excluded" items....so it will now be backed up
Strongly recommend that you do the first backup using Ethenret from your computer to the Time Capsule since the entire contents of the external drive will be copied on the first pass. Ethernet will be 3-5 faster than wireless.
Once you have the first backup done, you can use wireless for subsequent backups since they will nornally be much smaller....unless you add large files to the external drive. -
Folders with photo files are lost due to external hard drive crashing. Processed photo's are still in LR. How can I export from LR to a file (any file) that no longer exists? Help!!!
Well, no backups, the technical term for that is "a problem". I think from this point forward, you need to commit yourself to making regular automated backups of all of your photos and catalog file to different physical disks, no excuses.
Your photos are not stored in Lightroom. However, Lightroom does create "previews", this is what you are seeing, but these are usually smaller and low-quality compared to the originals. There are plug-ins that can extract the previews from Lightroom. One such plug-in is here robcole.com - PreviewExporter -
My hard drive crashed and I now have a new one installed. I have lost my purchased Adobe Creative Suite 6 Design Standard MAC OS. I have the receipt and product; can I reinstall it into the computer?
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Mylenium -
I recently moved my Aperture Library file to an external hard drive. Can I now create a vault to be saved on my Time Capsule for the Aperture library on this external hard drive?
One thing to bear in mind, if you are using Time Machine on your Time Capsule and have it set so the TM backup includes your external drive, you will effectively be backing up your Aperture library twice on the same drive, once with Time Machine and once with the vault. This isn't a problem unless you start to run out of space.
Another thing to note, vaults on network drives used to be flaky (i.e. not really supported) and required workarounds to be able to use them. I'm not sure if this has changed, but I just managed to create a vault on my TC ok. -
I have all of my imovie events stored on an external hard drive in order to save space on my MacBook Pro's internal drive. I currently back up both my MacBook Pro and the external hard drive using a second external hard drive via Time Machine. I have a few questions:
1. How can I be sure that the external drive is actually being backed up.
2. How do I retrieve the imovie events if the 1st external hard drive crashes?
Thank for your help!Let me give you some thoughts. I can tell you my plan, but ultimately you will need your own plan that makes sense for you.
I do not think that your idea of having two separate Time Machine destinations will work. You can have two external drives as Time Machine volumes, but they will both back up the same data set. You cannot dedicate one to iMovie and one to everything else. They will both have everything, so you may still have a space problem.
One way to overcome this is to back up the iMovie volume by using a tool like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. The good news is that your Event files should be pretty stable and there is no need to back them up every 15 minutes. So something like SuperDuper, which you can set to automatically backup once a day, for example, is probably fine. I am pretty sure that this would work if you kept the Projects on the same external drive. As long as Projects and Events are on the same drive, then the cloning stragy should work (but you should always test.)
Because projects change more often than events, and projects can become corrupted, I would definitely back up the Project Library to Time Machine. You can do this even though it is on an external drive. (And even though you may be periodically backing up the entire drive that contains the projects.)
Here are some thoughts on how I approach backup, copied from an earlier answer...
============================================================
Great question. I think the issue of backup is a important one, and one I always worry about since I have a lot of video footage that is irreplaceable.
For back-up, it is helpful to define the risk you are trying to protect from.
For example,
1) risk of corruption in iMovie --> I use Time Machine
2) risk of hard drive failure --> I use SuperDuper! nightly for bootable backup) and Time Machine all the time
3) Risk of theft or fire --> offsite backup
Here is what I do...
1) I back up my boot disk with SuperDuper automatically each night so I always have a bootable system.
2) I back up my original video files. For my Motion JPEG, VHS-->AIC, DV, and 8MM to DV, the EVENT is the copy I back up. (I keep the tapes, but I never want to have to import the tapes again.)
For my AVCHD high def video, I back up the camera archive of the AVCHD, but I am not currently backing up the Event files, because I would need from 4 to 8 TB to back up these events depending on whether I made one copy or two. I can always re-create the Event from the camera archive.
3) I use CrashPlan for my offsite backup. It costs less than $4 per month, and I seeded the initial backup to an external drive to minimize having to transfer video files over the Internet. I currently have over 2TB of data backed up to CrashPlan, which includes my entire boot drive, and the files described in #2.
4) All of the above is automated, so I don't have to think about it too much. If I have to manually do stuff, I tend to get behind.
You have to consider the value of total multiple redundancy vs. the likelihood that 2 or three unlikely events would all happen at once. For example, CrashPlan could lose my data. My hard disk could fail. I could lose everything in a fire. But it is unlikely that they would all happen at once, except in nuclear war, in which case, who cares? -
hello once again.. i have formatted my external Hard drive it using exFAT, now my windows cant detect my device, can u plzz help me the whole purpose is getting ruined, i use Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit
This is a problem with the Mac OS X implementation of exFAT. I've had the same problem.
Best is to use a Windows box to format the drive exFAT. Then it can be read by both Windows and Mac OS.
But aren't Macs supposed to "Just Work"? Not in this case. -
I was trying to move my music to an external hard drive but now I have lost all music that was not purchased with itunes. I never hit delete so its still somewhere on my imac. How do I find it?
Do a Spotlight search or do a logical search along folders that make sense such as looking in the music folder first. Moving a library correctly should not result in any loss, and I can't think of any way to move a library and lost just a select grouping of files. How were you trying to effect this?
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I moved my itunes library to an external hard drive, now all of the music says it needs to be located. Not sure, but I believe it is not directed properly.
if you do iTunes > Preferences> Advanced you can change the location of where your music is stored. Click on change location and direct it to your external hard drive. Of course, your external hard drive will need to be connected to your computer to play the music.
When you moved your music to an external hard drive, did you copy the folders or move the folder off your computer completely? I copied the folders, and left iTunes folder in my Music folder and all seems to work fine. one hitch can be is that your Library in iTunes will list all of your content, but if you have some albums on the hard drive of your computer and some on your external hard drive, iTunes will need to be told where to locate these files. -
External hard drive crashed...need to move iTunes music files
I had all my music on an external hard drive which recently crashed. Fortunately I did have the library xml file on my laptop hard drive so I still have the library info, playlists, play count, etc. So I used 3rd party software to dump the music files from my iPod back on to another external hard drive. However, when I go to preferences and change the iTunes directory to that folder it still does not recognize the songs. I have gray exclamation marks beside each song and when I try to play songs it says that it can not locate the file. I have a huge library with close to 13,000 songs in it so I am really trying to figure out the easiest way to restore the music back to library so everything will play. Can someone please help me figure out what I need to do. So to summarize I still have the library xml files...I just need to know how to associate the actual songs with the library so that when I try to play a song I do not get an error message saying the file can not be found.
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When I right click on an image, then went to Go to Folder in Library, it pulls up the new external hard drive where I made the new link. When I try to work on the photos, the image still says file image is offline or missing. When I right click on the image to Show in Finder, it says the image could not be used because the original file could not be found. I eventually did click on their locate and found the image. When I linked those two together, a few minutes later ALL the "?" went missing and now IT WORKS!!!!
That was weird!
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