Help! Installed SSD and now no itunes or iphoto

Question

Hi all,
I've succesfully replaced my optical drive with a new SSD, leaving my old HD in place. Things were going well until I discovered that I can't connect iTunes to my old media folder and iPhoto crashes.
What I would like to do:
- Use the SSD as boot disk and to run all applications
- Use the old HD (still installed) as a storage disk for files, music, media, etc
What I did:
- Installed Lion on new SSD
- During the install, used migration assistant to bring over the applications and system settings from my old user account to the SSD
- Left the other files on the HD
What happened
- Things went fine. I opened up Lion off the new SSD and saw my familiar old desktop (now booting up at lightning speed) and both drives available through finder. Opened up Word, saw all my recent documents just as I'd left them.
- Then, I opened iTunes and found no files. I redirected itunes to my old HD's media folder, but nothing shows up in iTunes even after the redirect.
- Then, I opened iPhoto and was prompted to choose which folder off my old HD should be used. I chose one and it crashed. Not iPhoto gives me an error message that says, "Your photo library is damaged or unreadable. Please restore from backup." I haven't had a chance to back anything up yet, as I am just in the process of all of this.
What I tried:
- Restoring permissions and rebooting
- Redirecting my admin account to the old HD through Account - Admin Acct (right click) - Advanced Options - Choose Home Directory
          - when rebooting, this brought me to a "brand new desktop" that no longer had any of my old stuff on it
- Creating a new user account with admin priveleges and choosing the user acct off the HD as per above (same result), with the added feature of having "system preferences" no longer able to open at all and a note from iPhoto that says I don't have sufficient permissions.
Any ideas???
Thank you!!
Austin

Answer 1

You probably have a permissions problem. You probably created a new account and are trying to get access to folder(s) that belong to your old account.
To access your files, your account and the files must have the same permissions. This article has a brief tutorial.
Troubleshooting permissions issues in Mac OS X
When you have that under control, iTunes is a special case that will need a little more work:
iTunes: Missing folder or incorrect permissions may prevent authorization
Above all, don't panic, your files are fine. When you get the permissions straightened out (it will take more steps than just Repair Permissions) everything will be fine.