How can I play the music on my  external hard drive with my laptop?

Look before everyone points out that this has been asked lots of times before, I wanted to state that in this particular case it might be a little bit more complicated. You see I think I've been an idiot.
I backed up all my physical music onto my external hard drive, but only the physical music. So now I have my nice new laptop and haven't got a clue how to play the music off my external hard drive, since I don't have an itunes library on my external hard drive.
Anyway any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Am I being a plonker, but it doesn't seem as simple as that. If I try and import via itunes it seems to want me to select the individual music file not the folder which holds all the music.
Also if I simply import it, won't my mac copy the files from my external hard drive back on to my laptop? Which makes me think I change the location where all the music is stored in itunes...?
Thanks for the help!

Similar Messages

  • My old computer has broken and I had not backed up my Itunes. I now have the hard drive from my old computer but cannot transfer the music. How can I transfer the music from my old hard drive to the new laptop?

    My old computer has broken and I had not backed up my Itunes. I now have the hard drive from my old computer (windows 7) but cannot transfer the music. How can I transfer the music from my old hard drive to the new laptop (windows 8)?

    Copy the entire iTunes folder from \Users\<User>\Music on the old drive into your music folder on the new computer.
    Or see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
    tt2

  • How can i update the itunes in my external hard drive?

    When i try to update the itunes on my external hard drive, it creates a new application in my computers hard drive. How can i update the one on my external hard drive?

    there's no advantage to having the application on your external drive, you should leave it in your applications folder on your internal drive. if you insist on changing the app's location, you'll always have to then copy the app by hand to the external drive

  • How can I transfer my music from an external hard drive to my Time Capsule and can I play it through apple TV?

    All my music is currently stored on an external hard drive, but I would like to transfer everything onto my Time Capsule, so that everything is backed up, what is the best way to do this?
    Is there a way I can then play all the content stored on the Time Capsule through apple tv without the need to clog up my macbook hard drive?

    Did you import the music on the external hard drive into your iTunes library on your new PC or point iTunes at the location of your library stored on the external hard drive?
    B-rock

  • My itunes can't find the music on my external hard drive.

    My itunes was working fine using my external hard drive. Then I played a song that was not part of that music folder. Now itunes says it can't find any of the songs that are listed. The little evil exclamation point pops up. How can I reconnect to the hard drive without having to start all over?

    Thanks for the clarification of check vs click. I guess once I saw the word "double" I stopped reading. I ended up "reloading" the drive to itunes. The interesting thing is that itunes isn't setting the location for the external drive. It is set for a folder under "my music" The actual songs aren't there, but the folders are there. When i put my external drive music to a new itunes library, i did so without copying the songs. So about 100 gig of music is in a folder that is really only about 300mb. I noticed before i restarted that the location was this folder. When i opened it, it was empty. After redoing everthing all of the songs are on the folder. I probably should have just changed it to go to the external drive like you suggested. Just for fun i changed the location to the external and bypassed that small folder. It worked great. It only took about 2 minutes to update, and it works great. I thought i had to use that stupid little folder. Thanks for all of your help!!

  • Mac-format to PC-format: How can I get my music off an external hard drive?

    I had a mac-formatted iPod for years, and all of my music is on an external hard drive that is hooked up to that computer. When I got a new iPod after mine was stolen, I had to get a PC-formatted iPod. How can I get my music off of the hard drive and onto my PC (and eventually my iPod)? I tried uploading the files into my iTunes account on the Mac, but they don't show up in my account on the PC. Most of the music are CDs that I copied onto my computer years ago, and had on my old iPod. Help!

    Your Firefox profile would have the data. You can find it at:
    *C:\Users\<Windows login/user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile folder>
    **The file you want is called ''places.sqlite''
    You can copy that file if you want to restore your bookmarks to your current Firefox by going back to ''C:\Users\<Windows login/user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile folder>'' and overwriting the current file. Keep in mind, doing this will erase your current bookmarks.

  • How can I download my music to an external hard drive from my ipod ?

    I am trying to figure out how I can download my music from my ipod to an external hard drive.
    Thanks

    Drag and drop the music  from your Itunes to your desktop - to the external hard drive.
    - Works for me, Works for you.

  • I have so many photos I only have 1G of memory left.  How can I move the photos to my external hard drive that is connected to my iMac?

    I have so many photos on my Mac I only have 1G of memory left.  How can I move the photos to the external hard drive that is plugged into my iMac.

    1GB? It's a miracle your Mac is running at all!
    This is our resident iPhoto guru, Terence Devlin's, advice:
    You can move your iPhoto Library to an external disk:
    1. Quit iPhoto
    2. Copy the iPhoto Library Folder as an entity from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
    3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
    4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.

  • I am over capacity and think it's because I have Downton Abbey Season 1 saved in iTunes. How can I move the episodes to an external hard drive?

    I am over capacity on my #GS iPhone and I have  a very large amount of audio space that I think might be taken up by season one of Downton Abbey. I have tried to copy and save episodes to my external hard drive but I get a message saying I "don't have permission". How can I move the six episodes out iTunes ??

    dckramermd wrote:
    How can I move software program over to an external hard drive to free up space on my imac.  I have move documents and photos and movies but the only thing left is softward programs.  How do you move them to the external drive?
    EXTREMELY poor idea! Leave the apps on the internal HD. You can move files and libraries from iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture, etc.. to an external HD but leave the apps them self on the internal HD.
    Did you empty the Trash after moving all that data to the EHD??

  • How can I change the settings of an external hard drive?

    I have a 250-GB external hard drive connected to my Mac mini, whose files and folders I can´t delete as it shows up as a read-only disk. According to the Mac help, I can use the files on a disk by clicking on the "Get Info" label and selecting "Ignore ownership on this volume" at the bottom of the menu. However, when I try to do that, the "Ignore ownership on this volume" checkbox doesn´t even show up on the menu. Any suggestions or alternatives to get to delete those files I no longer need? Thanks in advance for your assistance.
    Mac mini 1.66 GHz Intel core duo   Mac OS X (10.4.5)   1 GB DDR2 SDRAM

    If you want to erase the entire drive you can format it with Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities).
    Mario is right about NTFS. If you drive is formatted as such (which would mean it was used by Windows at some point) then the issue is related to permissions (actually NTFS-formatted drives don't have permissions, but Access Control Lists instead), it's just that Mac OS X can't write to these disks.

  • How do I transfer my music from my external hard drive with the extension .itl?

    I transferred my music from my old computer to an external hard drive.  Now trying to get my music to load into my new computer via external hard drive but I do not think it will due to the extension of .itl.  what shall I do?

    The itl file is the library's database file; it doesn't contain the music itself. You need to transfer the actual song files.
    (118022)

  • HT1751 How can I copy only music to an external hard drive from Itunes and not video?

    I only have 32 GB worth of space and 54 GB worth of itunes. I only want to transfer the music on to a drive for back-up. Please help!

    Drag and drop the music  from your Itunes to your desktop - to the external hard drive.
    - Works for me, Works for you.

  • How can I find the path of an external hard drive?

    I am using Virtual Box to install linux to an external usb flash drive. It gives me a list of drives:/ dev/sda, /dev/sda2 (type: ext 4), /dev/sda5 (type: swap). Which one is my external flash drive. This is very import and so I don't write per my current operating system, so please be certain. How can I find out which one is my external flash drive? Thank you!

    Open the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder, click on the partition, choose Info, and look at the disk identifier.
    (113804)

  • How can I utilize the free space in external hard drive?

    Hey,
    I have a 1T external usb harddrive and formated as NTFS. It has about 250GB free space and I am trying to see if I can utilize that space for timemachine backup?
    Please advise.
    /S

    Use a Windows computer to copy all the files from that external and then format it either Fat32 or exFAT, I suggest FAT32 if you don't have any Files over 4GBs in size. Once that is done you can then Copy/Move those files back to the external and then connect it to your Mac. Mac OS X can read and write to FAT32 and exFAT formatted drives. So you can then use it to store other files on fro your Mac.
    But you need a Dedicated, Indepentant, Separate external for Time Machine backups and that drive must be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a Partition table of GUID.
    YeaSt2u wrote:
    Hey,
    I have a 1T external usb harddrive and formated as NTFS. It has about 250GB free space and I am trying to see if I can utilize that space for timemachine backup?
    Please advise.
    /S

  • How do I store iTunes music on an external hard drive?

    My iBook has a small hard drive and I can't store any more music on it. How do I store the music on an external hard drive and have it appear as a library (its own or part of the library on the iBook)?

    Assuming that your hard drive is plugged into your computer (USB or Firewire connection) and switched on, drag the Music folder (HD > Users > Your Name) on to the external drive icon. The Music folder is the default location for your iTunes files.
    If you wish, you can set this new location in iTunes preferences so that any additions or deletions to your iTunes library will be applied to the folder on your external drive. You must remember to swich on the external drive to enable this. To set the new location open iTunes and go to preferences>advanced and click on General. You will see where you can designate the new location for the iTunes Music folder.

Maybe you are looking for