How to merge Music in Cloud with Music on External Drive without Duplicating everything

Question

My PC (Windows 8.1) computer hard drive crashed.  My old computer was using an iTunes media file on an external hard drive so I still have that, but I also subscribe to iTunes Match.  After replacing my old internal hard drive, I went to set up iTunes, and I changed the iTunes media folder location so it would use the one on my external hard drive.  However, once I turned on iTunes Match, all of the music still shows up as being in the Cloud.   I can't figure out how to have it recognize that my music is already on that external hard drive.  It just wants me to download everything from the Cloud.   I have tons of music, and it would take days to download everything.  Is there a way to associate it with my previous library on the external  hard drive?

Answer 1

Changing the path to the media folder doesn't automatically import all of the content. In principle if you add the media folder to the library any items that iTunes currently sees as being in the cloud will be detected as being in the library. Before you proceed to use File > Add Folder to Library however you might want to look at my tip Make a split library portable. Since you are starting over it may be best to generate a new iTunes library at the root of your external drive, e.g. X:\iTunes where X: is the drive letter, then move the media folder to X:\iTunes\iTunes Media before adding it to the library.
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