I have just restored data from an external hard drive, but half of my iTunes songs are getting the error "original file cannot be located." Where are these files?

My Windows 7 PC just had to be reformatted, and I have retrieved all of my files from an external hard drive. About half of my iTunes library is working fine, the other half pop up the error statement "original file cannot be located." If they haven't come off my external drive, where are they?

This happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout,or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
tt2

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How do I restore data from an external hard drive back to a restored mac?

how do I restore data from an external hard drive back to a restored mac?

Hello, Esmin77.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
I see you want to restore your MacBook Pro from an external drive. Here is an article that may help you with this process if you used Time Machine to backup these files.
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
Cheers,
Jason H.

How do i recover data from an external hard drive that was accidentally deleted? After I verified the drive, a message appeared that said my drive needed to be repaired. When I tried to access the drive again, the 700 Gigs of music is gone!

How do i recover data from an external hard drive that was accidentally deleted? After I verified the drive, a message appeared that said my drive needed to be repaired. When I tried to access the drive again, the 700 Gigs of music is gone!

Stop using the drive immediately, un plug it.
Buy a copy of ProSoft DataRescue 4 and use it to search for deleted files.

I perviously transfered all my iTunes music to an external hard drive. But now when I connect the external hard drive and try to play a song, I get an error message saying that I need to "locate" my music. I don't how to find it on my external hard drive.

I perviously transfered all my iTunes music to an external hard drive. But now when I connect the external hard drive and try to play a song, I get an error message saying that I need to "locate" my music. I don't how to find it on my external hard drive. Please help for I am not that computer savy and don't want to mess anything up.
Thanks!

I called Apple Support and they walked me through it. They told me to basically copy and paste my music to the external hard drive. (I think.) Or maybe it was they had me transfer a folder to the EHD. I don't exactally remember it was a few years back. But I tried to plug in the EHD before starting and...nothing. Still says same thing, "locate file."

I transferred data from my external hard drive to my restored Mac Book Pro via migration assistant and now my external hard drive in time capsule has red minus signs. How do I get rid of that without getting rid of any of my data?

I used Migration Assistant to transfer my data from my external hard drive via Time Capsule to my restored Mac Book Pro. When I now go into Time Capsule I there are red minus signs in the corner of all the folders that are contained in my back up. How do I get rid of this and access my previous back-ups?

Select the drive and Finder > Get info and at the bottom "ignore permissions on this volume"
You can copy the files, but the ownership on the files still belongs to the other user account, once your done copying, then perform a #6 Reset Users Permissions and that will set all the ownership to that account.
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
Another method is to copy the entire folder, then change it's permissions.

How do i retrieve data from my external hard drive?

how do i retrieve data from my external hard drive?

If your hard drive can be detected and shows up as a drive letter in my computer but you can't access your files,then you can recover your data off it with data recovery software easily.This way is the easiest and the most inexpensive way to recover your data.If you bring it to a computer repair shop that is available for data recovery servise,they will cost you $500-1000 or more.Hmm, a lot of money.
I managed to recover data from crashed hard drive with Tenorshare Data Recovery.If needed,you can download it and scan your hard drive for free to preview whether your data can be recovered.It will show you thumbnails for recoverable pictures.

I have an imac 2009 the disk drive is damaged and I have lost the passwords I need to reset passwords I tried booting with a macosx disk from an external hard drive but did not read the drive how else can I reset password ?

I have an imac 2009 the disk drive is damaged and I have lost the passwords I need to reset passwords I tried booting with a macosx disk from an external hard drive but did not read the drive how else can I reset password ?
I have a 2012 mac book pro can I use that to connect with firewire and load osx that way? and how woudl I do that?
Thanks so much!

To what password are you referring? Do you mean your user account's admin password? Or do you mean the master password for File Vault or do you mean a Firmware Password?
For an admin password:
Forgot Your Account Password
For Snow Leopard and earlier
     Mac OS X 10.6- If you forget your administrator password
For Lion/Mountain Lion
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     When the menubar appears select Terminal from the Utilities menu.
     Enter resetpassword at the prompt and press RETURN. Follow
     instructions in the dialog window that will appear.
     Or see Reset a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Password and
     OS X Lion- Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.
If you cannot do the above then try this:
1. Boot to Safe Mode by restarting and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-S keys until a black screen with white type appears.
2. At the prompt, type the following commands pressing return after each command line:
     /sbin/fsck -yf
     If you do not receive a "Filesystem OK" message then repeat this command until
     you do. If after seven tries you still do not receive a "Filesystem OK" message,
     then the system is corrupted and needs to be reinstalled.
     mount -uw /
     cd /private/var/db/netinfo
     mv local.nidb local.old
     rm ../.AppleSetupDone
     shutdown -r now
The second-to-last command above will cause OS X to think that the operating system is newly installed, and when the new owner starts up the computer it will send him/her to the startup wizard where he/she can start a new user without reinstalling.
This last method does not actually change a password. It simply removes the user accounts and lets you create an initial admin account as if the computer were new out of the box.
How to reset the OS X password without a startup CD:
Reboot into Single-user Mode. Enter the following and press RETURN after each command line
   1. Type fsck -fy
   2. Type mount -uw /
   3. Type passwd <username>
I have never tried this method myself.

I have all my music on an external media drive that has crashed. How can I get the music of my ipod touch back onto the comupter without loosing the music when it syncs?

I have all my music on an external media drive that has crashed. How can I get the music of my ipod touch back onto the comupter without loosing the music when it syncs. in order to start rebuilding my music collection?

You should be able to recover the media with the tips in this post from forum regular Zevoneer but I'm not sure what the implications are for your application settings. You can probably transfer your purchases into a newly authorised library, backup the device, recover any other media using third party tools, then restore the device from the backup. That should switch the assocation of the device to the new library but it is not something I've personally tested.
When you get it all working, make a backup!
tt2

My hard drive crashed on my MacBook Pro crashed and I need to get my CS5 up and running on the new hard drive. I copied what I could onto an external hard drive but when I drag and drop I get directions to uninstall but the uninstall folder I have does sa

my hard drive crashed on my MacBook Pro crashed and I need to get my CS5 up and running on the new hard drive. I copied what I could onto an external hard drive but when I drag and drop I get directions to uninstall but the uninstall folder I have does says it is an alias that is no longer present. I get error 6. I would like to get my software up and running on the laptop again please

If you subscribed to iTunes match the songs are kept in icloud. If you didn't but you did save the actual iTunes library folder which should include the music, video, etc. you should be able to just drag this file back to your machine in the same place and when you open iTunes it will give you a chance to identify the iTunes library folder.
You can test this to find out if you saved the media files or not and don't need to attach your nano to do it.
You are correct that once you connect the nano it will clear the existing files from it and sync it with the new iTunes library.
If you don't have the media files i'm not sure if/how to get them back on a windows ipod. I have everything backed up regularly because of the horror stories I have seen & heard.

When transferring data from an old hard drive to a new one, is there a way to keep alias files and folders in tact?

My mac and I rely HEAVILY on the use of alias files and folders. The simple version of my question is: When transferring data from an old hard drive to a new one, is there a way to keep alias files and folders in tact? These are not symlinks or symbolic links, they're all alias files and folders.
Is there any software out there that might help me with a solution? Are there any tricks or tips you can give me to try?

Use either Setup Assistant at first start, or Migration Assistant on subsequent occasions and all will be transferred intact. Given your wording I presume you are Unix savvy and will appreciate the problems that duplicate userids would cause, so of you use MA for the migration, make sure the target Mac has no userid equal to that on the source and you will be fine.
SA does not have these issues since it runs before any user account is created, so it can simply copy over everything. But MA runs after the fact and only solves the issue partially by changing the UID in the user directory, leading to permission problems.

I just got an iphone and am trying to connect it to my itunes account. Getting the message " This iphone cannot be used because the Apple Mobile Device service is not started. How do I start it? Have already been back to the store with it and no change

I just got an iphone and am trying to connect it to my itunes account. Getting the message " This iphone cannot be used because the Apple Mobile Device service is not started. How do I start it? Have already been back to the store with it and no change.

http://tinyurl.com/3hs3g2u

TS3355 I loaded video from an external hard drive to my desktop. How do I import the video into iMovie 09? I tried "Import Camera Archive". Didn't work.

I loaded video from an external hard drive to my desktop. How do I import the video into iMovie 09? I tried "Import Camera Archive". Didn't work.

It depends on the type of video. iMovie will only import video that it can edit.
In general, you would use FILE/IMPORT MOVIE...

I cannot transfer data from my external hard drive to my new mac

I had to get a new hard drive put into my macbook pro because it was failing. So, I moved all my data onto an external hard drive so I would not lose anything. But now I cannot get iphoto or imovie back onto my computer. It says I cannot open it because it is a time machine back up. I don't want to have to purchase iPhoto and iMovie again just because I had to replace my hard drive.

Copying the files directly from a Time Machine backup may be possible but I don't recommend it. Your new hard disk is essentially a new computer to Time Machine, and it will have problems understanding where to put the individual files. What you're trying to do is just not the right way to go about it.
To restore from a Time Machine backup, boot Lion Recovery and select "Restore from Time Machine backup".
See Pondini's explanation here: http://pondini.org/TM/14.html

Moving data from one external hard drive to another ERROR-36

i got a new hp simplesave external hard drive, and i'm moving all my files from an older external hard drive (can't find brand name). Some of the files are bringing up error 36 which is something along the lines of can't read/write file. which is causing the file transfer to stop on that one file. there are a lot of damaged files so the file transferring is going very slowly. is there a way i can find out which files are bad ahead of time so i can get rid of them AND THEN transfer the files?

Well, since the MacBook with Tiger still has issues with the drive, I think it is some kind of hardware problem related to the external drive. I have numerous USB and FireWire drives connected (probably too many), and I've had no issues with Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard makes my older Intel iMac run better than when it was new.
Make sure you try connecting the drive to a separate power outlet, if it is connected to a power strip. It is also possible the drive's power supply is failing; that can cause the the improper disconnect message to come up, because the drive inside is not getting sufficient power. That is why you need to try the hard drive in a different case, or using the USB adapter, to eliminate possibilities.
Also, I still don't know if this drive is USB or FireWire, but be sure to try it with no other devices connected, in case there is some interference between devices.
One more thing you can try to rule out a problem with your currently installed system. Start up using the Snow Leopard installation disc; insert disc and restart with the C key held down. When you get to Installer's first screen, go up to the menu bar and, under Utilities, select to run Disk Utility.
At this point, you can just leave the iMac alone for a while to see if the drive gets ejected. If it does not, try making a Disk Image of the external drive and saving the image file to the iMac's internal drive. If that works, there may be some issue with your current installation (and you have a backup of the data). If it fails, then I think you have confirmed that the problem is with the external drive, not the iMac or Snow Leopard.

I recently restored my laptop and also iTunes from an external hard drive, but when I play songs, it says the original file could not be found. How do I locate and fix this?

I recently restored my laptop with Windows 7 and imported my iTunes library from my external hard drive. When I try to play songs, it says it cannot and that the original file could not be located. How do I fix this?

Put the files back where iTunes expects them to be.

I have just restored data from an external hard drive, but half of my iTunes songs are getting the error "original file cannot be located." Where are these files?

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