I moved my itunes library to external drive and now itunes wont work.

I moved my itunes library to an external drive and now itunes cannot find the library. I followed a youtube video and all seemed to work fine until i deleted the old library and emptied the trash. Prior to deleting and emptying the trash I checked preferences to verify the path of Itunes was to the external drive. It seemed to work even when I moved the original library to the trash.
Now when I launch itunes the song listings show but the songs cant be found. I checked the volume of my itunes that I moved to the external and it was about 4 GB that i moved. I have approx 2000 songs.
Any suggestions?

Hold down the alt/option Key when you start iTunes a dialog box will open
Select Choose Library and select the itunes library on your external drive

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I have a blue file on my desktop labeled iPhoto Library, that appeared during the course of me moving my iPhoto Library ( iPhoto 11) to an external hard drive to make room on the internal disk, my attempts to reopen iPhoto on the internal disk, move selected photos from the iPhoto Library on the external drive over to the newly emptied iPhoto Library on my laptop.
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1. I opened Pictures, dragged the iPhoto Library from there to the external drive.
2. When I opened iPhoto on my MBP it said it needed a library to open with and the choices already in the box were:
iPhoto Library(default)
iPhoto Library
3. I chose "iPhoto Library" because I thought "(default)" meant restoring the original library.
4. iPhoto opened to the "get started with iPhoto" like a new install.
5.I moved (drag and drop ) some photos from the external drive back into the "empty" iPhoto Library. I tried to move a group of photos but I didn't know how to do it so ...
6. I took the iPhoto Library from the trash and put it back into the "empty" iPhoto Library.
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Medusa59

It appears you created a new library. Launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and select "Choose Library".
Navigate to the library on the external hard drive and select it. Once you're satisfied that it's the one you want you can delete that folder from your desktop.
OT

Moved i tunes and files to external drive and now have 3000 files???? help

I moved all files to an external drive and now show all files as seperate how do i find my playlists and also put the items back into i tunes form??? so f#%@ing confused and also the library comes up as a huge dos read file?
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i local to portland free diner to wjo ever helps me out or my wife is going to kill me for severe time lost!~

Import is just a word for copying photos from the phone to a computer and not that different than what I do in Windows -- although I haven't compared the speed on a large number of photos. If you are importing and using iPhoto, you might try doing it with Image Capture which will allow you to copy them directly to an external drive. It may be faster than doing it to iPhoto but I haven't compared the speed. Instructions from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083 are shown below.
Connect the iOS device to the computer.
If Image Capture does not open automatically, you can navigate to your Applications folder and open Image Capture from there.
Choose the location to which you'd like to import pictures.
Click Options.
Click the Options tab if it isn't already selected.
Enable the option "Delete items from camera after downloading".
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HT1364 If I already moved Itunes media folder to external drive and now music is not matching up in iTunes?

Dear Itunes Community~
This is my first time using glad you are here, but all the passwords!!
Question/Quandry:
If I already moved Itunes media folder to my external drive and now my music is not matching up in iTunes, what should I do? I have tried my solution !?, and now I have 17,000 songs, instead of 9,000!
Should I just uninstall Itunes, and then reinstall Itunes, and let it do it's thing, and then figure out how to move to the external hard drive later?
Help, I screwed it up all on my own!
Any/all help and Itunes educated suggestions appreciated!
Thank you very much,
Doris =:o
PS ~~ Is there anyway to easily delete duplicates?? Seems not?

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polydorus, you are my hero. I launched itunes with the shift key down and was able to select the library on the external drive. I would not have thought of that. Thanks so much.
shockme, I found changed the folder name under the advanced tab wasn't enough. I used File>Import and imported the music from the external drive no problem.
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I moved all my music and photos to an external drive.
You used teh menu Advanced Consolidate, correct?
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I'd love some help trying to figure out why my 2008 MacBook no longer recognizes my external drive and now is not downloading photos from my iphone....?

After many years of having no problems at all on my Macbook, I recently figured I should finally upgrade my OS. I did that about three weeks ago, updating to Snow Leopard (10.6.8). I used Time Machine at least once after the OS upgrade but now Time Machine no longer recognizes the external drive I have used for all these years to back up. The MacBook does not "see" it. (Disk Utility does however.) The computer then also stopped recognizing another La Cie back-up that I have and now... my iPhone cannot download photos? Yikes.
I have, of course, shut down numerous times, used different cables (that worked for some) and the two USB drives. I even used a firewire. Nothing worked. I also tried to "Repair disk" on Disk Utility. It didn't work either, giving me an error (that I didn't save, sorry).
I read many other discussions on the file format of the external drive and of course I'd be happy to reformat the external drives--however, it is obviously a tad nerve-wracking to reformat drives before having an accessible back-up. Suggestions? I do not remember what file format they have but am pretty sure it's not the Mac file system someone mentioned. The drives are a 2009 WD "My Passport Elite" and La Cie 2007 d2 Quadra,
In terms of other hardware available, we do have another MacBook Air but it has started rejecting both drives as well (without the Snow Leopard upgrade). We have an old Dell but it wouldn't have the disk space to help out much.
Any thoughts on the process involved would be welcome. Any ideas on the iPhone rejection would be helpful as well! It is a 30gig iPhone 4 that has 20 or so gigs free (not clear as iTunes says that there are abour 18 Gigs on the phone but 24 free gigs? I may be bad at math but that's 40 gigs...).
I am checking out iCloud but apparently there are only 55 gigs available?
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Good afternoon Lyssa,
Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...these blogs are always comforting help!
So, to answer your questions: For the age of the hard drive.Well, I added memory a couple of years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amount of gigs with photos of my kids and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced the original drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that in March 2010. If there is some way to verify that (whether or not I replaced the entire drive), I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigs free, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
Question 1- What formats...
The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At the time that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
The WD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I again tried to repair the WD last night and this is the error message: "Error: DiskUtility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Also, Time Machine tried again to back-up and gave me this error: "Files can't becopied onto the backup disk because it appears to be 'read only'. You may needto repair or reformat the disk using Disk Utility. If the disk can't berepaired, you must use a different disk for backups. Open Time Machinepreferences to select a different backup disk."
Question 2. Other cables...
I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't change anything.
Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it is indeed present, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.
So, in summary...
I can plug in the La Cie and it is functional on the MacBook, visible on Disk Utility but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and not functional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... Also, the iphone photos did, in the end, get downloaded, so it is not something more general.
Causes...
I forgot to mention that there is a "lost+found" file on the WD which apparently points to a UNIX /OS issue?
Some kind of "insurance"?....
I'm curious about how people avoid this kind of issue. You just regularly replace back-up drives and hard drives before problems come up? Time Machine is great and saves many of us from disasters, however, knowing that your Time Machine back-ups are vulnerable makes the whole system insecure. No way to have alarms ring before the drive goes out?
As for ways ahead...
It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD to the MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, I haven’t been able to see its contents except on random occasions. If you have any ideas on how to copy the Time Machineback-ups from the WD, again, I'm all ears!
Good afternoon Lyssa,
Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...
So, to answer your questions:
For the age of the hard drive. Well, I added memory a coupleof years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amountof gigs with photos of my kids ….and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced theoriginal drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that inMarch 2010. If there is some way to verify that, I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigfree, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
Question 1- What formats...
The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At thetime that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
The WD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I again tried torepair the WD last night and this is the error message: "Error: DiskUtility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible,reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Also, Time Machine tried again to back-up and gave me thiserror: "Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appearsto be 'read only'. You may need to repair or reformat the disk using DiskUtility. If the disk can't be repaired, you must use a different disk forbackups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a different backup disk."
Question 2. Other cables...
I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't changeanything.
Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it isindeed accessible, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.
FYI...
So, in summary... I can plug in the La Cie and it is “functional” on theMacBook but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and notfunctional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... ALSO,the iphone photos did, in the end get downloaded.
As for ways ahead…
It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD tothe MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, Ihaven’t been able to “see” its contents except on random occasions…
Any further thoughts are welcome!

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