Importing music from my external harddrive

I have saved my iTunes library to an external harddrive as my laptop was dying. How do I tranfer my library back to iTunes? It workes when the external harddrive is plugged in but as soon as I diconnect the songs are not available.

UPDATE--> Manually adding folders (drag from explorer and drop on music libray) appears to be functioning as a work around. I have been testing individual folders and so far so good.
While this may be a workaround i have HUNDREDS of folders! =(

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How to import music from an external hard drive to my itunes on my computer?

how can import music from an external hard drive that i saved my itunes music to. i dragged the music from my hard drive to the itunes on my computer but the music does not play from my itunes. it does however play on my ipod. it gives me an error that the original can not be found and do i wish to locate it. i am thinking that i did not drag the right file or all of the files necessary .thanks. kevin

To import music into your iTunes library on the computer go to iTunes>Help>iTunes Help>Add items to iTunes and follow the instructions

Importing music FROM an external hard drive

My dance studio has an external hard drive with over 15,000 songs in MP3 format, and I would like to be able to put some of those songs on an iPod. My problem: I do not want double copies of my 15,000 songs (one copy in the external hard drive and one copy in iTunes) as that would take up A LOT of computer space. Space I don't have. I have recently installed iTunes on the studio computer (preferring the program for my personal music), is there a way to import the songs from my external hard drive into my iTunes library with out making two copies of each song (in different formats as explained earlier)? Can you "tell" iTunes to find its music in an external hard drive?

Check your iTunes Preferences. Go to Edit>Preferences>Advanced and see if you have "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checked. If you haven't then all you did was add a reference to the original location (the external drive) to iTunes without copying the song files them selves. With the external drive disconnected iTunes can no longer locate the file to play from. If that's the case you'd need to delete the songs from iTunes, change preference and add the songs over again.

Playing music from an External Harddrive/in the cloud

So I have a question for anyone who feels liek answering it. I have set up my icloud and everything works great on my iPhone. All my music is stored on my external harddrive at home. I bring my mbp to work with me and would like to play music. Only thing is that I can't unless I want to download them onto my iPhone. I dont particularly like doing this. I'd much rather play my music straight from my computer. My only problem is that it tells me that the music could not be found. I know where it is, sitting on my desk at home in a harddrive. But I know my music is stored in the cloud, why can't I redownload it to my mbp? Why can I only download it on iOS devices such as an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Is lion not essential an iOS device? If anyone knows away to do this I would be greatly appreciative. Thanks.

Welcome to the Apple Community.
You can't redownload it because it's already there, or at least the indexing to the missing media file is there, you'd need to delete the entry in iTunes to redownload it.

Importing Music from an external drive

Can anybody help i am new to itunes and Ipods and have just got my first 1 to which i am over the moon with
However my question is i have a large collection of music which i have built up over the years which are stored on an external drive in Seperate folders which is the Album name and a sub directory representing the CD number ie
D:\Music\Album No 1 Name\CD1
D:\Music\Album No 1 Name\CD2
D:\Music\Album No 2 Name\CD1
D:\Music\Album No 2 Name\CD2
etc
What i want to do is import all the music so the Album name that appears on the Ipod will read Album No of that album, and the music within that album will be all the mp3's within the CD1 & CD2 preferably keeping the track number saved in each cd and automatically know that CD1 & CD2 are a compilation album called with the album name
can this be done if so how

Move all the folders from your external drive to your computer. Then, in iTunes, click File, then "Add Folder to Library". The find the folder and double click it. You have to do the last part for every folder.

Best way to import music from PC/External HD

Hi there, thanks in advance for any help here.
I have a a lot of music and have spent the last few days getting it all into one location on an external HD. I have placed my iTunes folder in my Music Folder on External HD, and then dropped all of my music directly into iTunes-->iTunes Media-->Music
There is another folder above the Music Folder which is called Automatically Add to iTunes.....should i have put my tracks in there for them to show in iTunes? Or is there another way to get everything to show up in my iTunes player?
And what is the best way to get all my music organised as this i something i have never been good a which means i don't really end up listening to any of it!!

To answer the second question first, iTunes will look at the tracks and create library entries. It gets track information from the tags in the song files. It does not make use of folder names in this process, and thus does not care how many are in a folder.
Per your first question, once the files are in the iTunes Media folder, you can use the iTunes command File > Add Folder to Library, and navigate to the music folder.
I strongly suggest that you do this on a small subfolder first, so you can see how it works, before aiming at the whole folder.
As far as organizing: once the songs are in your iTunes library, you can always find what you want by going to iTunes first. However, if you want to have them in regular Artist/Album folders, you can (at any time) enable the iTunes Advanced preference to "Keep iTunes Media folder organized."

Itunes will not read some of me music from my external harddrive?????

I keep getting a(!) everytime I try to open up music that is in wma file, what do I need to do???

a wma file is a Microsoft file. it will only play in Windows media player and afew other players that have basicly paid Microsoft a fee to have there players able to play wma files. iTunes will not play wma files at all BUT itunes makes it easy as pie to convert those files into something it can play long as there not protected wma's you may have bought online. First goto edit, preferencs. Once there in the settings, hit the "Advance" tab at top, you will see 3 more tabs appear below. hit the "Import" tab there you will most likly want to set it to "MP3" so you will be able to play all songs u import or rip from CDs on iTunes and other apps. Below that you can set the bit rate. after that just rightclick all the songs with the ! beside them and select Import or convert section to MP3

Using External CD Rom drive to import music from CD to Itune

I have itunes 6.0 on an XP laptop, and an external TDK DVD/CDrom drive. Itunes imports music from CDs when I use the drive on the laptop, however, only imports links (seem like URL links) when I use the external drive to import music from a CD into a playlist.
I am trying to use the external CD rom drive for importing music into Itunes, but there seems to be a problem, or I have not checked some box or the other. Can someone help??
Thanks

First, Jaguar does not come on a DVD. The standard Jaguar release comes on two CDs. What you probably have is a gray color OEM DVD or a copy that was made for a specific Mac model and will not work with your computer. Furthermore, in order to run OS X on your computer you must first install a firmware update.
You also need at least 128 MBs of RAM for OS X and at least 3 GBs of free space on the hard drive during installation. Your particular model requires that OS X be installed on a drive or partition that is less than 8 GBs. If your hard drive is larger than 8 GBs it must be partitioned such that the first partition is no larger than 7.85 GBs and OS X must be installed in that partition. The drive must also be formatted Mac OS Extended (HFS+).
Furthermore, you cannot boot OS X from a USB drive, only from a Firewire drive.
You will need to get the correct Jaguar installers. You can purchase the right package at www.applerescue.com. Your particular model is compatible with Panther thru 10.3.9. Panther would be a better choice than Jaguar because it is much faster even on your iMac. However, OS X will not be very fast on your computer because it lacks CPU speed and video horsepower. If you continue to install OS X, then you should plan to install the maximum of 512 MBs of RAM that iMac supports.

I am trying to import aperture library from macbook to new imac the import window sees the external harddrive but does nt see library. I can open library as a refernce library but cannot import onto hardrive as managable files Tried to do as a backeup t

I am trying to import aperture library from macbook to new imac the import window sees the external harddrive but does nt see library. I can open library as a refernce library but cannot import onto hardrive as managable files

I may be misreading what you are trying to do but you don't import libraries via the import window. You use File->Import->Library..
If this doesn't resolve your problem post back with more detail of what you are doing and what is happening.
regards

HT2518 How do I transfer music from an external hard drive to my itunes on my mac? I have put the files into the itunes media, but they are not showing up in iTunes!

How do I transfer music from an external hard drive to my itunes on my mac? I have put the files into the itunes media, but they are not showing up in iTunes!

Hi, did you try iTunes>File>Import?

I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library. When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found". need help

I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library. When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found". But when I have my external hard drive plug in the song will play with no problem. What do I need to do to play my music without having the external harddrive plug in ???????? Please help

Because the location for each song in your library is on your hard drive. If the hard drive isn't there, how can iTunes play it?
You'll have to move/copy the music from your hard drive to your computer's hard drive.
Basically, EASIEST way to do all this, if you don't care about your play counts, etc...
-Delete EVERYTHING from iTunes, so that your library is now empty.
-Go to "Advanced" inside of the "Preferences" window, found in the "Edit" drop-down. You can also access Preferences by pressing Ctrl+, (Press Ctrl and the comma key)
-Change your iTunes Media Folder Location to something simple, but on your computer. I use C:/iTunes. Make sure "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" and "Copy files to...." are both checked. You can close Preferences now.
-Now, drag and drop your music from your hard drive into your iTunes library. iTunes will automatically add the music to your library, as you would expect, and also creates a copy of each file to place into that iTunes Media Folder you just created.
Shouldn't have any more problems...

How do I import music from a portable hard drive to my iTunes library?

I have a portable hard drive with music on it. I have been successful in Importing Files from that external drive to my iTunes library and can play the music on my PC. However, when I sync my iPhone in an attempt to load those new songs, those songs get the little !exclamation point! next to them and the message "Original File Cannot Be Found". What do I need to do to get these songs from the portable drive onto my iTunes library as permanently recognized files that will be sync'd to my iPhone. Any guidance is greatly appreciated....thanks

Connect the external drive and choose Consolidate Library from the Library section of the File menu, or open the Advanced section of the iTunes preferences and tell it to copy music to the iTunes music folder for future imports.
(41256)

ITunes freezes when importing music from CD and also when playing,

Just recently iTunes has started to freeze when importing music from a CD - it just stops and the progress bar remains as it it. The whole mac then freezes and I get the spinning beachball. I can't use any other application. The same thing is happening when I play music - it's ok for a song or two and then freeze and the beachball appears. I've downloaded iTunes again and reinstalled and it's just the same. Using Safari and Mail etc is no problem at the moment.
I also have a problem getting the iMac to recognise external hard drives - it won't show them on either firewire 400 or 800. I can see my 1TB drive using usb ( it shows up on the desktop, whereas on firewire it doesn't do this) but if I try to open it and see the contents in finder, it opens, but doesn't dispaly the contents of the drive. I can see the disk size but just get a grey spinning wheel in the bottom right hand of the finder window. Timemachine does not work.

I have had the same problem & itunes crashes when i try to import a file. Now i can't even start itune. I've reinstalled itunes so many times, without a fix, I've lost count.
I did post and had no reply. I'll watch this post with interest.

How do I load my music from my external hard drive without saving it to my computer?

I have alot of music and all of it is saved on my external hard drive. I dont want to save any of the music on my computer because it takes up too much space. I just want to be able to play my music from my external hard drive. Can someone answer this?

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

I imported files from an external hard drive to Itunes on a new computer. they imported & play fine, but the ratings & playlists are gone & i am unable to update any info. I found a file name playlist on old drive & imported now most files are missing!

I imported files from an external hard drive to Itunes on a new computer. they imported & play fine, but the ratings & playlists are gone & i am unable to update any info. I found a file name playlist on old drive & imported now most files are missing! Help!

Can you locate the iTunes Library.itl file on the old drive? Ideally you would have simply copied over the entire iTunes folder structure from <User's Music> on the old computer into <User's Music> on the new one to transfer the library will all playlists, ratings, play counts etc. intact.
tt2

Importing music from my external harddrive

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