Importing/restoring iTunes from an external hard drive

I have Windows XP and my laptop crashed. I had/have everything on a back up external drive, so I've restored my laptop and I'm trying to import my iTunes information from the external drive and it's not doing it. I am wondering if it's because it's an older version of iTunes. Is there a way to import everthing that's on my iPod to iTunes and not worry about the external files or will it wipe my iPod blank? When I try to pull the info off the external drive it says that I'm trying to open a file that is an "Application Extension" (.dll) Any ideas? I'd hate to loose all my music and video. Thank you for any help anyone can give me
2006 Toshiba laptop Windows XP

This really isn't the best place for this question. This forum is for helping with iTunes U, Apple's iTunes Store version for colleges and universities, and not for general iTunes help. I'd suggest you try asking in the appropriate iTunes forum; you'll be more likely to get quick and accurate responses there.
Good luck.

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Importing ITunes FROM my external hard drive to my Library

Need to know how to IMPORT ITunes FROM my external hard drive to my ITunes library... as of right now...all it lets me do is import one by one...big pain.
any assistance or advice is appreciated...

You should probably post in itunes forum, not iphone forum for more answers.

Importing Itunes from my external hard drive

I had a Macbook with my itunes music on it. Unfortunately, it was owned by my employers, so I had to return it when I changed jobs. I put all of my music files onto an external hard drive. I got my new Dell computer and am trying to import my music from my external hard drive to my new dell. The message reads that "The song cannot be used because the original file can't be found. Would you like to find it?" Interestingly, the music plays when my external hard drive is plugged in. Can anyone help me? My music is all legit....no illegal downloads....its all from my own cd library or itunes. I am so frustrated

It appears that you did not have "Copy to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checked in Edit>>Preferences>>Advanced>>General when you added the tracks to your library.
(It might as well to look and see how you have this set).
So the library just contains a pointer to the external drive - so the tracks can only be found if the drive is pugged in.
If I have guessed right, consolidating your library will copy the files across into your iTunes Music folder. But be aware that it will do the same thing to any other music in your library but not in the iTunes Music folder.

How do i import my library from an external hard drive. Exported it as had to wipe pc and reinstal windows but when i try to import nothing happens

How do i import my library from an external hard drive. Had to export it as had to reinstal windows due to a conflict between windows and i-tunes. Wen i try to import nothing happens despite selecting the file. Can you import from an i-phone to i-tunes?

What do you mean bye exported the library?
There is nothing to export or import.
The correct process to backup the iTunes library would be to copy the ENTIRE iTunes folder from the computer to the external drive.

HT1727 how do I transfer my iTunes from an external hard drive to a different computer?

How do I transfer my iTunes from an external hard drive to a pc?

If you don't have all of your music files within the iTunes Music folder structure, simply moving all of your music to a new location will not result in your iTunes library automatically updating the file paths to all of your songs appropriately. If you have a few other locations in which you store your music, you can take the ExportImport script turingtest2 wrote, make the modifications below, export the results, paste them into Microsoft Word or Excel, do a Find and Replace with the correct file location, and then import the new locations. To use the script, follow turingtest2's instructions on this thread as posted on Dec 19, 2012 6:28 AM.
Note that the modifications, while they worked for me, show my lack of experience with VB as the progress bar will no longer work. Definitely be sure to back up your iTunes library file before executing the script with the below modifications, but doing this for 3500 items didn't even take 2 minutes for the script to run.
Line 89 was:        Prog=True
Line 89 is now:     Prog=False
* I had to do this because otherwise the progress bar was erroring out. So, i just turned it off.
Lines 164-165 were:
'File.WriteLine "<#>" & .Location           ' Not so useful if working with missing tracks
'File.WriteLine "<Album>" & .Album
Lines 164-165 are now three lines (the middle one is the only uncommented line):
'File.WriteLine "<#>" & .Location           ' Not so useful if working with missing tracks
File.WriteLine "<Location>" & .Location
'File.WriteLine "<Album>" & .Album
Finally, insert this whole block around line 270 so that it looks similar to the others:
        Case "<location>"
          If T.Location<>Value Then                ' Don't update if value won't change
            T.Location=Value
            U=U+1
            Trace T,"Updated Location"
          Else
            V=V+1
          End If
          'If Trace Then MsgBox "Updated Location"
Note that I had to comment the very last line as well or else the program errored out. You won't be able to trace the results either.
Just thought I'd share this in case anyone else needed something like this.

Due to a broken laptop I've loaded my itunes from an external hard drive my itunes wont play unless i leave the the exteral hard drive connected. what is the problem?

My laptop working Vista H Premium broke, I now have laptop working Mindows 7 H Premium. I reloaded my itunes from an external hard drive but they wont play without the external hard drive left plugged in

The media is on the external drive. If you want to be able to play it with the extrenal drive disconnected, this will require moving or copying the media off the external drive to the computer's hard drive.
Importing the media via iTunes may automatically accomplish this, depending on the settings in iTunes.

Importing .mxf Files from an external hard drive...

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. My problem comes close to others discussed, but I haven't been able to find a duplicate post. And I apologize for the length; I just want to give you as much info. as possible (I also put details in my signature) to help you help me.
I shot a short film using Panasonic's HVX200 camera, filming in HD 720p/24p, and downloaded each P2 card through a PC laptop into a LaCie Brick external hard drive. I was originally planning on editing the footage with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, but became frustrated with how much trouble it was having handling the .mxf files. Assured by Apple salespeople that FCP 5 would have no problem importing the footage from an external hard drive, I purchased the computer described in my signature.
Now I know that FCP/Apple only supports importing footage from the P2 card directly, and not from an external hard drive. A representative from ProMax.com was able to help me out, however. First, he had me copy the footage files onto my Mac internal drive from the external hard drive. Then, he had me select IMPORT -> PANASONIC P2. Then, I was to highlight the CONTENTS folder and import away. And it worked... sort of.
There are two major problems: 1) During this transfer, not all of the footage is making it across. I import it, and then get the much-talked about "one or more P2 clips failed to import; probable incomplete or corrupt clips" warning. After checking the original video folder on the internal hard drive and comparing it to the number of clips FCP imported, I learned that I had lost around 20 clips/video files at one point. Other shooting day transfers worked completely smoothly with all of the files imported (we split up the footage by shooting day, without touching or changing the CONTENTS folders). So, some transfers work and some don't. And 2) When I try to import the files from our 4th day of shooting, I get a "Selected path does not contain a P2 volume." Nothing is imported.
So, that's my situation, and I'm getting very desperate. I know that I'm not doing things in the Apple-supported way, but I'm really hoping there's still someway to successfully get the files from the external hard drive into FCP completely. It seems to work some of the time.
Final notes: When importing, I make sure to import the entire CONTENTS folder. There is never a LASTCLIP.TXT file listed under it in the window, but some of the days of footage have transferred perfectly, so I'm hoping that's not a dealbreaker. If it is, isn't there some way to rebuild a lastclip.txt file? I don't even know if that's the issue. And one last note: In most of my folders, the "CLIP" folder has a number of files in it. In the 4th day's footage that I can't import at all, I noticed that the CLIP folder is empty. And on the days where FCP isn't importing all the files (like I mentioned above), there isn't a CLIP file for every single VIDEO file. Could this be the main problem? Along this line, is there a way to somehow put the footage on the external hard drive back through a p2 card and then into the Mac?
Okay, I'll stop typing. Thank you so, so much for any help.
Tom
PowerMac G5 (Dual 2.3 GHz) Mac OS X (10.4.6) Quicktime 7.1.1 - Final Cut Pro 5.1 - Aforementioned External Hard Drive: LaCie Brick (FAT 32 based)
PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

The problem didn't turn out to be as complicated as I had thought. The process I described above ended up working fine, and I'll explain how. And this is a cool workaround, because the AppleCare helpers told me that they didn't think it would work (FCP P2 import is only supported straight from the P2 card/viewer or the camera).
I hooked up my external hard drive to the Power Mac G5, and copied the files and folders onto my internal scratch disk. Then, I opened FCP and chose IMPORT -> Panasonic P2. I chose the "CONTENTS" folder for each day's filming, and imported them in, no problems. There was no visible "lastclip.txt" file shown (under the "CONTENTS" folder or anywhere else), but this didn't seem to cause any problems.
The reason that not all of the footage was bring imported (the aforementioned "one or more P2 clips failed..." warning) was because we were missing clip files (in the CLIP folder) corresponding to certain video files (in the VIDEO folder). Luckily, we had just forgotten to transfer all of them from the original external hard drive, and once we transfered them completely, FCP could read all the video files. FCP needs a clip file for every video file in order to make it work (that's why our aforementioned "Day 4" could not be read; we hadn't copied all of the clip files over with the video files).
Even after we did this, we STILL were getting the "one or more P2 clips..." warning for our Day 5. After taking a look at all the folders, we figured out that there were still more files in the VIDEO folder than in the CLIP folder, even after we transferred them all over. Finally, we figured out what had happened. For some reason, some of the audio files for some of the clips had been included in the VIDEO folder for our Day 5. There is no way we did this accidentally; somehow, the HVX200 placed some of the audio files into both the VIDEO and AUDIO folders. And FCP was trying to read those as video files, and therefore couldn't find the corresponding clips in the CLIP folder. After making sure that those audio files were also in the AUDIO folder, we simply deleted them from the VIDEO folder and stopped getting the "failed to import" warning.
Final thing to share: If we had actually been unable to find the corresponding clip files in our original external hard drive, we had also found a potential solution (that we didn't end up needing to try). You can record from FCP back onto the P2 card, in the hopes that the clip files would be regenerated when you re-import it into FCP. I received a PDF file about this process, and I'm not sure how to put it up on the page here. If interested in this described process (which, again, I can't fully vouch for), feel free to email me at [email protected] and I can forward it to you.
Hope this helps.
PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)
PowerMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

When I try to import .olm files from my external hard drive back up, where do they go? It says on different forums they go to the "on my computer" folder but they are not there

When I try to import .olm files from my external hard drive back up, where do they go? It says on different forums they go to the "on my computer" folder but they are not there.
I go through all the instructions but then my emails do not appear. I'm starting to panic a bit!

You might want to try asking on the MS Office Outlook forum - http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoutlook - since those are Outlook files.
Also note which method you're using to create a backup.
Clinton

How to Play iTunes from a external Hard Drive?

Is it possible to run iTunes from an external hard drive so that I dont use up the space on my labtop? For example, store all my music files on the External and run it through iTunes.

Assuming you use the iTunes default settings where iTunes copied added items to your iTunes folder and organizes your library (meaning - everything is all self contained in the iTunes folder), then all you have to do is drag & drop your iTunes folder (not just the iTunes Music folder you find inside the iTunes folder) to the external drive and copy the entire thing.
If you want to test that it worked or would like to actually start using it from that location instead, use these instructions when you start iTunes to point it to the new location...
How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
If you are just testing, then close iTunes after you verify it works, and restart iTunes again with the same instructions and point it back to your internal drive (original) location.
Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307074
Patrick

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.

When loading songs into iTunes, from my external hard drive. It seems to be copying the music onto my MacBook Air.

When loading songs into iTunes, from my external hard drive. It seems to be copying the music onto my MacBook Air.
How do i have iTunes only read the songs from my hard drive, rather then copying them?

You may find these Links of Interest...
Moving iTunes Media Folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-media-to-an-external-drive.html

Can i download and run itunes from an external hard drive

can i download and run itunes from an external hard drive?

The iTunes application should be on the boot drive but you can keep the iTunes library on an external.
hold Shift when launching iTune sand select Create library and select the external.
This will create an iTunes folder on the external with all the library files and all media will also go into this folder.

Can I import .MTS files from an external hard drive into Final Cut Pro X?

Can I import .MTS files from an external hard drive into Final Cut Pro X?

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:
b) Use an utility like Clipwrap or MPEG Streamclip to convert the mts file to a quicktime (mov) file
Luis,
Just to clarify one point…in order for Streamclip to convert the MTS I believe a plug-in like the AVCCAM QuickTime importer from Panasonic needs to be installed. (Credit David McClain over at the FCS boards for that info.)
Russ

I imported my photos from an external hard drive into Lightroom, edited my photos but what next...?!

Adobe,
I imported my photos from an external hard drive into Lightroom, edited my photos and when i decided to export them the originals had not been updated and the deleted photos had not been deleted. How do i set it up so that once i import the photos, edit them and export they are then placed back in their original folder edited and updated?
I have managed to export the photos to another file but these were exported with an Adobe.xmp file. What is this and is this necessary?
Thanks for your help!

It's important to realise that LR is a DAM (Digital Asset Management) application - no images are actually imported into LR only links to where they are. Secondly, the details of any edits that you make to your images are kept only in the database and/or xmp files depending how you set this up in Preferences. In the general workflow e.g. edit in Lightroom, further edit in Photoshop and returning to LR then creating xmp files aren't really necessary. So just to emphasise - edits are stored in the LR's database, the original RAW images themselves don't change (non destructive editing). You can prove this yourself by desaturating an image (turning it into a B+W) and then look at the original images in Explorer - you'll see it's still being shown in colour.
Exporting an image is something different. By implication, you've finished with the image and perhaps want to save an image for posting on the web somewhere. Now assuming your not using any additonal and freely available LR export plug-ins, one way would be to Export a jpeg image to a folder on the desktop and this is allowed for in the Export dialogue. At this time LR reads any edits from it's database and applies those to the exported jpeg (or tiff) file it's going to send to the folder on the desktop.
As mentioned earlier, any edits and keywords etc are stored in LR's database - original RAW files remain untouched. XMP files also store the edits if LR is set up to create xmp files (in Preferences) but these are not really necessary unless you are going to be editing an already edited RAW file in another application. As an example - you import into LR's library a scanned negative. Now because strictly speaking LR isn't designed to work with negative images, you now open this file via Bridge into ACR and from here reverse the negative into a positive image. All fine and good except when you go back into LR what's shown is still a negative so what is needed is to update the metadata (LR > Metadata > Read Metadata from file) which will force LR to read the newly created metadata from the xmp file that Bridge generated. As already suggested, if you're happy editing your RAW files in LR and only LR then xmp files aren't really necessary - all the data being saved in LR's database.
Hope this has been of some help but if I might also suggest, purchasing a good book on LR from the outset thus getting to really know LR will pay dividends further on down the line.

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.

Importing/restoring iTunes from an external hard drive

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