Itunes can't find my music on an external drive

Hi...new user here. I have 75G of tunes on an external usb hard drive and just synced with my new classic. All went well. Have since disconnected/reconnected the HD a few times and now itunes can't "see" the HD. Have made sure the path is correct in itunes and actually re-set the path and set it again. The itunes message it get is "the song can not be played as the original file could not be found, do you want to locate it".
I can play a playlist from itunes but not the list of all tunes.

If you try to start iTunes with the external drive disconnected, iTunes will default back to the internal drive.
DO you know if you have your iTunes folder containing the library files on the internal drive or the external drive.
If the iTunes folder that you are using is on the internal drive then you need to set the location of the iTunes Music folder with Edit>>Preferences>>Advanced.
IF you had your iTunes folderon the external drive, hold down the shift key and start iTunes. Keep holding the shift key until you are prompted to choose a library. Navigate to the iTunes folder on the external drive and choose iTunes Library.itl.

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My itunes can't find the music on my external hard drive.

My itunes was working fine using my external hard drive. Then I played a song that was not part of that music folder. Now itunes says it can't find any of the songs that are listed. The little evil exclamation point pops up. How can I reconnect to the hard drive without having to start all over?

Thanks for the clarification of check vs click. I guess once I saw the word "double" I stopped reading. I ended up "reloading" the drive to itunes. The interesting thing is that itunes isn't setting the location for the external drive. It is set for a folder under "my music" The actual songs aren't there, but the folders are there. When i put my external drive music to a new itunes library, i did so without copying the songs. So about 100 gig of music is in a folder that is really only about 300mb. I noticed before i restarted that the location was this folder. When i opened it, it was empty. After redoing everthing all of the songs are on the folder. I probably should have just changed it to go to the external drive like you suggested. Just for fun i changed the location to the external and bypassed that small folder. It worked great. It only took about 2 minutes to update, and it works great. I thought i had to use that stupid little folder. Thanks for all of your help!!

ITunes doesn't find my music files on external drive anymore

I have some 15.000 music files on an external hard drive. I added them to my iTunes library and added also a lot of extra info (titles, genres, albums covers, etc.).
After a great New Year's Party, where several people "played" with my iTunes playlists, for some reason iTunes doesn't sees / recognises the music files on the external hard drive anymore.
What can I do? I don't want to import the music files all over again. Otherwise I loose all the info I added in the past year. And it is undoable to find the music files one-by-one on the external drive. That would take months.
Who can help?

Select one track in your library that is currently missing in action. Press CTRL-I to Get Info then look at the Where: entry on the Summary tab. You should get something along the lines of:
file://localhost/<path 1>/<Artist>/<Album>/## <Name>.<ext>
e.g. file://localhost/D:/iTunes/iTunes Music/Arcade Fire/Funeral/01 Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).mp3
The true path will be something else of the form:
<path 2>\<Artist>\<Album>\## Name.<ext>
e.g. D:\iTunes\iTunes Music\Music\Arcade Fire\Funeral\01 Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).mp3
Comparing the two paths should reveal what needs to be done to put music back where iTunes "expects" to find it. The examples show the different default locations before and after the upgrade to iTunes Media Organisation. I've seen problems before with the way iTunes manages this upgrade so that it occasionally reorganizes the files but then carries on looking for them in the old location. It is also surprising how easy it is sometimes to accidentally move a folder without noticing. Alternatively Windows may simply have switched the drive letter for your external drive. Windows Media Player is more resilient in these circumstances.
If you can give the two locations for a sample file I can probably suggest what will need doing to put things right.
tt2

ITunes can not find my music on external hard drive

Had to redo my hard drive; had all music on external hard drive; copied iTunes folder onto external hard drive. Now that my desktop hard drive is clean, and new iTunes downloaded, it can not find my music on the external drive which I have always used. Is there some setting I am missing, do I have to copy music onto CPU?

Hold the SHIFT key while launching iTunes. You will get the option to navigate to the iTunes folder on your external drive. In the iTunes folder point it to the iTunes Library.itl file.

How can i get itunes to find my music on my external drive?

How can I get Itunes to find my music on my external drive?

has been resolved. Got thye .xml files transferred over

Bought new HD and now iTunes can't find my music

I just bought a new FW HD, WD My Passport. I copied all of my music from my old USB 2.0 HD to the new one and now iTunes can't find all the songs. It'll play probably 40 or 50 songs but the rest of them show the "!" next to the song name. Right now the only thing I can do to show iTunes where the songs are without having to rebuild my playlists is to manually point it to each individual song but since but that would mean pointing it to over 14,000 songs......... I DID go in to the preferences and changed the folder location to the new HD and it still won't find the files. But strangely enough, when I have the old HD plugged in, as well as the new one, it'll play everything just fine, checking the preferences shows that iTunes is pointed to the new folder but "Get Info" on individual tracks shows iTunes finding the file in the old HD, unplug old HD and files cannot be found. Why doesn't the **** program look where I want it to and what do I have to do to fix it? I know my description here isn't crystal clear so I'll gladly answer any question to help clear it up a little. ANY help is very much appreciated as I do not want to spend the next 3 weeks teaching iTunes one song at a time. Thank you.
Chris

For moving your iTunes library, I recommend this method...
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

ITunes can't find my music library

Hello-I have all my music files on a external hard drive,when I want to play a song in iTunes 7 it can't locate my music on my external hard drive. How to I get my iTunes library to see my external hard drive?
Thanks alot,
Robert

If you did not rename that file, then I am a little worried there might be a larger problem looming (malware, etc.). If this is so, then finding the file might not even help.
I recommend restoring from a backup. If the backup was made before this file changed, then you should be fine.
If you would like to stick with what you've got, then this Apple Support article should provide you with the instructions you need: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1391
Best!

Itunes can't find my music folder

I can't install Itunes....it downloads fine from the exe file but when i try to open itunes it gives me the error msg that it can't find My Music folder. I went to the support page and it told me that if i couldn't find My Music folder to create one in My documents and download/install Tweak UI. I did and followed all the steps except when it asks me to click on My computer, then special folder and can't find the My Music folder to move it. I am using Windows XP....Please help. Has anyone ever had this problems?

I finally found a solution here: http://forums.techarena.in/windows-xp-support/983948.htm
it's stupid, you have to hold down the shift key while you open iTunes (don't just hold it while you click, keep holding it until iTunes actually shows the library dialog).

Itunes can't find my music from old file

Although my music is available on my ipad and phone, Itunes can't find and play my music on my laptop. WTH?

+changed the location of the music folder to E: iTunes Music.+
All this does is make future additions go to that new place.
When you move things around outside of itunes, it loses the path, as you've found.
Can you move everything back and use the Consolidate Library command to move it to the new location?
Here is a good article from iLounge on what you need to understand about the process.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive

HT203288 Itunes can not find my music files. But I can with Windows . Lost over 8 hours trying to fix stupid itunes, Even removed it and reinstalled. Still nothing.

But I can using Windows.
Lost over 8 hours today. Still not working
Even deleted itunes and reinstalled.
My Music files are still there. But itunes can not find them.

Empty library or library full of broken links?
tt2

ITunes Can't Find My Music

Ok, my iTunes Library was getting to big, so I put it on my external HD, that worked fine.... now, when I start iTunes I hold down option then click the icon, so i can select the iTunes Library I want (the one on my external drive) all the songs show up no problem, but when i try to play them I get this message:
now I can click yes and find the song on the external HD, but this is happening for EVERY song... any ideas on how i can make this work without having to search all 2000 songs???

I don't have a MAC but that happened to me on my dell. Even though you save songs on itunes all of the songs are stored in a file on your computer, so if anything happens to that folder you can loose your songs even though itunes still keeps the names,artists, etc.. Try to locate the folder on your computer. If all the songs are still intact, try to import them back into your library or into a new library.
Otherwise, you can purchase a program called transipod that allows you to take songs off of your ipod and put them back onto your computer. The only problem with this is if you have more then one song with the same name it only downloads one for some reason. And I would create a new library just so my ipod wont automatically sync.

ITunes can't find my music after reinstalling iTunes 10.5

Hi All!
I thought I'd post this to help out others that may be having the same problem.
Background: After doing a System Restore on my Dell (Windows XP) I couldn't use iTunes because a "system folder is missing".
So I uninstalled iTunes (first copying all my music to an external hard drive just in case) and then installed iTunes 10.5 (32 bit I think). All that went smoothly, but when I opened iTunes every song had an exclamation mark next to it. After reading through a number of other posts I came up with the following solution.
First I used Windows Explorer to see if my music was still in the iTunes folder (My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music) which it was. All the album folders with all the songs in each.
Next, in iTunes, I clicked Edit>Preferances>Advanced, and it showed the path to the folder location
(C:\Documents and Settings\RedEft\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media),
but since it didn't "see" my songs I thought it didn't recognize my "Music" folder, so I edited the path by adding "Music" to the end.
Like so: C:\Documents and Settings\RedEft\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music
iTunes then chugged along for a few minutes and recognized about 1/3 of my music.
So I clicked on a song that still had an exclamation mark next to it and the pop-up window said "The song 'xxxxx xx xxxx' could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" I clicked on locate and found the song, then I did it for one more song and a pop-up asked something like "Would you like to locate more music?" I clicked the yes option, and to my surprise it found almost ALL the rest.
Victory!!!
Now I'm just missing one album and one song from another album.
Where, oh where, could they be? I'm hoping they're on my external hard drive and I'll just have to do a copy and paste.
Hope this helps someone.
Peace
RedEft

I would recommend you put everything including th eiTune slibrary files into the iTunes folder on the external.
This way, you will not have any issues when moving th eHD anywhere else. The entire library will be on it.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ from yoru internal to the external.
Move your current iTunes media folder on the external into the /iTunes/ folder you just copied to the external.
Hold Option and launch iTunes.
Select Choose library and select the iTunes folder on the external.
Now you can plug in the external to another/new computer and launch iTunes holding option as above and everything will be there.

Changed laptops, now iTunes can't find my music on my file server

Ok, here's what happened when I recently switched laptops
- I use iTunes to point to the music I store on my file server via a network share (WinXP)
- I manually manage my iTunes folders
- I took the \My Documents\My Music\iTunes directory from my old laptop and copied it to the same location to my new laptop
- Installed iTunes 9 on the new laptop
- When iTunes9 loaded on the new laptop ALMOST all music files in my library loaded with an exclamation point indicating that it couldn't locate the file (even though the file locations never changed)
Ok... so here's the problem. I have over 20,000 songs with ratings information and if I just re-add all the files from the network share to the iTunes library again then it looks like I'd lose those ratings.
The only way that I can see to fix things is to individually point iTunes to the network share location of the file for each file... YUCK!
Is there a script or something I can write to tell it to find these files, or at least copy the ID3 tags to the duplicated songs that I re-added from the network share.
Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Something is different in the paths to the files....hence itunes cannot find them.
Sound like you know about the ITL file, which is why you copied it over.
What you can do is look in its companion XML file to see the paths itunes thinks it should be using.
If your XML is really big, open it using WordPad instead of NotePad. About the 10th line down is the itunes preference setting for the itunes folder:
key>Music Folder</key><string>file://localhost/K:/iTunes%20Music/</string>
On my system it's K:/iTunes Music
The %20 just indicates a space.
Then each song will have its own path
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/K:/iTunes%20Music/Cowboy%20Junkies/The%20Trinity%20Session/07%2 0200%20More%20Miles.mp3</string>
Now....can you see ANYTHING funny in one of those song paths?Is there an extra space, a different user name, anything different than what you could browse to in Windows Explorer?

Since upgrading to version 8.1, iTunes "can't find original music files".

I've been building an extensive music file since the first iPod. It's about 110 GB large and for about three years I've stored it on an external drive with absolutely no problems. Now, within hours of upgrading to iTunes 8.1, every listed item on my iTunes library has an exclamation mark next to it and the message *"The song "whatever" could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"* Of course I can show iTunes where the song is and then it will play it but I'm not gonna do that for 110 GB's worth of music! And yes, I've gone into iTunes preferences and told it again and again where the iTunes library is located but that doesn't work. Does anyone have a fix for this? And oh by the way, I will NEVER AGAIN let Software Update sway me into upgrading to a new version of iTunes until it's been up and running without bugs for at least three months!

Have you tried, importing the music into iTunes again? So delete the music from iTunes only not the system, & then import to see if it finds your musics?

ITunes can't find the music - long post

Here’s the situation; apologies for length, I want to get all the details down.
The music collection:
8Tb (and growing) in lossless format, on an Ethernet network, accessed via the Mac Mini running OS 10.9.2 that’s my entertainment centre. The music is stored on a D-Link server in a RAID 1 setup. I’ve disabled the iTunes import features keep the iTunes media folder organised and copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library because with a very large library of opera and other classical music with multiple artists, this produces chaos. I’ve tried editing the file info before import, but the organisational results are still awful. I put the music files into folders named by composer, then subfolders for each work named by composer and performer(s), then add them to the library. If I didn’t do this I’d have (and have had), e.g. Turandot sorted by artist into eight separate albums. I’m sure many of you know the problem already, I just want to make sure everything’s clear.
There’s also a separate, lower bit rate, collection for my iPod.
The music library (.itl) files:
There are two, the complete library file for home listening, and the separate library file for iPod music. I’ve tried keeping the library files on my hard drive so they’re included in Time Machine backups; and keeping them on the server with the music collection. The same problem happens whichever way I do this.
I option+click when loading iTunes to select the library file I want to use, to make iTunes point to the correct media file location. I make sure I’m connected to the server before I do this(!)
The problems:
Every time I select a playlist either the playlist doesn’t list any tracks but shows me how many songs there are in the playlist; or iTunes tells me it can’t find the first file in the list - do I want to locate it manually? I do locate it and then I have to tell iTunes to find the other missing files; it finds the files in that playlist but then takes several minutes to tell me that it can’t find all the other ‘missing’ files in that big library. Meanwhile, I’m not able to listen to any music.
It seems to me that iTunes only works properly if the music is actually on the local hard drive but how many of us have that little music? I buy DVDs and rip the music myself, at max bit rate, I don’t buy downloads.
One problem seems to be that the Mac OS doesn’t index external drives automatically, is this true? This morning I’ve forced Spotlight to index the server drives using the terminal mdutil command but it’s made no difference, the problems are still there. What is Spotlight supposed to do? I’ve followed the instructions for using it and researched using it on the Web, but it’s never been able to find files I know are there, yet EasyFind has no trouble locating anything on the local drive, the music server or other external drives. I suspect that there are more fundamental bugs in the OS affecting this, because sometimes I’ve looked at a folder count in the Finder and know that the displayed number of files is wrong, it’s less than the number of files I know are there. Get Info will give me different numbers for the same folder at different times when I haven’t added or deleted any files in it.
I’m looking at Music Collector as a replacement for iTunes, but if iTunes’ problems are based in the OS, there doesn’t seem any point in switching. The price is reasonable, I’m happy to pay for it if it will work properly on the Mac OS. If I’d had to pay for iTunes I’d be getting my money back as it obviously isn’t fit for purpose. I’m in the EU, we have proper consumer protection laws here.
The Mini is 17 months old, still under a 3-year high ed warranty and has just come back from servicing at an Apple retailer, which fixed a software problem that prevented the OS from loading, so it should be problem-free... right?
Do you think reimporting the whole music collection again, using the two iTunes settings I’ve disabled, would make iTunes retain its links? I have the server space. It’s a nightmare scenario, imagine that Turandot again, 55 tracks split into eight albums, by soloists, conductor, and orchestra, and iTunes’ and/or Mac OS search facilities not working properly. How would I find all the tracks and create playlists for everything? There’s a lot of CDs that would give me the same problems. I have a 50-CD set of the Berlin Philharmonic covering 100 years of recordings, trying to organise this into coherent playlists multiplies the Turandot problem many times over. It goes on. That’s why I switched to organising the music myself in the first place, I was getting migraines trying to find everything to create playlists and not listening to any music.
I’ve been running various Linux distros on a dedicated box for several months, but again, music is the obstacle to switching. I haven’t found products that do what Audio Hijack Pro (especially) and Fission do, on Linux. Everything else on that platform works for me.
Sorry about the length, but music is the most important thing my Macs do. I’m disabled and music matters a lot. Any tips, links or advice generally would be much appreciated. I don’t mind spending a reasonable amount of money to get something that’s reliable, because iTunes doesn’t seem to be it, although I wish it was.
TIA.

Is this a NAS type of setup (of which I know very little)? Mine is not a response based upon strong technical knowledge but iTunes seems to have problems with those. Just about everybody has issues with iTunes but you say it is not fit for the purpose. What is that? I bet for 99% of people it does. Not everybody has 8TB collections they are trying to use with a RAID structured external server. iTunes is really a mass consumer piece of software. Yes, many people have expanded beyond internal drives, but NAS arrangements seem to add levels of complexity beyond a direct external drive that is Mac formatted and at most served by an Apple brand wireless router which I suspect is probably how everything is tested. Anything more is fortuitous in terms of support. Except that you say the library files are on the external drive too it sounds to me like the server is asleep when you say it cannot find files and then suddenly can when you go to find one.

Itunes can't find my music on an external drive

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