Itunes identifying music in an external hard drive
Hi.
I am having difficulty getting ITunes to pull in music that is stored on an external hard drive. Let me explain.
Sometime back I moved all my music onto an external firewire drive I keep connected to my laptop. I used the standard instructions available on the apple website and that worked just fine.
However, recently I was having serious system software issues so I decided to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the system software. That appears to have solved the problem with the system.
However, I cannot figure out now how to get Itunes to pull the music in so it can actually be played. I did go to preferences-advanced-change and told Itunes where the folder is in which the music is located. I also went to advanced-consolidate library (I am using an old version, 7.6) and clicked this. But, of course, the purpose of that is to take music in Itunes and store in the new folder. Since there is no music in the old Itunes library nothing happened.
If I go to file-add to library a dialogue screen comes up and shows the Itunes music folder with the organized sub-folders in it that looks right. If I do 'choose' Itunes will bring in music but I then lose the folders and playlists - Just a long list of alphabetized music.
So, how do I get ITunes to recognize and pull in my music along with the folders, playlists, etc.?
Thanks.
Michael
I think the playlists etc are stored on a separate library file in the iTunes folder.
If you formatted the OS HD and the library file was on that then you would have lost your playlists.
ITunes is just like an index that telles your computer where to Ho for certain files.
Exactly what disk did you format?
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not sure which macosx i have. i think it's 10.6.8, but it may be 10.6.7. i'm typing from work now.
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Open your external hard drive to the directory containing your iTunes folder.
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Me compre un ipod classic de 160gb cada vez que trato de ponerle musica de mi disco duro externo solo copia hasta 1500 canciones y luego me congela el Itune y no lo puedo cerrar, me pide que restaure el ipod como de fabrica, lo hago y nada. Trato de cerrar el programa de itune y no me deja, trato de apagar el computador y no lo puedo apagar, he buscado para ver si tiene errores el disco del Ipod y me dice que esta bien. Lo he restaurado como 8 veces y le he puesto musica y videos pero siempre me borra todo. He aplastado Menu y Seleccion para entrar al sistemade diagnostic o del ipod y le pongo el test manual donde entro al IO y me dice q todo esta bien. Le he dado ya varios Format directamente desde el Windows 7 y nada tampoco, siempre me borra todo desde que pasan mas de 1300 canciones y me congeal todo el equipo. Ya no se que pensar de esta compania Apple porque no da ninguna solucion ha este tema.
I bought a 160gb iPod classic every time I try to put music on my external hard drive only copy up to 1500 songs and then freezes Itune me and I can not close, asks me to restore the ipod as factory, and do nothing . I try to close the program and itune will not let me, I try to turn off the computer and I can not shut, I looked to see if the iPod disk errors and says it's okay. I restored it about 8 times and I've put music and videos but I always delete everything. I crushed and Selection Menu to enter diagnostic sistemade or ipod and I put the manual test where I enter the IO and q tells me everything is fine. I have already given several Format directly from the Windows 7 and anything either, I always delete everything from passing over 1300 songs and I congeal whole team. No longer have to think of this company because Apple gives no solution has this issue.06-sep-2012 0:14
Me compre un ipod classic de 160gb cada vez que trato de ponerle musica de mi disco duro externo solo copia hasta 1500 canciones y luego me congela el Itune y no lo puedo cerrar, me pide que restaure el ipod como de fabrica, lo hago y nada. Trato de cerrar el programa de itune y no me deja, trato de apagar el computador y no lo puedo apagar, he buscado para ver si tiene errores el disco del Ipod y me dice que esta bien. Lo he restaurado como 8 veces y le he puesto musica y videos pero siempre me borra todo. He aplastado Menu y Seleccion para entrar al sistemade diagnostic o del ipod y le pongo el test manual donde entro al IO y me dice q todo esta bien. Le he dado ya varios Format directamente desde el Windows 7 y nada tampoco, siempre me borra todo desde que pasan mas de 1300 canciones y me congeal todo el equipo. Ya no se que pensar de esta compania Apple porque no da ninguna solucion ha este tema.
I bought a 160gb iPod classic every time I try to put music on my external hard drive only copy up to 1500 songs and then freezes Itune me and I can not close, asks me to restore the ipod as factory, and do nothing . I try to close the program and itune will not let me, I try to turn off the computer and I can not shut, I looked to see if the iPod disk errors and says it's okay. I restored it about 8 times and I've put music and videos but I always delete everything. I crushed and Selection Menu to enter diagnostic sistemade or ipod and I put the manual test where I enter the IO and q tells me everything is fine. I have already given several Format directly from the Windows 7 and anything either, I always delete everything from passing over 1300 songs and I congeal whole team. No longer have to think of this company because Apple gives no solution has this issue.
iPod classic, Windows 7, ME BORRA TODO Y SE CONGELA -
Why can't iTunes find the music from an external hard drive?
I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop. Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music. I have to go through and manually select a song for it to find it one and then it says should it use this to find the rest of the songs. Then it crashes. I have reinstalled iTunes tonight with no real improvement. I want to be able to create a playlist to upload to my new iPad as well as updating music on my iPod but I can't do any of it. Please, any advice!
angelafromlanchester wrote:
I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop. Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music.
Has the new laptop given the external drive a different drive letter?
The "missing file" error 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, one of its parent folders, or 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 click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) 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, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links.
If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
tt2 -
I would like to keep all my music on my external hard drive but I can't seem to get itunes to recognise my hard drive. How do I get itunes to recognise my hard drive so I can play the music off there rather than copying the files over each time?
Click the icon to launch iTunes
Immediately press and hold down the shift key
Keep holding shift until asked to create or choose a library
If iTunes opens normally close and go back to step 1.
Browse to the iTunes Library.itl file you want to open.
See also: HT1589: How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
If you had copied across as directed there would be no need to move anything back...
tt2 -
How to put my music on my external hard drive through itunes
How do i put music on my external hard drive from itunes after creating a folder.
Our iTunes guru Terence Devlin advises the following:
1. Quit iTunes
2. Drag the iTunes folder from your internal hd - located in ~/Music folder - to your external hd (which has to be formatted as HFS Extended (Journaled)). DO NOT delete the original one from your internal hd... yet!
3. When the transfer is complete, press and hold the Option(alt) key and fire up iTunes.
4. A "Choose iTunes Library" window will come up. Click on the "Choose Library" button.
5. Navigate to where the iTunes folder is located in the external hd.
6. Within the iTunes folder, select the iTunes Library file and click Choose...
That's it. iTunes will now display all your playlists, songs, movies, podcasts etc. At this point, should you wish, you can delete the iTunes folder from the internal hd to free up space.
More info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
Or if you prefer a more complicated explanation:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive
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