ITunes music is stored on an external hard drive. How do I play...

I just transferred all of my music onto an external hard drive to save space on my computer.
Is it possible to set iTunes so that it uses the external hard drive as the source of the iTunes music library. iTunes seems to only want to have the "iTunes Music" file on the C drive so that it can access it automatically as iTunes opens.
How do I switch it from looking at the C Drive to a specific folder on my G drive?

I followed all the instructions for consolidating my music into one folder on my external hard drive. (I'm struggling with this because my ext HD was renamed when I synched my iPod shuffle last night. The "E:" drive has now become the "F:" drive and all my songs have those dreaded exclamation points next to them. Exploring my computer, I found "My music" folders in two place on my C: drive and one place on my external hard drive... and the song list in each place is different.
Argh.
So... following the directions in the article reference here, I attempted to consolidate all of my songs into one folder on my external hard drive.
But.. I checked the song list when the "consolidation" was complete... and MANY songs are missing. They're still on the C: drive, but don't appear to have been copied to the new folder on the ext HD.
I would appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks so much!
Edit: I tried to reassign the ext. HD a permanent letter, but my Control panel does not appear to offer the option of Administrative tools. Is there an easy way to get to this, as this seems to be the root of the problem?
Thanks.
Message was edited by: hbdivegirl

Similar Messages

  • I have my iTunes music folder stored on an external hard drive.  I recently purchased a new Mac.  After attaching the external hard drive, all the songs imported without any problem except my Playlists.  Any clue about where they are or how to revive them

    I have my iTunes music folder stored on an external hard drive.  I recently purchases a new Mac.  After attaching the external hard drive, all songs imported without a problem except my playlists.  Any clue about where they are or how to revive them for use on my new Mac?
    Thanks!

    Rysz wrote:
    To retain your playlists, artwork, play counts, etc, you need to move the entire iTunes folder, not just the music files..
    Correct.
    After that just select the new folder location in iTunes> Advanced settings.
    Incorrect.
    Hold Option and launch iTunes.
    Select Choose library and select the iTunes folder.
    This will read the iTunes library.itl file in this folder and the library as it was previously will be opened.

  • HT4914 My music is stored on an external hard drive. All music that I buy, whether from itunes or some other provider, automatically gets loaded onto my external drive. There is some music on my computer drive as well. Will match work in this circumstance

    My music is stored on an external hard drive. All music that I buy, whether from itunes or some other provider, automatically gets loaded onto my external drive. There is some music on my computer drive as well. Will match work in this circumstance?

    I followed all the instructions for consolidating my music into one folder on my external hard drive. (I'm struggling with this because my ext HD was renamed when I synched my iPod shuffle last night. The "E:" drive has now become the "F:" drive and all my songs have those dreaded exclamation points next to them. Exploring my computer, I found "My music" folders in two place on my C: drive and one place on my external hard drive... and the song list in each place is different.
    Argh.
    So... following the directions in the article reference here, I attempted to consolidate all of my songs into one folder on my external hard drive.
    But.. I checked the song list when the "consolidation" was complete... and MANY songs are missing. They're still on the C: drive, but don't appear to have been copied to the new folder on the ext HD.
    I would appreciate any suggestions.
    Thanks so much!
    Edit: I tried to reassign the ext. HD a permanent letter, but my Control panel does not appear to offer the option of Administrative tools. Is there an easy way to get to this, as this seems to be the root of the problem?
    Thanks.
    Message was edited by: hbdivegirl

  • Ooops...I manually moved iTunes music folder to my new external hard drive

    So I thought I was smart and manually moved my iTunes music folder to my new external hard drive. I've changed the location in Preferences but can't locate my music through iTunes. What do I do now? My library is on my external hard drive, but I read I should have done this through iTunes. Any advice?

    Is it still possible for you to temporarily return the iTunes Music folder to its original location?
    If so you should be able to see your music in iTunes again and then follow the instructions in this article in the Apple Knowledge Base.

  • How to back up all my iTunes music and playlists on a external hard drive

    How do you back up your iTunes music & playlists to an external hard-drive (in this case a W.D.Elements)
    My Computer is an I Mac 27 inch, Late 2013 OSX  Version 10.10 Upgraded to "Yosmite" on the 26th October 2014
    Thanking you in anticipation of your help.
    Vince Cygan

    Thank you Niel,
    My 21,574 music tracks are populating the external hard-drive as I reply. I'm assuming my playlists will accompany them. My playlists start with music from 1914 to the present, each year is divided into 4 month periods so I know almost exactly when each record was released or from 1952 onwards when it entered the charts.
    According to the progress line the procedure should take 2 hrs 20 mins approx.
    Thank you once again Niel

  • If i previously had my iTunes library set up on an external hard drive, how do I get my iTunes on my new mac pro to operate off of the same hard drive?

    I recently bought a mac pro. I previously had a macbook that I had set up for iTunes to run off of an external hard drive. How do I set up my mac pro to run off of this hard drive?  I have been trying to figure it out for the last hour and have had no luck.
    I have tried to move my itunes folder on my mac pro to my external hard drive but am having no luck. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

    If you had the entire library running from the external drive it should be a matter of holding down option as you start iTunes and browsing to the library on the external drive.
    If you'd followed the advice to move the media folder only then ideally you need to recover the library folder from your Macbook with a view to making the library portable on the external drive.
    Otherwise you're going to have to simply import the content into a new library, losing rating, playlists, play counts. etc.
    If you have any devices that sync to your library see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
    tt2

  • Will iTunes Match work if my music is stored on an external hard drive and not in my mac's iTunes Library?

    Since my music takes up a lot of space, I've moved my entire iTunes Library to an external hard drive. If I subscribe to iTunes Match, can I upload the music from my external hd or does it need to actually be in my iTunes Library?

    Crawdaddy wrote:
    I'm wondering if, AFTER uploading all my music to iCloud Match, will I need to have the external hard drive connected in order to access music from iCloud while in iTunes?
    iTunes Match does not work this way. The location of your music in iTunes is not changed by iTM. If you needed the external HDD connected to play your music before you enabled iTM you will still need it connected after you enable HDD.
    Now, if you wish to not have to have the extenal HDD connected, then you can create a new, empty library in iTunes by holding down the Option key while launching iTunes and enable iTM on that library. That will allow you to you stream your music in iTunes. You'll need to switch between the libraries to make changes to the metadata.

  • My computer had a virus and needed to be wiped clean. all my itunes docs are stored on an external hard-drive so i downloaded a new itunes but it over-wrote my old one - how can i restore this without wiping my iphone? please help :(

    Hi there,
    My windows xp computer got a virus and needed to be wiped.
    As i store all of my itunes and iphone stuff on an external hardrive i thought this would not cause a problem.
    Got a bit confused when i tried to open itunes again from the back-up hardrive as it would not open.
    Wrongly assumed that the best option would be to re-download itunes and move my old itunes info across - silly silly thing to do :/
    The new download just over-wrote the old one and after trying a few of the suggestions on here to get my old library back - i still cant work out if its possible as it has been over-written.
    I don't want to plug my iphone4 into my computer as i have heard that this can wipe your phone completely, so before i do anything, does anyone know what is the best thing to do from here? or how i could posibly recover my old library, playlists, apps, podcasts e.t.c
    please please help
    mappy1970

    thisisdavid wrote:
    i have all of my music on my external hard drive, and would like to be able to listen to it on itunes without it copying to the computer.
    go iTunes > preferences > advanced and temporarily disable the copy files ... when adding option.
    from the file menu, choose add to library and select the folder on the external containing your content, or drag the folder to the automatically add to iTunes folder inside the iTunes folder.
    when iTunes has finished the operation, go back to preferences > advanced and point iTunes media folder location to the external so that future additions to your library are put there. also, re-enable the copy files ... when adding option.

  • When all of your music is stored on an external hard drive...

    Hi - first time poster, so be gentle.
    I recently purchased a new laptop (HP Pavilion DV6736) w/Windows Vista. I installed iTunes and am now trying to get my Music Library to point to my music, which is housed (all of it) on an external hard drive. I have read several articles (305451, for example), which have not helped. I have also read other discussion threads, to no avail. So far I've tried "Moving your iTunes music folder" (above-referenced article 305451) and then changing the iTunes Music folder location (Edit > Preferences > Advanced > "Change") to point to my new external HD. This did nothing. Basically, I have iTunes installed, and I have over 40gb of music on an external drive, and I can't get the two to talk to one another.
    *sigh*
    Can anyone help?
    Message was edited by: popquizkid

    Article 305451 applies when you already have songs in your Library and want to move them. Changing the location of the iTune Music folder in your Preferences only affects songs you purchase or import from a CD from the time of the change forward, not songs that have already been imported (like those on your external drive).
    Have a look at this article in the Apple Knowledge Base and let us know if it brings you any combination of joy and/or satisfaction.

  • My itunes library is stored on an external hard drive. How do I set it up to be able to use with my work macbook pro? I do not want it stored on my laptop.

    How do I store my itunes library on an external hard drive and access it on my macbook pro? I do not want to store my library on my macbook because it is a work computer and do not want to take up storage space there. I know it can be done because I had it that one on a previous laptop but I cannot remember how I did it and would really appreciate a quick step by step process. I do not mind if it seems elementary. I am admitting my lack of knowledge and would really appreciate basic instructions. Thank you for anything anyone can do to help.

    iTunes>Preferences (Cmd+,)>Advanced
    Choose the Ext HD (and the appropriate folder) as the location for your library.

  • Music is on an external hard drive how to transfer to iPod without using disk space on MacBook

    Hi
    I just brought a new iPod as my last one broke and I was wondering if there was a way to transfer my music currently stored on an external hard drive on to the iPod without having to have it using up disk space on my MacBook.
    I was told in the Apple store by a sale guy that you can do this by creating a playlist in iTunes and dragging the music files in from the hard drive. He said it wouldn't be stored on the MacBook and the playlist could only be accessed (or music played on the macbook) when the hard drive was connected. But when we tried this it started transferring ALL of the music from the hard drive onto the main iTunes library and subsequently onto the disk space on the MacBook. 
    Can someone help me :-)

    The sales guy does not know what he's talking about...
    Open iTunes preferences Advanced tab.  Uncheck the box for Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.  Click OK.
    Now, when you add those songs to your iTunes library, iTunes will access the song files from the external drive, where they are currently located.  And you can sync them to your iPod.

  • Is there a way to access my iTunes Library, which is stored on a (PC) External Hard Drive, on a MacBook Air (through an Apricorn Universal Hard Drive Adapter), without transferring the music files off of the external hard drive?

    Is there a way to access my iTunes Library, which is stored on a (PC) External Hard Drive, on a MacBook Air (through an Apricorn Universal Hard Drive Adapter), without transferring the music files off of the external hard drive?
    In other words, because the MacBook Air only has 120 gbs of hard drive space & my old hard drive, from a Lenovo, has 500 gbs of hard drive space (and I have over 120 gbs of music), I’m looking to manage my iTunes music from the external hard drive permanently. Upon attempting to access the iTunes library held on the external hard drive the following message comes up: “The iTunes Library.itl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file”.  Is there a way to get around this?
    Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much!

    You will have to engage a split library which means you will have to start answering questions on this forum because you will need to learn a lot about how iTunes works in order not that have a big mess at the end of it all.  It also won't be easy when the time comes to relocate it all to different drives.
    You can go to advanced preferences and turn off organize media and copy to items to media folder when adding items to library.  Next read about how to selectively consolidate items to the external drive.
    Sept. 2010, Consolidate selected content - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589812 and April 2014, https://discussions.apple.com/message/25414357
    "...selected the new tracks directly in iTunes, Control-clicked on the selection, and saw that now you can consolidate selected items." - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090919000326840
    Remember that when you start iTunes without the external drive turned on iTunes will present you with a bunch of broken links.  If you have automatic downloads enabled with iCloud you may have to turn that off to prevent iTunes from repopulating your drive trying to deal with those "missing" tracks.
    If you add tracks in bunches to iTunes and want them to go to different media folders you will need to either add them by holding down the option key while dragging if the desired media folder is not the one set in preferences, or by changing the media folder in preferences.  Changing media folder preferences only applies to new files added, not old ones.
    Okay, I am going to stop typing because you might just reply to me, "Oh, okay, forget it," and I don't need the exercise.
    What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
    More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
    What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
    Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

  • TS1717 I cannot get iTunes to automatically launch at startup in Windows 7. I need it to do this so my Apple TV 'finds' my Music Library, which is stored on an external hard-drive, connected to my Windows 7 PC.

    I cannot get iTunes to automatically launch at startup in Windows 7. I need it to do this so my Apple TV 'finds' my Music Library, which is stored on an external hard-drive, connected to my Windows 7 PC. Anyone know how I do this? I cannot seem to find anything on Google, which is surprising.
    iTunes helper launches OK, but not iTunes itself. Am I being dim?
    Thanks

    The iTunes application should be installed on the system drive. You may need to repair iTunes to fix that error regarding a missing .exe.
    To organize your library properly see Make a split library portable.
    If you don't have a working version of the library that can be transformed into a portable shape I have tools and techniques that can repair the broken links.
    tt2

  • ITunes cannot locate purchased music.  It was stored on an external hard drive that has crashed.  How can I recover the songs?

    iTunes cannot locate purchased music.  It was stored on an external hard drive that has crashed.  How can I recover the songs?

    Hello, nwestpha. 
    Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities. 
    You may find this article helpful in locating your missing media.
    iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1408
    Cheers,
    Jason H.

  • Erasing all music from iTunes and starting over from an external hard drive

    Hello,
    I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
    Well this backfired big time probably because I did not follow any sort of instructions.
    1st I backed up Finder > music > iTunes > iTunesMedia folder to two seperate external hard drives just in case.
    2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
    3rd I finally decided to erase content from iTunes Media Folder
    4th I deleted the iTunes Media folder because I felt it was stupid to have a "iTunes Media folder" and "iTunes Music Folder" in the same place but not actually have anything in the iTunes Music folder (probably really stupid of me in retrospect)
    5th I unchecked the box under iTunes > Preferences > Advanced "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"
    6th I believe I changed the location of "iTunes Media folder location" in the Advanced area under Preferences thinking this should be pointing to my external drive
    I then believe I tried to run iTunes and play my content, but when I did all it did was copy my music/media back to my MacBook Pro hard drive but I did not realize it was doing this until later the next day when I tried to play some music and realized I had 3 copies of everything in my iTunes program (ie music movies podcasts tv shows etc) however, I could play all three versions of whatever it was I selected there was no "error message" saying that iTunes could not located that file, would you like to try and locate.
    So I checked Finder to see if there were 3 copies of everything (by the way at this point I stopped connecting my external hard drive for the sake of making more copies on iTunes) but there wasn't??? So I tried to go through Option+View > Show Exact Duplicate Copies and delete all but one of the items. When I would delete them and it asked if I wanted to move them to my Trash Bin I clicked yes and all the 2nd and 3rd copies were gone!!! Yeah, so when I played those songs/movies that remained they would play!!!!!
    Than I realized that my Internal Hard Drive was almost full and went looking around for things I could delete to help make my MacBook run better, and realized that my Trash had a large amount of data in it and that emptying it would significantly reduce space on my Internal Hard Drive, but when I went back to iTunes and selected music or movies to play it placed the infamous "!" next to that track or movie and it could not locate those items anymore?
    Long long long story short hopefully, can anyone help me set up iTunes so that it only can play content/media off of my external drive and not take up space on my internal hard drive? Is this even possible to do that or will always start to copy those files from the external hard drive back onto the internal hard drive? and second is there anyway to use the Apple router external hard drive to use as the source for all my media?
    PS I am running Mac OS X Lion version 10.7.5 and iTunes 11.1.3 (8) 64-bit

    2012EVOL wrote:
    Hello,
    I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
    Quit iTunes.
    Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external. Don't only copy the iTunes media folder.
    Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
    This is all you need to do.
    Everything for iTunes (except the application) is on the external.
    2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
    Make a shortcut to this folder on your desktop.
    Nothing should be in this folder. When you put a file here, it will get moved by iTunes and added to the library.
    The reason it had files in it is because you moved it.

Maybe you are looking for

  • Images folder in Robohelp 7 project only lists a small fraction of the images actually there

    I added an image to a topic. The image had an identical name to an existing image in the project. The image appeared in my main project folder, which is where all images initially show up in my project. I then move them to an images folder. I moved t

  • Try challenges from Win 8.1 Pro and Win 7 clients to OneDrive server

    Cases: m  files marked to be uploaded from Win 8.1 Pro client to OneDrive Problem 1: if the nth file upload fails then file n+1, n+2 ... m will not be uploaded! Note1: there should be possibility to define retry count and have default, for example 3

  • I did something dumb -- HELP!

    I have the messiest desktop in the world -- for a 22" cinema display (one of the old ones). I found a neat tip on macosxhints to clean up your desktop using Automator. I created an action that was supposed to find all sorts of files on my desktop and

  • Unable to open WAD (Web Application Designer) 3.x

    Hi experts In my computer I don´t open WAD (SAP BW 3.x) i make click start-> programs -> Business Explorer-> Business Explorer(SAP BW 3.x)-> Web Application Designer(SAP BW 3.x) appears following error: This application requires Internet Explorer 5 o

  • TIF images scrambled and error when opening NEF file

    Hello, Not sure what happened, but when I open .tif images in CS5 the display screambled. When I open the NEF image adn hen press the Open Imge button in Camera Raw 6.6 dialog, sometimes I get the following error message and other times the image ope