More iTunes Library Locations?

I'm new to iTunes, and am using 9.0.2 (25). Under Preferences > Advanced, there's a checkbox which states, "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to Library". Does this mean there are iTunes Libraries placed elsewhere than only in the Music > iTunes > iTunes Media folder? If so, where are the other places iTunes keeps Library contents?
Also, when I run Activity Monitor, while running iTunes, there's another program running, named, 'AppleMobileDevic'. I don't connect my computer to an iPod, or a phone, so is there a way to stop 'AppleMobileDevic' from running each time iTunes is activated? Thanks.

My concern is that the phrase, 'Copy files...,' gives one the impression that the files are in at least two places – their original location, and then also, the location they are copied to.
That is correct.
If you haveiTunes prefs Advanced "Copy files..." ticked, after you add it to iTunes, you can delete it from the original location.
it would still imply that iTunes is retaining a copy of Library entries. If that is so, then where within iTunes are they kept?
They are in iTunes media folder location shown in iTunes prefs - Advanced. The default location is \Music\iTunes\iTunes music\ (or \Music\iTunes\iTunes media\ in iTunes 9).

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Can't change itunes library location to external hard drive

I did have my itunes library location set to an external disk (my time capsule) and this worked great with my macbook pro. However, the macbook pro "died" last week and now I'm trying to set my new replacement imac itunes library to also be the external hard drive.
The advance tab on itunes preferences indicates that library location is set as requested however, I can't see any of my music in my itunes window.
I could of course just copy my music on to my new computer but that'll take ages and I'd rather keep it on the time capsule.
Many thanks
Anna

So the additional step need to do was make sure the copy files to itunes media folder is unchecked and the go to itunes>files>add to library then select my itunes music folder in my itunes location on the time capsule. Done!
Answer was found here http://www.macworld.com/article/46248/2005/08/shiftitunes.html

HT201562 Multiple Itunes Library locations

Hello and Good Day,
I haven't yet found an answer to this question. I have have a 3TB USB 3.0 Hard-drive that I store most of my media content on. I also use an Apple TV to watch my content. When I add a movie to iTunes it gets copied to the Macbook. I would like to be able to store some content on the 3TB drive and some on the macbook. Is there a way to add content or have mixed iTunes library locations.
Thank you,

I figured it out and did not lose my music,

Sharing two or more iTunes library

Hello,
I have just bought an Apple TV2, but I have all my films in an external hard drive.
I have created a new iTunes Library on the external drive, and I tried to make a second shared library (my Mac and now the external hard drive). How can I see both libraries in the Apple TV, so I can have the music and all videos and films?
Is it possible to share more than one iTunes library in the same Apple account?
How can I solve my problem? Put all the iTunes stuff in the new library (external drive)?
If its the only way, how can I export the actual mac iTunes Library, to the external drive?
Best regards
Tiago B

You can only view one iTunes library at a time on Apple TV. So moving all your iTunes files to one library would enable you to view all your music, videos, and films.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easiest-move-itunes-library-external-drive/
To move your collections to another location, open iTunes “Preferences”. Use the menu “Edit – Preferences” (Windows) or “iTunes – Preferences” (Mac). You can also use the shortcut key combination: “Ctrl + Comma” (Windows) or “Command + Comma” (Mac).
Go to the “Advanced” tab and click the “Change” button for “iTunes Media folder location“. While you are at it, check the “Keep iTunes Media folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” boxes.
Browse to the new location where you want to put your collection. Create a new folder if you have to.
After you click “Create“, iTunes will update the library.
Now you have assigned a new location to store your collection, but the multimedia files are still in the old location. To move them to the new location, you have to consolidate them. Go to “File – Library – Organize Library” menu (similar under both Windows and Mac).
Check the “Consolidate files” box and click “OK“. If you’ve organized your files in the iTunes Music folder before, the second box will be greyed out.
Then the waiting game will begin – iTunes will copy all the files inside the iTunes Music folder to the new location. The process could take a while depending on how large your collection is.
Now that your collection is safely stored in the external hard drive (or another location that you chose), you can delete (some of) the files at the old location to free up some space in your hard drive. You can keep your favorite songs/movies so you still can play them even without the external drive.
Another point to remember: Even though the multimedia files are in the external drive, iTunes stores the information about them in the iTunes Library file in your local hard drive. So don’t delete the iTunes Library file.
What Will Happen Now?
With a larger empty space in your laptop’s internal hard drive, you are convinced that moving your multimedia collection out was a good idea. But you also realize that bringing an external hard drive everywhere you go is a bit impractical. The question is, what will happen if you open iTunes on your laptop while the external drive is unplugged?You will get this error message every time you want to play a file that doesn’t exist in the local hard drive. Then an exclamation mark will appear next to the item.If you still keep the items that you want to play inside the local drive, click “Locate“, browse to the location, and you can play them without any problem. If not, click “Cancel“. You don’t have to do anything because this issue will be automatically resolved the next time you plug in the hard drive. If you add new music or movies during the unplugged period, you can always consolidate those files to the external storage later.Another possible path to take is to create another iTunes library for your local multimedia files. You can do this by holding the “Alt” button when you open iTunes, You will have the option to create a new library.
Give a specific name to the library so that you can easily tell the difference between the one that points to the local files and the one that points to files stored in the external drive.
Pressing “Alt” while opening iTunes will also let you switch between iTunes Libraries easily.

How do I move my iTunes library location?

Hello, I am trying to move my iTunes library file location from my internal HD into an external HD.
I read a lot of topics within this community regarding this topic, and nothing worked for me...
I copied my entire itunes folder into the new location.
Then I opened iTunes with option key pressed, and selected the new iTunes folder in the new location.
When I tried to play a song, it asked me to locate it, and when I located it, itunes asked me if I want this new location for everything else missing, I said yes, but it does not find any other song, I need to locate one song at a time, and it is quite boring.
What can I do? What I am doing wrong?
Any ideas? I still need to change my iTunes library file location because I do not have more space in my MacBook's HD
Thanks....
KONRAD

Type "move itunes library" into the google search bar.

How do you restore a recently deleted music file from one's iTunes library located on a PC

While trying to clean up duplicate music files in my iTunes library, I mistakenly deleted several songs that I need to restore. How can this be accomplished? The songs still reside on the PC but need to be resynced to iTunes someway.

Unless you have a recent backup of your library that you can restore, iTunes has no information about the files you've deleted, so you'll need to use Windows' search functions to locate them. This is one of many reasons why you should set these options in Edit > Preferences > Advanced:
and if necessary use iTunes' File > Library > Organize Library... function to consolidate your media so that everything is stored in a standard, predictable folder structure under iTunes\iTunes Media.

Changed iTunes library location....

I just changed my lib location. Created a new dir on the external HD, changed the preferences to reflect that in iTunes. However, when I get info or play one of the files it still goes to the old location to play the file. Thoughts?

The library.itl file is the central controlling file of iTunes. It contains the file locations. When you open this library it displays your content (as it know it) and playlists, etc. When you play a track it checks the file location in iTunes and goes and plays that file. If the file is not where iTunes thinks it is, you get a broken link.
You didn't change your library location. What you did was tell iTunes, in future, to put all media in a new location. Did it ask to move your old media, and did you say yes? If it didn't move it then you may end up with split media. Existing media is still where you put it (as seems to be the case from your description), new media will go on the external.
In general the above is not what most people want to do. To correctly move the "library" (I say collection so as to not confuse this with the library file) you want to drag the whole iTunes folder to the external and tell iTunes when it starts up where the new location is. This is assuming you have everything in a nice, neat package in that folder. Now if you're in an intermediate stage then things are messy, but you'll have to let us know where you various files are at this stage.
Some people only want to move their media. That's okay, but you have to know what iTunes is doing, and also realize it gets tricky when moving the collection in the future.

ITunes library location resetting itself

I have moved my iTunes Library to a server drive so that it can be backed up, but iTunes keeps resetting it to my local hard drive. I had first moved the library several weeks ago, and then accidentally discovered it had changed back to my local hard drive all by itself at some point. I had moved it prior to the recent 6.0 and 6.0.1 releases (currently running 6.0.1), so I thought maybe the upgrade from 5 had reset it. A couple of nights ago, I got it all cleaned up and recombined back on the server drive. I had downloaded the 2 new free downloads this week, and then had numerous podcast updates during the day. That night, I found that again the location of my library has changed back to my local hard drive, and those downloads I had just done had went there. Again, I changed the library location through Preferences (with the "Keep iTunes Music folder oganized" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder" options checked), and then "Consolidated" the library. Today, at around 4:00 this afternoon, it again switched back to the default C: drive location, when no one was even home. What's up with this? iTunes is supposed to allow changing of the library location, and I have followed the proper procedures, but it will not stay!
Help!

Speculation about future iTunes releases, features, or bug fixes is not allowed to be discussed here, but I can safely say that iTunes 7 won't be out for a long time. We went from 4.9 to 6 in six weeks recently. Highly unusual, and I don't expect that to be repeated anytime soon. However, that doesn't mean version 6 won't be updated.
What's important to remember is that your setup isn't the majority of iTunes' target market. That translates into your feature request or bug fix requirement probably being lower on the ladder of priority.
What would be useful to the iTunes community here is someone to volunteer to do some extensive testing and report the results.
- try multiple network/mount methods
- quit/launch iTunes quickly and see if there's any correlation with the speed of disk access
- make a note of any other processes that may have locked the network volume for a brief period, causing iTunes not to have access

Itunes library located on NAS, but it's SO slow!

So, I've set up my iTunes library to be located on my NAS (network attached storage). It's plugged into a gigabit switch, as is my home PC.
The library is big, about 77GB - which is why I don't want to keep it locally in the first place.
Anyhow, anytime I add music to itunes, it is SO SO SO slow to put the songs in the library. It just freezes itunes for about 1 minute per song. The copy process of the files over to the drive is pretty quick, a few seconds at most. It's like itunes is thinking about organizing it or something for the other 55 seconds, per song...
Is there any fix for this? iTunes has always felt sluggish on my i7 (which is ridiculous) - I'm getting close to switching over to Spotify completely for syncing/etc... but I would like to see if I can't fix this first...
Thanks,
Scott
Windos 7 64 bit, by the way.

Where's the ITL file? By that I mean the itunes database file. When you add songs or edit existing entries, that is the file itunes is accessing. By default itunes puts it on the C: drive. So, if you moved it to the NAS, try putting it back on the C: drive and do a shift-start to tell itunes it's in a different place. Or vice versa.
A shift-start means, press AND HOLD the shift key while starting itunes. Keep pressing until you see the option to choose a library. Browse to the new location and choose this file
iTunes Library.itl
You only have to do a shift-start once. iTunes keeps using the last ITL file it opened until you do another shift-start.

ITunes Library Location and Music Default Folder

I have a fairly large music library (350 GB) and keep it on external hard drive. In the iTunes Preferences I changed my default library location to such external drive. However, from time to time I can see that my library location gets back to the default internal HD of my Mac. Once it does that the system starts slowly copying music from my external to my dafault internal HD where there is obviously not enough space for that. Is their any way to stop iTunes changing the location of my Library? Did anyone come accross this issue?
Also does anyone know how to change the location of the default Music folder to refer to my external disc? I can not find where this can be done.
Thanks
Ruben

If iTunes doesn't find the iTunes Music folder at startup, it will set it to the default location. iTunes does so, because it has to know a location where to store imported music.
To prevent this, always connect your ext. HD before running iTunes.
You can make it somehow failsafe by using the method I described here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=318759
It's not an elegant solution, because it will give an error and iTunes won't run.
At least it doesn't reset the 'iTunes Music folder' location and you are reminded to connect your ext. HD.
Hope this helps.
M

Two iTunes library locations

I have a MacBook with a nigh-full 60 gig hard drive. I just bought a new 160 gig external hard drive to create room for my iPhoto library and some television shows that I play in iTunes.
I have found lots of help for putting all of my iTunes library onto the external HD. I want to put my movies and my television shows on the external drive, but I would like to keep my music on my laptop so I can carry it around with me; my iPod isn't big enough. Is there a convenient way to do this?

I have a MacBook with a nigh-full 60 gig hard drive. I just bought a new 160 gig external hard drive to create room for my iPhoto library and some television shows that I play in iTunes.
I have found lots of help for putting all of my iTunes library onto the external HD. I want to put my movies and my television shows on the external drive, but I would like to keep my music on my laptop so I can carry it around with me; my iPod isn't big enough. Is there a convenient way to do this?

Is it possible to control an itunes library located on an iMAC from a

I am trying to set up a sound system for a blind person using an ipad as a controller. The itunes music library is located on a iMAC and there is a Wifi network with an Airport Express located elsewhere. The ipad has the Remote App and Airport utility. The library is in excess of 64 Gb so cannot be stored on the ipad (16Gb) I can access and play from the library using the touch screen but Siri does not recognise the library and merely says that there is nothing on the ipad - which is literally correct. Is there any way that I can achieve this? The iPad is running iOS 6.1

Unfortunately, I don't see a solution to your problem.

ITunes resetting library location

I have yet to figure this one out, but I'm dealing with an extremely large iTunes library (+120GB), which is stored on a NAS drive, which is making this problem an absolute nightmare,
I have manually set the iTunes library location in preferences to be to a location on my NAS drive. I keep my library consolidated in that location. All good so far -- the problem is that iTunes randomly resets my library location to the default -- not the one I had set in preferences. My suspicion is that this happens if iTunes is forced to quit, but I'm not sure. I have discovered this because on a couple of occasions when syncing my iPod, iTunes has told me that it cannot find music files to sync to the ipod, but I can play them just fine (that is a whole other apparent iTunes bug -- it seems that iPod syncing is looking for songs in the iTunes library location, while actual song playing looks for the songs where the song config in the library file is set, which in this case, is different).
So I checked the library location in preferences, and reset it to where it is supposed to be. Now iTunes updates the entire library for every song, which takes a little while, with 7500+ songs. But here's the nightmare: it now consolidates the library to "keep songs organized", and despite the fact that all my songs are already sitting in the exact location they are supposed to, iTunes tries the copy anyway, duplicating every song file in their respective directories, adding a " 1" to the file name. So my library size is doubled, I have 7500 extra songs in my library, and a big mess that is prohibitive to even attempt to clean up manually.
I have had this happen three times now, and with the data sizes in play, it takes an entire day runtime to fix this.
Any answers to this, why it happens or how to prevent it?
Brad

HangTime,
HangTime wrote:
perhaps i'm overlooking a fine point that is important to you, but when i've accidentally added music to my local drive I just moved the files to my external, and then dropped them into iTunes.
does this cause a problem for you of which i'm unaware, perhaps, in my usage?
Thanks for the reply. You are overlooking a few things. First, now I've confirmed, that when this happens, the library location has been automatically changed by iTunes from the external drive location to the default local location. Second, when these files are "accidentally added", they are presently in the library.
So in your scenario that you mention, you have two things you have to be concerned with. The first is to go into preferences and reset your library location to the external drive from the default location iTunes has changed it to. If you do this, and your preferences are set to keep your library organized and copy files imported into your library, once the library location has been changed, it will update your entire library with the new location, after which you will receive a dialog to copy the files into the new library location. If you select OK, then the entire library is going to get copied into the exact same location where it already resides, duplicating every file except for those copied local, which of course have only a single copy in that library location.
The second thing you have to be concerned with is that you cannot just move the files from where they are at -- your current iTunes library is currently pointing at those, and so you have to remove them from your iTunes library first, or else the links will be broken.
Does that help to clarify?
Btw, I'll add that it has all happened yet again since this thread started, because my network connection between by NAS drive and my Mac was interrupted, once again setting my iTunes location back to the default -- this is a major pain, and more so, really renders my iTunes library unusable because of its size. It appears that every time communication is interrupted between my external drive and my Mac, either because the external drive isn't mounted/ready or because of network communication, it resets my iTunes library location, causing the problem all over again.
There has got to be a solution to this.
Brad

Can two computers share same ITunes library over Airdisk?

Hi all,
I have a Macbook and a PowerPC G5 and a Drobo (external hard drive) hooked up to my AEBS with only ITunes music stored on it.
I want to be able to edit and browse my ITunes library from both my G5 (which I can already do) and my MacBook (which I can't). When I try to change my ITunes library location from within my MacBook, nothing shows up. It's a blank library, even though I can edit and browse the Drobo (as an Airdisk) through the finder. How can I edit and browse my ITunes library from my Macbook if my G5 is also using the same library? Two more quick points...
1) I have tried the "sharing" feature and don't want to use it. It doesn't allow editing of my library and won't show cover art.
2) The above situation happens whether my G5 ITunes is open or closed.
Thanks everybody for your help.

Ziatron wrote:
Yes, two computers can share the same library.
I periodically copy my iTunes library from my Mac Pro to the Mac Mini.
They aren't using a single library. Each computer is using its own copy and you have two sets of library files. It can certainly be done that way but if between copy sessions you edit a bit of each library then it is a bit of a muddle trying to make sure your versions are synchronized with each other. For example, ratings are stored only in the .itl file, so if you rate a song on your second computer it will get lost the next time you copy over from your first.

Itunes library sharing on single Mac Pro with 2 users.

Recently I have setup a Mac Pro with 2 users. Primarily the thought was to have this as the media server for a couple of AppleTV (2nd generation) and other users. The primary user on the Mac Pro (me), has the iTunes Library located in the Public Directory. Home sharing is enabled, on all systems. There is no problem when the Primary user is logged in and iTunes is running. When the second user, logs into the Mac Pro, nobody has access to the iTunes Library of the primary user.
I was thinking of setting up the secondary user with the same itunes directory, but when new content is added by the primary user, the secondary user would not see it automatically, would they?
Basically I am trying to set up a common iTunes library for all users and all devices. Is it possible

michaelfromsherwood park wrote:
The primary user on the Mac Pro (me), has the iTunes Library located in the Public Directory.
while logged in to the other user account, launch iTunes while holding the option (⌥) key, click on choose library when prompted, and select the iTunes folder in the shared folder.
if you're using fast user switching, user A must quit iTunes before user B can access the library.
Home sharing is enabled, on all systems.
home sharing is designed to work between two (or more) computers on the the same LAN.

More iTunes Library Locations?

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