Moved itunes to Ex HD, does library move automatically?

I was able to move my and my daughters itunes over to an external HD. I think I must do a clean install of my pc. I think I must have both libraries over on the external.
Would they have automatically moved? If not, what do I need to do to get them over there? Is there a way to check?
Thank you for your help!
Colleen

I am PRETTY sure the instructions I looked at were almost identical to that, but I do remember when I was doing it wondering if both items up toward the top were checked. Is there a way to tell if the library was moved? Otherwise maybe the right thing to do is move it back, and then make ABSOLUTELY sure everything is checked??? Do I make any sense???? (It's early for me!)

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Moved iTunes to an external drive, library files can't be located - help?!?

So ok, I knew it couldn't be that easy...
I copied my iTunes to an external drive to free up space on my laptop - followed the instructions for moving files on a PC - and got to the part about moving the old iTunes folder to the recycle bin. Well, the recycle bin wasn't large enough for the folder, so it deleted everything straight out of MyComputer. Apparently the "library files" went with it.
Now I can see all my songs/movies/videos in folders on the external, but can't get my iTunes to associate with it when I open it.
Is there any way to fix this? I'm tearing my hair out, here. I have a full backup on DVDs - will that help?
Thanks!

got to the part about moving the old iTunes folder to the recycle bin.
There is no part about moving the _iTunes folder_ to the recycle bin.
There is a part about moving th _iTunes music folder_ to the recycle bin.
Did you move them to the external by using iTunes menu File -> Library -> Consolidate?
Or did you move them to the external yourself?
Which folders exactly did you move?

Moved iTunes Libary Now iPod does not work

I recently moved my iTunes library to an external hard disk.
Now my ipod does work. Do I need to restore it? Thanks.

Does not work at all or were the songs/files just deleted from the iPod?
Not sure what the problem was but you might want to sync again iTunes with the files at the new location.

I have a Iphone 4, upgraded to ios 5 with itunes 10.5 Since doing upgarde to both Itunes and Iphone I am not able to add individual songs from my itunes library to my Iphone. I get a grey listing of the song and the sync symbo but it is not moving.

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The sort fields should generally be empty unless you've putting in custom values to sort solo artists by their surnames. You can apply common changes to thousands of tracks at once, just don't apply the wrong change because there is no undo.
It is a good idea to backup before undertaking large scale changes. See this backup tip for a suggested approach.
tt2
Message was edited by: turingtest2

I cannot connect to Home Sharing on iTunes, so that I can send movies and TV shows to another computer. The other "library" does not come up in the box on the upper right side of the iTunes screen. I tried disconnecting each computer from Home Sharing.

I cannot connet to Home Sharing on iTunes, so that I can send movies and TV shows to another computer. I cannot find the name of the other computer in the "Library" box on the upper right side of the iTunes screen. Do I need to have the other computer connected to the Cloud?

Mkae sure you have enabled Home Sharing using the same AppleID on both computers.

Moving iTunes Library to external HD--song could not be used

I wanted to move my iTunes library to an external HD, because my internal drive was running out of space. I looked around on here and found directions how to move my iTunes Library to an external hard drive. I followed those directions, and everything seemed copacetic the first time I started iTunes after the move and pointed it at the moved library. Songs played and everything was great.
But tall subsequent times I've started iTunes, I get the dreaded "song could not be used because the original file could not be found" message for every song I've tried.
I looked around on the discussion boards here some more, and seem to be seeing that there is no general solution. There's no good way to tell iTunes, "Go match up all the lines in the iTunes database with all the song titles in such-and-such a location."
I also read the article about "What are the iTunes Library files." I see that there are 2 basic files. One is a database file called "iTunes Library," and the second is a text file called "iTunes Library.xml." I opened up the XML file and looked around a bit. Here is what I find:
Every song in the XML file seems to be referred to with a relative path, such as: <string>file://localhost/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Krys%20Mach,%20Jo%20Az usa,%20Jerome%20Mokar/Native%20Spirit/01%20Cave%20Dweller.m4a</string>
The thing is, that's not the right path, unless localhost happens to be pointed at my external HD, which I don't know why it would be.
I suspect that this is the exact same problem inside the database file, too.
I'm looking around for a definition of localhost... the only thing I'm finding is in /etc/hosts, which looks like:
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
I think it's odd that localhost is in there twice, but maybe that's normal.
Anyway, enough rambling, the basic question is, how can I tell iTunes that my files are on my external HD instead of wherever it thinks they are on "localhost," which I'm sure somehow resolves back to being my internal HD. Can I do some tricky grep-ing through the database file and strategically replace all occurrences? Or is that just asking for trouble?
Thanks!
Rodney

I don't know if this is at all useful to other people having similar problems, but I did get all my songs back more or less, and this is how:
1) With iTunes shut down, I went into my iTunes directory (ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTune), and moved my "iTunes Library" and "iTunes Library.xml" files to someplace else.
2) I started iTunes while holding down the Option key.
3) When iTunes popped the "Quit / Create New Library / Choose Library" dialog, I selected "Create New". I chose the path back to where my original iTunes Library used to live and where my music is; ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes.
4) iTunes started up with a completely blank library. I went and looked in the above directory, and yes, there was now a very small "iTunes Library" file there.
5) Under the File menu in iTunes, I chose "Add to Library". I then navigated to the location of all my music, which was ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music.
6) When I selected this folder, iTunes started going through a bunch of gyrations of scanning, organizing, adding... I don't know what all it thought it was doing, but it finished 24 GB of music in about 3 minutes.
And now my music is all playable again! Of course, all my playlists are toast... completely gone, since they were in the old library.
The thing I notice is that iTunes moved all the artist folders... For instance, my album by the group Baka used to be in "ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Baka" with previous versions of iTunes, but now iTunes 8 seems to want to flatten that out and it moved that directory to reside at "ExternalHD/Users/rodney/Music/iTunes/Baka". So, while it works, it looks messy. I liked it better when all the artist folders were down a level in the directory /iTunes Music/. Then the only things in the iTunes folder were the database files, a few other files iTunes has created over the years, and the iTunes Music folder.
But whatever... at least I don't have to add thousands of songs back into iTunes manually.
Just as a side note, I took a clue from the directory flattening out, and I tried one other thing: I put all the artist folders back down in the /iTunes Music/ folder, and I moved my original "iTunes Library" files down into that folder too. Then on startup, I tried pointing iTunes at the original library which was now down one level. But that didn't help... the individual song paths in that database are apparently still pointing onto my internal HD.
Rodney

Sync problems since moving iTunes library to external HD

My wife's MacBook Pro is the syncing computer for our house. Since she moved her library to an external drive we have had to start all over. iTunes is current. In preferences the library is mapped correctly to where it resides on the external drive. The sync begins and then almost immediately stops with an error message that the file type (music and TV shows total of 100 errors) is not supported by this Apple TV. The Apple TV has been reauthorized in iTunes Store. I am as I write this syncing the photos, but since they are in iPhoto, that seems to work fine. I disabled the syncing of music for this sync until I get this figured out. The cover art for all the movies and TV shows is not available. All of this content synced fine before the change to the external drive. I suspect that once the photos are done syncing the TV shows and movies won't sync because the above mentioned error messages will prevent this from happening.
Any help much appreciated.
CD3

Hi Winston,
After 4 hours of futzing around and finally fixing, I found my answer on the iTunes forum. Simply mapping the external drive which now has the content to iTunes, is not enough. All that does is tell iTunes where to put new purchases. The library list is there, but when trying to play or sync anything, there is an alert exclamation mark. When you click on that it tells you that the song can't be found and asks would you like to find it. I knew something was wrong when none of the cover art was available. So I did a test and "found" 2 missing songs, and 2 TV shows. The exclamation mark then disappeared next to each, the songs played, and I tried to sync just the aforementioned content, and that worked perfectly.
So now I'm faced (since I didn't know how to do this, and frankly still don't have the easy answer) with "finding" every single piece of content manually. Yikes!. So I found on the iTunes forum the "add to library" command and everything shows up fine and plays fine except that I now have duplicates of everything. One each of the exclamation point and one of the real content. LOTS! 1000 plus songs, 2 dozen movies 100 plus TV shows, audio books, podcasts.
Here is where I don't know the easy solution, which you may know for future reference, once you've "added to library. What I ended up doing was deleting all the exclamtion points one by one. That part alone took and hour and a half of near midnight, very tired, bleary eyes. The good thing was if you happen to accidentally try to delete the real content as you go down the list you get a warning. I checked the trash when I was done, so nothing was accidentally deleted.
The sync took quite a long time, about 9 hours, because there is alot of video content, but it's all on the TV now. Everything! Phew!
Do you know of an easier way to do this when you put your library on an external drive? Or should this question be posted on the iTunes forum. I may do that anyway.
Many thanks for your help.
CD3

Different way of moving iTunes library - will it work?

At our house we run one iTunes install and it is on my iMac. We have two Apple TV's and two iphones that we sync to this install.
We have purchased A LOT of movies, tv shows and music over the last year since we have had the APPLE TV's as well as burned a lot of our personal DVD's to the hard disk (we still have the DVD's which we purchased so all is legal) so that our entire collection can be accesssed.
Currently our collection takes up 1.6TB and lives on a 2TB Firewire disk connected to my iMac.
We just got my wife a Mini Mac and we want to make her computer the main iTunes computer in the house.
Now I have read lots of articles about moving your iTunes library between computers but they all involve moving the files to a portable disk and then copying them to the new computers drive.
Being that we have so much space in our library and that they are already on a portable disk is there another way?
I would love to just unplug the firewire disk from my computer and plug in hers and have it moved over but I am guessing there is more to it then that, and since there is so much data there I do not want to risk it and have anything go wrong.
Any ideas on how to best move the library to my wife's computer?
Thanks in advance.

There are two main parts to the iTunes library - the database files & the actual media. Usually the database files are placed in *<User Folder>\Music\iTunes* with the media placed in *<User Folder>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music*.
If you have the standard layout then, in principle, your library should be "portable" and you can move the top level iTunes folder to another path or connect the drive to another computer with ease. To open a library in a different location click on the iTunes icon and immediately hold down Option(Mac) or Shift(PC) until a prompt appears, navigate to the new folder location and open the *iTunes Library.itl* file therein - iTunes should resolve all the file pointers and be able to access all your media. Simply connect the drive to the other machine, install iTunes and connect to the library using this method.
If you've kept the database on the internal hard drive, but moved the content folder (iTunes Music or iTunes Media with iTunes 9.x) to the external drive then things are little more complicated however it may still be possible to make your library portable. Copy the database files (iTunes Library Extras.itl, iTunes Library Genius.itl, iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Library.xml & sentinel) plus any other subfolders (Album Artwork, iPod Games, Mobile Applications) to the parent folder of the media folder on the external drive. I.e. if your media folder on the external is called *...\Music\iTunes Music* then copy the files into the ...Music folder. Now use Option/Shift to open the library database on the external drive and test that you can still access your media. If that works, install iTunes on the other machine, connect the drive & use Option/Shift to open the libray on that machine. If any step fails simply go back and open the previous library - you're not doing anything destructive here, or asking iTunes to take charge of moving 1.6Tb of data about which could potentially go wrong.
If you've split the content between different locations, e.g. put all your movies in a separate folder outside of iTunes Music, then you should be able to use the general method as above, delete (from iTunes only - NOT the files) any content that is not inside the iTunes Music/iTunes Media folder, then reimport from it's new location on the relocated drive.
tt2

Moving iTunes library from external HD to MacBook Pro

Ok, so a while ago, my iTunes library had grown so large I was running out of space on my Mac, so I moved all the files to an external HD. Of course, I could only listen to my music (as well as sync my iPhone and iPod) with the external device plugged in.
Fast forward to today, and I've decided that I'd like to reverse this process, as it's far too big a pain in the rear to continue, not to mention the fact that I'm a little sick and tired of entire albums disappearing for no apparent reason.
That said, if I simply go to Files>Add to Library and click on the iTunes Music file on my external HD, will I end up with duplicates of all 2300 of my albums? This is what I'm dreading, as I have nightmarish visions of my sitting here all weekend deleting duplicate files.
Sorry if this is a ridiculous question, but there it is...
Danke schoen!

Did you move the whole library or just media (there is a big difference)?
Whole library:
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music [library] to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527 - a somewhat bewildering and not always easily understandable set of options.
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the new location of the iTunes Library.itl file in the moved iTunes folder.
For the record there's this reference for iTunes 11 but it really doesn't strike me as having the specifics you need. iTunes 11 for Mac: Move your library to another computer - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12168
Just media:
Consolidate is how you move your iTunes media files to a new location. Consolidate simply looks at everything you have in iTunes and copies them to the iTunes media folder location specified in iTunes prefs -> Advanced.
iTunes 11 for Mac: Change where your iTunes files are stored - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12165 - more information at: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22026652

I moved itunes file to external hard drive and want to move the file on my pc to recycle bin. When I move i get an error message that it cannot delete ituneshelper.dll access is denied. Can I move that file to the recycle bin?

I am trying to free up space on my pc and moving itunes files to external hard drive. I have followed instructions and believe I have file copied to new drive, but I am having trouble moving file to recycle bin as the instructions say. I am getting the following error message: cannot delete ituneshelper.dll:access denied, make sure disk is not full or write protected and file not in use. I know the file is not in use when trying to move. Any help would be most appreciated. I am on Windows XP.

Yes. And you should not have moved that folder. Put it back. To move your iTunes library move the folder from User's Music.
tt2

I'm using Windows 8. I have 2 folders in my videos library - movies and personal videos. When I try to import a movie into iTunes, it puts it in the Home Video section and if I import a personal video, it puts it into the home video section. what up?

Im using Win8. I originally had all my ripped movies in a movie folder listed in the videos library. This imported into iTunes movies with no issue. I later added a second folder t my library - personal videos where i put all my home videos. I was able to import this into iTunes and it showed up in "Home Movies" - very cool and exactly what I wanted. Now, if I add a new ripped movie and put it in my movie librairy and try to import it into iTunes, it places it in Home Movies. And if I put a new personal video, it will also import into iTunes under 'Home Video?. What is going on here?? Any help would be greatly appreciated - it seems like this is a bug in iTunes 11.

I thank you for the response. Apple does some assinine things sometimes and this is one of them. Ask the planet the difference between a movie and a home video and with the exception of Apple, you'd get 100% consenus on the what difference is. A home video is something that I shoot, like my kids birthday party. A movie is something I urchased either via download or a DVD that I ripped. Unbelievable! The fact that Apple has chosen not to distinguish based upon which folder I tell it is Movies and which folder is Home Videos is really hard to fathom - sounds like something Windows would do. I find it funny that in my iTunes movies sub-section of the movies section, the movie icons have a cloud icon in upper right corner to distinguish it as bought from Apple iTunes versus no cloud icon for movies that I have ripped - so the distintion was already made and clearly visible. Now - everything just defaults to "home videos" if I try to import a new ripped DVD - why even bother to have this distinction on the iTunes bar? WOW!
As for your direction, I do not understand what you are telling me - what Media Kind and what Options tab are you referring to? I see no Options tab in iTunes. Right licking on the movie icon does not yield media kind or options as well. Gping to the source file does not yield these options either.
Thanks again for your help.
Clay

Why does iTunes not refresh the Music Library if files are updated?

What if have already a nice library SYSTEM built for my music, and every time I add 30-50 files to 30-50 different locations, iTunes requires me to add the same song again... What if I am doing this updating for 3 hours and I can't remember anymore which songs I added to my Brazilian compilation folder? Why can't iTunes update the library with added files? I see this question popping up on a lot of forums. This is very cumbersome. I keep my international music collection organized by country of origin. If I let iTunes consolidate my music, it will put everything into one big folder organized by name of artist. I definitely don't want to let the program do that. I would lose all my work and all my system.
Once I imported the folder system into iTunes though as a reference, it does not recognize if there was a change, music added, music deleted, music reogranized. It doesn't make sense to delete everything from the iTunes Music Library every time I update my music collection.
Where is the solution? I want iTunes to find the changes and apply it to my Music Library automatically.
I can live with my iPod only having the files in one big library, since I mostly use it for shuffle play anyway, but I want to keep my originals in an orderly manner based on style, country of origin, etc. I don't want to end up having all my files renamed and moved.
So I need iTunes to refresh my Music Library by looking at the original folder I imported the list from, and make the necessary changes.

I guess then this is a serious shortcoming of iTunes... Up till this point I owned an RCA Lyra MP3 player and it had no problems whatsoever doing these things. I guess, after seeing how iTunes and iPod works, I'd rather return to Lyra if it had an 80 G version. The only thing that still keeps me with iPod is the capacity.
It seems like that iTunes is a very cumbersome program and it tries to be so much user friendly that it even tries to eliminate the human element. Sometimes, it makes sense to keep files organized in specific manner. Especially when there is work involved and productivity.
I guess I will just delete everything from the play list and read in the main folder every once in a while, leaving the machine working on it during the night or something, then another night, it will refresh my iPod. That's the only solution I see right now.
It is interesting that a huge program like iTunes cannot do what a small one like Lyra can. And I even read in user groups that some people created programs for this problem, but those programs don't work with iTunes 7 well yet, so I am stuck with the manual updating or the brutal deletion and re-reading.
Thank you for the answer. At least I know what not to expect from the program. I just use it for only one purpose: load music onto iPod, then forget about it. It quite an unuseful program for me otherwise.
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I am trying to delete songs from itune 11 library and i want it to delete the song from my hard drive as well. All my songs are in the music folder but not in the itunes folder?? itunes did not prompt me to move file to trash nor is there an option??

I am trying to delete songs from itune 11 library and i want it to delete the song from my hard drive as well. All my songs are in the music folder but not in the itunes folder. itunes did not prompt me to move file to trash nor is there an option to remove file to trash bin. How can i delete songs from both the itunes and hard drive at the same time?

aespinoza2210 wrote:
could it be in the itunes folder or does it have to be in the itunes media folder, which is within the itunes folder??
A Espinoza,
The iTunes Media folder is set in Preferences > Advanced, and is the key to most iTunes folder organizational activities. So I doubt that the automatic deletion will work for files that are somewhere else within the folder structure.
However, I have not experimented with that issue in quite a while, so you are welcome to give it a try in iTunes 11.

Moved iTunes library to an ext hard drive to make space on my int drive... Followed steps from apple. Now I cannot access my music... It says: "File could not be used because the original file cannot be found. Would you like to locate it?"

Moved iTunes library to an ext hard drive to make space on my int drive... Followed steps from apple. Now I cannot access my music... It says: "File could not be used because the original file cannot be found. Would you like to locate it?"
I moved my iTunes library to my external hard drive some time ago and I followed the directions listed here on the apple support page. It did copy my library and now is on my hard drive... I can open iTunes and use it to sync all of my devices but I would like to play my music... I can see all of my music files but can not play them if I click on an album or song it says the following: "(file name) could not be used because the original file cannot be found. Would you like to locate it?" I click locate but do not know where to go from there? I need a way to access all files and not to hunt down one at a time on my hard drive... I am pretty sure I deleted the original library to make space on my internal drive which was the reason for moving it. I have tried and tried to fix it and do not have a lot of time to do so with a one and two year old at my house who do not like it whenI sit down at my computer. What to do??? Any help is much appreciated!!!

See Make a split library portable. Move all of the bits of the library together in the the correct shape and it should work. Or undo exactly what you did and then start over.
If you're a former Windows user don't try merging two folders together that have the same name by dropping one into the same folders as the other, as that goes badly on a Mac.
tt2

Moved itunes to Ex HD, does library move automatically?

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