Moving itunes folder and music to external drive

I moved my itunes folder and all my mp3's onto an external hard drive. As a result, all of the songs that appear in itunes has a ! and says they cannot find where the songs are. It seems that I have to re-import everything all over again including re-ripping all my CD's to itunes again. Is there a better way to go about retrieving my library? Is there a way to import what is on my ipod into itunes or is it only a 1 way thing? Please help.

Go to edit-->preferences Click the advanced tab
Change the location of the iTunes music library to the current location. I don't recall if it will then update the links. If they still show up with the ! after the change, post back for instructions on how to tell iTunes they are there all at once.
btabz

Similar Messages

Moving iTunes Library and Music to External Hard Drive...Possible?

I want to transfer my iTunes Library to an external hard drive. Is this possible and what are the pitfalls, if any?
Thanks
A.L.I

Yes it's quite possible, that's how I have mine set up, and Moving iTunes Music will tell you how to go about it.
Pitfalls? Can't really think of any.
Regards
TD

How do I combine iTunes movies and music on external drive and play both from same library?

Trying to make an old MacBook with current iTunes a server for Apple TV. Have burned DVDs to external drive and have added my music to drive. iTunes made a library on the external drive. When I open iTunes to choose a library, I can either get all of the movies or get all of the music, but I cannot choose something that is both. I have even dragged the movies into the same file as the music, hopping that would help, but alas, I can still just have one or the other.
Any help would be so appreciated.
Thank you.

Choose one library and drag the files from the other to the library in the open iTunes application window.
(113949)

I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

Hopefully you moved the entire iTunes Media (or iTunes Music) folder to a new path on your external drive. Copy your iTunes library folder out to the root of the external drive, e.g. X:\iTunes (where X: is your external drive), then move the media folder inside it. Hold down shift as you start iTUnes and keep holding untila asked to choose or create a library. Choose the library at X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl. Should all be good.
Failing that, download and run my FindTracks script and point it at the new location of your media folder.
tt2

Sharing Itunes library and backup on external drive

Would appreciate if anyone can offer help on their experiences of external / NAS drives. I've been looking for the best solution to move my entire Itunes library to an external drive that I can put on the network so can have access from PC's, Mac and Iphone. Just recently moved to new MBP but still have PC's in home.
Have looked at varying solutions and think I've got it narrowed down to going for either QNAP TS212 NAS or dedicated Iomega Network hard drive but seem to come over a lot of conflicting reports of these items not working well with MAC, particularily some comments on the use of Iomega which is the more cost effective solution.
A little background was planning on 2TB drives and partioning for Itunes library, Time Machine backups and PC backups. Have the S/W on MAC to read/write NTFS.
From my research the dedicated NAS would be appear to be the best answer but a lot more expensive than a network drive.
Can anyone advise of a network drive that they have experienced working well for this type of configuration?
Also is there any issues with syncing Iphone to an external networked library?
Any Advice Appreciated
Thanks

Trevnew wrote:
when looked in preferences the old location was still there, eventually changed in preferences
Trev,
changing iTunes media folder location via preferences > advanced tells iTunes where to put new additions to your library, not where the current content is.
also, with your library now on the NAS, you must make sure the NAS is mounted on your desktop before launching iTunes.
... still showed an issue with the file locations and the exclamation marks.
you may have done something wrong initially (during re-locating your library to the NAS) because the exclamation marks usually appear when media files were moved using the finder and iTunes lost track of their location.
you might be able to use this script:
iTunes Track CPR v1.3
This script attempts to locate the files of so-called "dead tracks"--iTunes tracks designated with (!)--that you assume are not actually missing but are still located in the iTunes Music folder in their "iTunes File Order" (Music -> Artist -> Album -> file.xxx)."

Moving iTunes 6 Library to an external drive

All I wanted to do is reroute the iTunes Library from my Macs INTERNAL DRIVE, to an EXTERNAL DRIVE (that has more space) AND keep all my hard earned playlists & downloaded album covers intact. Unfortunetly I followd the directions for an earlier versions of iTunes. Final result; I was able to change the location, BUT all the playlists & album cover downloads were lost (hard work down the drain!). Does anybody know if there are any updated instructions for doing this available for iTunes 6?
Thanks to anybody who can help with this.
Dan

Dan,
in this case for whatever reason something went really wrong: The 2 library files "iTunes Music Library.xml" as well as "iTunes Library" must not be moved.
All playcounts, ratings etc. are stored in the last one mentioned.
If this files isn't in your iTunes folder, iTunes creates a blank one: All metadata will get lost.
If the original files still exist: Close itunes and move back "iTunes Music Library.xml" as well as "iTunes Library" into "iTunes" and relaunch the application.

Windows 7, iTunes 10 and Seagate FreeAgant External Drive issues

I'm having some serious problems with making the three mentioned above to go along with one another. The thing with my iTunes library is that it had started to take up some much of my PC's internal hard drive space that I decided to move it all to my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 3TB external drive. The problem itself is that while syncing my iPhone with the contents on that drive, iTunes is, more often than not, non-responsive. It simply freezes up for longer periods of time. And when it unfreezes, it moves forward with the the syncing process for just a bit. Moreover, it's not only iTunes that freezes like this. The same thing happens with the external drive and even, which seems oddest to me, Safari. It all makes the syncing process extremely slow in regards of transferring files to or from my 32GB 3GS iPhone. For example, I have started syncing my iPhone some time after 10A.M. Right now it's nearly 4 P.M., and iTunes has optimized (and only optimized) 1,205 out of 8,303 photos. This is just a nightmare... :/ Worth mentioning here is that I keep all my photos and the iPod Photo Cache folder on the external drive as well.
I had heard that Windows 7 has some communication issues with various peripheral devices, and I am not sure whether this is the case or not. I'm also not sure whether this is a Windows 7-related problem only, or does iTunes contribute to it as well.
If anyone was able to help me resolve this problem, I would be really grateful

I must say it's a bit of a relief to know someone is in the very same situation and that one another can relate. Writing my previous post, I forgot about polydorus' question regarding any constant backup process running in the background, and so I can answer this question here: No, there are no backup processes running in the background. This question, however, made me wonder what else could be slowing the external drive/iTunes down. There is a Dashboard software related to this specific external drive which starts along with every system startup. I quit this software before starting the syncing process again (I got an electricity cut off during the previous syncing, so I simply had to start it all over again :/), and now iTunes doesn't show in the Task Manager as "Not Responding". At least it doesn't happen until another application turns non-responsive, when it does, iTunes and Safari turn non-responsive as well.
But even though iTunes shows as "Running" most of the time now, the syncing process is still as slow as h-e-l-l :/ I began this last syncing yesterday at 8:09P.M., and right now it's nearly 12:00P.M. :/ iTunes looks as if it was running, since the rotating arrows icon next to my iPhone name on the left pane don't stop, but iTunes stops from time to time, without going any further with optimizing photos - it looks as if it was waiting until it could access the external drive.
I don't know what else could be slowing everything down like this :/ Could it be iPhone itself, which slows down the communication between the PC and the external drive, because it's also connected to the USB port, taking up some of its bandwidth?
igbg: My driver is running on 6.1.7601.17514 drivers' version. Even if there is a newer version of these drivers (which, basing on your post, I guess wouldn't solve the problem :/), I can't update it now, while syncing
P.S. As for my music, I keep it on my D drive, and have no problems with playing it. It's only the whole rest (books, movies and photos) which is stored on the external drive

Moved Itunes folder and everything is now gone - how can I recover it?

My C drive was low on disk space - so tonight I sent alot of the files that were on the C drive (only 14 gigs total) to my D drive (140+ gigs w/ tons of room)because I was down to something like 200 MBs.
One of those folders happened to be the Itunes folder w/ the files Itunes music library (xml doccument), Itunes library (Itunes music database file), and Itunes music
I didn't delete anything - and all the files seem to be intact just as they were before - only on my D drive now. Unfortunatly this caused 8 gigs of music to be deleted from my itunes which took me hours to organize
Is there any way to restore my Itunes back to what it was?
Thanks in advance for any help or advice you can offer
Dan

You will not have lost any of the orgainsiation (Playlists/Ratings etc) as long as you don't lose the iTunes library file.
You can re-import the songs from your D: drive, but it would create a different library file (since the library file tells iTunes where all the songs are kept - and this has changed).
If you did it this way, you would keep all the song info (Artist/Name/Genre/CD Cover etc.) but lose your ratings and Playlists.
Just thought of a better way to do this.
Copy your iTunes library file (its v small) back to your C: drive in its previous location.
Go to itunes Preferences (possibly called 'options' on Windows version) and go to the 'Advanced' tab. In the General tab within this, there is an option to change your iTunes music folder location. Hit change and browse to where your music is now stored. This way, your music should appear back in your iTunes library, all playlists intact and all ratings/tags as they were before

Moved i tunes and files to external drive and now have 3000 files???? help

I moved all files to an external drive and now show all files as seperate how do i find my playlists and also put the items back into i tunes form??? so f#%@ing confused and also the library comes up as a huge dos read file?
what do I need to do.
i local to portland free diner to wjo ever helps me out or my wife is going to kill me for severe time lost!~

Import is just a word for copying photos from the phone to a computer and not that different than what I do in Windows -- although I haven't compared the speed on a large number of photos. If you are importing and using iPhoto, you might try doing it with Image Capture which will allow you to copy them directly to an external drive. It may be faster than doing it to iPhoto but I haven't compared the speed. Instructions from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083 are shown below.
Connect the iOS device to the computer.
If Image Capture does not open automatically, you can navigate to your Applications folder and open Image Capture from there.
Choose the location to which you'd like to import pictures.
Click Options.
Click the Options tab if it isn't already selected.
Enable the option "Delete items from camera after downloading".
Note: Deleting photos after importing helps to reduce Camera Roll size, and it improves backup and restore times. You may choose Keep Photos if you wish to import the photos to additional computers.
Click OK.
Click Download All.

Moved ITunes folder to external drive now can't get Ipod to sync

I have moved my ITunes folder from laptop to external drive. Had to move each album folder individually to ITunes and when I went to Sync my Ipod, says its in Restore mode and can't get out of it as it stays in Restore mode over and over and over.

As a best practice, you should move your content to an external drive and import references to into iTunes rather than moving the whole database and app files. In iTunes > Preferences > Advanced, uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library". This will keep all your music and movies on the external drive, but iTunes and all references to the content on your desktop.
I know that's not what you wanted to hear as a fix, but this is how I have my MacBook Air setup and it works fine with the iPad. My son tried to move the whole app and database to a hard drive and we had endless problems with it.

How do l play music from external drive using itune.

Does anyone know how to use itune to play music from external drive without upload sounds to the itune libray.

You don't. Use the QuickTime Player instead.
(61573)

Moved iTunes folder to external hard drive

I have a 40-gig iBook and wanted to create more space on the hard drive so I pick up a 160 gig external hard drive. I copied the iTunes folded onto the new external hard drive including the iTunes Library, iTunes Music and the iTunes Music Library.xml files. I then went to the iTunes reference folder and changed the location of the folder to the new external hard drive. My music shows up in iTunes but when I select a song I get the “The song “___” could not be found. Would you like to locate it” error message. How do I fix this problem without relocating each song?

OK try this. Warning, while I am hoping it won't this might lose all your ratings, playcounts, and playlists.
Exit iTunes. Go into the iTunes folder and make a copy of the two database files onto your desktop. These are the files that contain the ratings, playcounts, playlists, etc. If you don't care about those things, then skip this and go to the next step.
Now create a NEW iTunes library by following these instructions...
How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
Now, grab, drag, and drop the iTunes music folder where your music and other media already is, onto your new library. It should now add all the stuff to the library AND know where it is now. It may create a new copy of everything on your hard drive, so you need to have enough room to do this. When it is done, you can go ahead and delete the old location you just dragged and dropped if it was all copied into the new library's music folder.
Again, if you don't care about ratings, playlists, etc. you can stop here since you now have everything back in your library and working. If you want to try and save your ratings, etc. we can try this...
Exit iTunes. Go get those copies of the database files you put on the desk top. Move them and overwrite the ones that were created in your brand new library. Restart iTunes. Did you get them back?
Patrick

Help needed with consolidating and moving itunes folder.

I have imported songs into itunes using with the Copy Files To iTunes Folder When Adding To The Library box unchecked and moved the location of my music folder to an external hard drive. I already had a folder full of music files on this hard drive so I now have 2 folders with music files, the iTunes folder with music recently imported from cd's and the old folder. The library points to references to both of these folders but not ALL of the files in the old folder as I don't need them in iTunes.
I now want to be able to listen to my iTunes library when not connected to the external drive. How do I do this? If I reset the location of my iTunes folder back to the macbook do I then need to consolidate, and if I do will only the files with reference pointers go into this folder? I don't want all the music files in the old folder to go onto the macbook, only the ones with reference pointers to them, plus the ones in the iTunes music folder.

I have imported songs into itunes using with the Copy Files To iTunes Folder When Adding To The Library box unchecked and moved the location of my music folder to an external hard drive. I already had a folder full of music files on this hard drive so I now have 2 folders with music files, the iTunes folder with music recently imported from cd's and the old folder. The library points to references to both of these folders but not ALL of the files in the old folder as I don't need them in iTunes.
I now want to be able to listen to my iTunes library when not connected to the external drive. How do I do this? If I reset the location of my iTunes folder back to the macbook do I then need to consolidate, and if I do will only the files with reference pointers go into this folder? I don't want all the music files in the old folder to go onto the macbook, only the ones with reference pointers to them, plus the ones in the iTunes music folder.

Using the iTunes folder within Music on PC; difference between "managed" and "referenced"

On my PC, I currently have all of my music within the Music folder (C:\Users\Stephen\Music) all split by artist into relevant folders.
There is also an iTunes folder within this Music folder, however only a small amount of music is within this folder (after doing some research, any album I ripped from my own CDs went into this folder directly).
I have since noted that there's a difference with how iTunes refers to the music within my Music folder as opposed to the iTunes folder within the Music folder ("referenced" as opposed to "managed").
Previously whenever I wanted to add any music to iTunes I would simply click "add folder to Library" under File. I haven't had the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" option ticked.
My questions are:
Should I have everything in the iTunes folder as listed above? Is there any benefit in arranging it this way?
If I make this change, should I also make sure I have the "copy files to iTunes Media folder" option ticked?
If there is a benefit in having my music "managed" by iTunes as opposed to just being "referenced", is it possible for me to just dump all of my music from \Stephen\Music\variousbands to Stephen\Music\iTunes\variousbands, without it screwing anything up within iTunes?
If I now want to move all my music to an external hard drive, will this effect anything? i.e. could I just move the whole \Stephen\Music folder to the external HDD and would this be fine? Or would I need to have it in the iTunes folder first and then move that folder across?
Many thanks in advance for any assistance. I just want to make sure I have the correct set up and not run into any problems when moving to my external HDD!

Yes, there is a benefit in having your iTunes library organized inside the iTunes Media folder.
If you place new content inside the iTunes Media folder before adding it to the library then the setting of the "Copy files..." option isn't important. Letting iTunes make copies of files added from outside the media folder leaves you with having to manage them later, or possibly leads to a situation where you end up importing them again leading to duplicates.
You can't (in general) move your files around without iTunes losing track of them. A special case exists when the files are inside the designated iTunes Media folder, which in turn is inside the iTunes folder that contains the library files. When the library is in this shape the entire iTunes folder and its subfolders can be moved as a unit between drives, or even computers, and iTunes won't lose track of the media. Having the library organized in this portable state, and backed up, should ensure you can migrate or restore your library when the need arises.
If you want to reorganize the library properly do the following:
Use the option File > Library > Organize Library... > Rearrange files in the folder "<Media Folder">, if not greyed out, then press OK.
Close iTunes.
Copy the entire iTunes folder to the root of your chosen drive, e.g. to X:\iTunes, then delete the file X:\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.xml as this file will be redundant in the new layout.
Press down and hold shift as you click the icon to start iTunes. Keep holding until asked to choose or create a library.
If iTunes opens normally, close it and go back to step 4.
Click Choose and browse to the new copy of the library file, e.g. X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl.
Use the option File > Library > Organize Library... > Consolidate files and click OK. When the process is complete the iTunes folder and media files that were connected to iTunes on your original drive can be deleted. Though ideally not before you backup your library to another disk.
tt2

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

Moving itunes folder and music to external drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for