Moving Music Files to new hard drive

I followed the instruction in iTunes Help, but it says to choose "Consolidate Library" from the Advanced tab in preferences. I have no such option on the screen. Can anyone help?

Consolidate Library is under Advanced on your Menu bar, up where File and Edit etc are, not in Preferences.

Similar Messages

  • Moving music files via external hard drive-- Can you keep ratings/playlists

    I keep all my music on an external hard drive in order to prevent it getting lost. Anyways... what I'm wondering is if I go to move my music from one computer (comp. A) to another computer (comp. B), is it possible to keep all the ratings and my playlists? I've seen the stuff for transfering with your ipod, but the problem is my 30Gb doesn't hold all my music, and I would reeeeeaaally hate to go through and redo all the ratings. If anyone knows maybe a file involved with itunes that might contain the ratings or playlists that I could store with the files themselves to transfer that would be excellent. Thanks to anyone who can help out. If you need clarification on any of the details just lemme know.

    It looks like it should, thanks. One other bit that I'm wondering about is how do I load that Library list once I've installed itunes on comp B? Is it just a matter of going file>import or file>add new file to library? Thanks again

  • Moving music files to external hard drive

    I bought an external hard drive and want to free up my main C drive by moving my music, pictures and videos to it. One of the folders in My Music is "iTunes" which has the folder "iTunes Music" which holds all of the music that iTunes communicates with. The new external drive is the "H" drive. How do I tell iTunes that all of my music is now located elsewhere, without actually having to go down the list song by song, which would be impossible, time wise. Some sort of single bulk change from one drive to another. Thank you

    Well, you never said that's what you wanted to do, so why don't you calm down and stop yelling at the people who are trying desperately to help you.
    "How do I tell iTunes that all of my music is now located elsewhere, without actually having to go down the list song by song, which would be impossible, time wise. Some sort of single bulk change from one drive to another. Thank you."
    All you asked for was assistance with moving your iTunes music. We provided instructions, which you chose to ignore.
    Moving your entire My Documents folder is a completely different procedure and you could have saved everyone a lot of frustration if you just made it clear that you wanted to do that in the first place.
    At the risk of complicating this thread any further, I am going to remove myself from it. Moving your My Documents folder is not something I feel comfortable helping with, as I am not a Windows user and I don't want to provide the wrong info for you and end up screwing up your entire machine.

  • Itunes exclamations moved mp3 files to new hard drive

    hi
    i recently bought a new computer (quad) and the new hardive is big enough to put all my mp3s onto one hardrive. so i put all 80gigs worth into one folder called "mp3s" and then i have sub folders to categorize them as latin etc...obviously itunes will display ! on every song now that they arent in their original location...so i went to advanced tab and made the "mp3s" folder the default music folder and assumed itunes would be smart enough to reestablish links to every song in my playlists...but no!!!...i tried one posts suggestions which worked the best (creating xml file etc)..but most all of the songs in my playlists still didnt show up...and every song in playlist is located in the "mp3s" folder so i assume it couldnt handle 80gigs worth of songs?
    my complaint with itunes is i use to use some mp3 player on OS 9 that was smart enough to reestablish links to multiple playlists by simply selecting one song in the playlist and selecting the new location of the file, then it would automatically see any other mp3 contained in any subfolders and reestablish links to it....simple...why cant itunes on OS X do this.
    any help appreciated
    thanks

    after reading many posts on apple, talking to apple tech support and googling nothing solved my problem completely...however i figured out a way to get it to work for me
    MY SCENARIO:
    before i had two different drives with 20gigs of mp3s on each drive and itunes on another drive...my files are organized by genre not artist so having itunes oraganize my mp3s is a no go and i have alot of playlists that i spent alot of time organizing so i didnt want to loose them.....when i got my G5 i finally had enough room to put all mp3s in one MP3 folder and thats what i wanted to do.
    STEPS I TOOK:
    1. I exported every playlist in the itunes on my old computer by going to file/export song list. then saved as .xml file. heres a link to apples directions:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93763
    2. I trashed all itunes prefs in user/home/library/preferences and all files in the user/home/music/itunes folder on my new computer...then i opened itunes and it goes thru standard steps and opens to an empty library.
    3. I copied all my mp3s to my new computer and placed them into one folder called MP3's ( you can copy or move to any drive(s) or folder (s)you want)
    4. then i went to itunes/file/add to library and selected the MP3s folder and itunes added every mp3 to the itunes library. (if you have mp3s on multiple drives simply continue to select the folders containing the mp3s and add them to the library)
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301509
    5. import the .xml song lists in step 1...as it imports some will import instantly, others you might see a progress bar as it searches...if some mp3 files in the playlist are missing it wont display them in the playlist.
    6. all mp3s should now be in the library and all playlists connected to the songs no more exclamation points.
    3. also afterwards or even in step 4 go to the advanced tab in the preferences and select the folder you want itunes to point to if you put all mp3s in one folder on one drive...make sure the "keep itunes folder organized" and "copy files to itunes music folder" are unchecked.
    FINAL THOUGHTS
    eventhough this wasnt that tough, this process could be made simplier by apple making itunes smart enough to locate broken linked files. i forget the name of an mp3 player i used on OS 9 but if i decided to move my mp3s to any other folder or hardrive, and reopen the mp3 app, it would show the files couldnt be found in the playlist, then when i clicked on one missing song the app was smart enough to scan that folder for any other mp3s in the apps playlists and automaticallly reconnect to them.
    quad g5   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

  • My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?

    My PC computer was wiped (virus) including itunes. How do I transfer the many playlists and music on my ipod to the new re-installed itunes?? Ipod is synced to old itunes. I have all original music files on external hard drive. Please help?
    New itunes is trying to wipe the ipod. But have many many playlists (many hours making) which I want to save. Any help would be appreciated.

    If you want to just extract the playlists from your iPod, plug it in iTunes.  When it appears under devices, right->click on it and choose Export Playlists.  Save them to a location such as your desktop and them import them into your library once you have copied and imported all of your music back into it.
    See this older post from another forum member Zevoneer covering the different methods and software available to assist you with the task of copying content from your iPod back to your PC and into iTunes.
    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2452022?start=0&tstart=0
    B-rock

  • 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

  • Updated music files on my hard drive and now itunes can't find path.

    I updated my music files on my hard drive and now iTunes can't find the path. too many to manually do. can itunes refresh or should i delete all itunes music files and re-import?

    Once a track is in your iTunes library, you should not touch it except through iTunes. But I guess you know that now.
    iTunes, to answer your question, cannot "refresh." If you re-add those files to your library, iTunes is unable to match them with the existing library entries, and will create a bunch of duplicate entries. This is a longstanding shortcoming of iTunes (and the source of lots of traffic on this fourm).
    If there are "too many to manually" reassociate, then starting over, in the sense of deleting and then re-adding, may be a good plan.

  • Moved my music to a new hard drive...

    Having read most of the other posts on the board, I have yet to read a solution to my specific issue.
    I had a crash recently and have upgraded to a new hard drive. I have moved my music from the E: drive to the F: drive in Windows Vista. Using the Shift button when iTunes was loading, I was able to switch the playlist library. So all my playlists are there but now I am getting the message "The song "blank" could not be used because the original file could not be found." To go and find each one will take forever because of the size of my collection.
    How do I tell iTunes where to find the songs for my old playlists?

    Fair enough Buegie, I'm sure I have scanned past the iLounge article before without noticing or following the link. But at least grant for the non-expert it's easy to get sidetracked. Combine that with stress and frustration and the obvious becomes invisible.
    It's a great article. Informative and well written, just like you said. I have not completed it yet, but have already learned the most important factor in my issues. It starts with a confession.
    The article leads me to believe that the reason I am struggling with moving iTunes around is because I am someone who has a "referenced" music library. Not only that, but a very large library (by most accounts), and one which my wife relies on for her part time job as a fitness instructor. I am avoiding the confession...
    I don't trust iTunes.
    There, I said it. I don't particularly like the way iTunes stores and keeps track of music in the Artist/Album concept either. Example, a Santana album that I have has various artists working with Santana. iTunes creates an artist folder for each track which has only one song in each, because logically to the computer each song is by a different artist "Santana and so-and-so." And the issue I have with trust is that if I ever want to use another program iTunes will store my music in a way such that I would have to spend a lot of time organizing it so that I could find it in another program.
    But my trust issues go deeper.
    The "this cannot be undone" message scares me to death. The biggest issue though is about trusting iTunes not to have any power over what I do with my music. If I want to move my music to another computer, it's mine, I should be able to. If I want to burn twenty copies, I should be able to. I realize with purchased music this is not allowed and I agree to that when I buy, but I really don't want my other music to be subject to such constraint parameters.
    I am going back to the article now. Just thought I'd share. I feel better.

  • Moving from old to new hard drive, some songs lost track number in file nam

    Anyone have thoughts on this? I changed to a larger hard drive a month ago. Copied everything over and things seemed OK. Synced daughter's ipod and things started acting weird. I compared old to new hard drive now and a bunch of songs are missing from the new drive but weirder is that some songs lost the track numebr in the name on the new drive - 04 loving.mp3 is now loving.mp3.
    we can't find a pattern to why those specific songs are like that. any thoughts?

    Sorry, never heard of that before.

  • ITunes won't let me move files to new hard drive

    Hey, all...I'm having a really major problem with my computer. I'm trying to move my iTunes library to a new hard drive. Currently, it's in a 1-terabyte Western Digital USB drive powered through the USB, and I'm trying to move it to a Seagate 1-terabyte drive. I currently have 535 gigabytes of media in my library and I have a MacBook with a 250-GB hard drive that I don't store any music on currently.
    I move the library file over to the new USB hard drive, and I consolidate my library as it asks me to do. Then, when I go down to "Organize library", it prepares to copy the files to the new disk, then gives me the big red stop sign and tells me "The disk cannot be read from or written to." and that's that. The files work fine when I try to play them, so they're there, and presumably, not irretrievably damaged. They're just impossible to move.

    A reply to an old problem, but I couldn't find this solution anywhere. I had the same problem when I moved my iTunes library to an external drive. As Apple recommends, I used File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files to copy my music files from my overstuffed hard drive to the external drive. Copying went fine for a while, adding about two-thirds of my files to the new drive without incident. Then I got the big stop sign with the error message: "Copying files failed. The disk could not be read from or written to."
    This turned out to have nothing to do with either the hard drive or the external disk. I had a bad file in my music library that was shutting down the consolidation process. Unfortunately the error message says nothing about which file may be the culprit. All I could think to do was to go back to my original library in iTunes and sort by Artist, select all cuts with artists beginning with A, right click and select "Consolidate Files". Then do the same with B artists, etc. Proceeding this way, files resumed copying but when I got to the "S" selections, the consolidate process failed again. Then I selected smaller and smaller batches until the problem file was identified. Removed it from my library and then Consolidate worked fine through the rest of the library. Problem solved.
    I spent several days working through this; hope I can save someone else the time.

  • Transfering itunes and music to a new hard drive

    A little background on my situation before I get to my question. I recently upgraded my desktop and before trading out hard drives I saved my itunes folder -including all of my music, to a flash drive. I opened up the flash drive once I installed the new hard drive and downloaded the itunes information onto it. Whenever I open up itunes now it shows all of my music, but I get a message that says, "song cannot be played because the original file cannot be found." My question is this: How do I get around this issue, how can I make itunes recognize that these are the original files from a previous hard drive?
    Thanks for any help that is provided.

    It would make more sense to move your whole home folder.
    1. WARNING: This procedure is for advanced users only. Some third-party software may not work as expected, or may not work at all, if the home folder is moved.
    2. Back up all data. Do not proceed unless you know how to undo these steps without having to ask for help. This website is not a support portal; it's a discussion forum. Don't assume that someone will help you if you get into trouble.
    3. If you do this wrong, you could end up with a bricked machine and no way to recover without losing data.
    4. Copy your home folder to the desired location, which must be on a volume of type "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" with file ownership enabled, as shown in the Finder Info dialog. Encryption is optional. The volume must be on a local storage device, not on the network, and it must be mounted automatically at startup — before any user logs in. A disk image will not work.
    The name of your home folder is your short user name. Do not rename it. Do not copy the "Users" folder.
    5. Select
     ▹ System Preferences ▹ Users & Groups
    Click the lock icon and authenticate. Right-click or control-click your name in the account list, and select Advanced options from the popup menu. In the sheet that opens, change the location of the home directory. Log out and log back in.
    6. Test. If you have problems, reverse the above steps. If you got this far, you should have no trouble doing that. If everything works as you expect, delete the original home folder.

  • Switching music library to new hard drive

    Hi.
    I recently bought a new external hard drive and transferred all of my music onto it from my old external hard drive. I'd like to change the music folder location to the new hard drive. My question is this: if I change it to the new hard drive, will the playlists be lost? I exported the library, but I think if I import it after changing the folder location that there will be double the songs in the library, but only half of them will be valid and I'd rather not have to go through all my songs and delete the ones that aren't found. Or will the library not be imported at all because it's a new location?
    Long and confusing question, but I've probably just made it too complicated in my head. If anyone can offer me some advice, I would greatly appreciate it.
    Thanks in advance.

    If you want to move your library to an external location, do it this way.
    Copy the entire iTunes folder over to the new external hard drive (not just the iTunes Music folder you find inside it). Once copied then use these instructions to open the library from its new location...
    How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
    That's it. Nothing else to do. Just start using the library from its new location. Just make sure the external is always powered up and mounted before opening iTunes. If you start iTunes and the external is not on, it will default back to the internal drive location for anything added to the library. You may not notice it for a while and find a bunch of your stuff is spread across the external and the internal drive. You would then have to change the preference back to the external drive location and do a Consolidate library command to correct.
    Patrick

  • How do I get iTunes to access music files on external hard drive?

    We moved all of our music to an external hard drive. The hd is always on and I connect to it wirelessly. I don't know how to get iTunes to use the library that is on the hard drive, can anyone help me please.

    iTunes expects to find its library in the ./Music/iTunes folder. To get iTunes to see music on another drive, you first have to create the library on your internal drive. Once you've done that, you copy the iTunes folder over to your external drive, and redirect iTunes to that drive, using an alias. (I originally did this in Tiger and it continues to work fine in Leopard. I don't know if doing it originally in Leopard would make any difference.)
    Note: If your external drive library is already too large for your internal drive, simply use as much of it as you can to create the original library on your internal drive. You can add the rest of it once you've got iTunes looking at the external drive. In this case, remember to name any "iTunes" folder on the external drive to something else, so you don't erase everything in the following procedure.
    Load up as much music as you can on your internal drive, making sure it appears in iTunes.
    Quit iTunes and copy the iTunes folder from your internal drive to your external drive (be sure you don't erase whatever's already on the external drive). Copying that folder to the root of the external drive is OK.
    On your internal drive, rename the 'iTunes" folder to something else (like orig_iTunes) -- or move it out of the Music folder.
    Open your external hard drive to the directory containing your iTunes folder.
    Cmd-Option drag the iTunes folder from the external hard drive to the internal hard drive Music folder, creating an alias in the internal drive's Music folder.
    Launch iTunes. You should now see the music from the external hard drive. If necessary, you can now add back any missing music, and it will automatically create the necessary music and library files inside your iTunes folder on the external drive. Once you've got them all added, you can delete both the orig_iTunes folder, and the folder on your external drive that served as the source for adding your library back in.

  • Can't find my music in iTunes - new hard drive

    I just had my computer repaired and they replaced the hard drive. Before I took it in for repair, I backed up all my data including music. But to do this I just copied all my files onto an external hard drive (I did not use any specific back up program). Now that my computer is repaired, they replaced the hard drive. I redownloaded iTunes but it is now the latest version but I think it might be an even more recent version than I had previously (and I don't know if this matters). So I put all my music into the iTunes folder (copied it back from my external hard drive) but when I open iTunes, it doesn't "find" it. I have tried every suggested "help" method I could find in the online FAQ support, but nothing works.
    Separately, for my daughter, I somehow screwed up the backup of her profile and lost ALL of her purchased music. What are the chances that Apple will let me redownload all of her purchases? If they don't, I have a 15 year old girl who will most likely murder her mother when she gets home from camp!
    And last question, I know that they only let you copy your music onto "5" computers. I already used up 2 uses due to replacement of my computer. Now with the new hard drive, will this make it number 3? I want to get a new laptop in the next year but don't want to get up to #4 of my allowance. Do they seriously expect us to repurchase all our music?
    My computer is running Vista.

    So I put all my music into the iTunes folder (copied it back from my external hard drive) but when I open iTunes, it doesn't "find" it.
    If you didn't back up or restore the iTunes database files, you also need to drag the music into the open iTunes application window.
    What are the chances that Apple will let me redownload all of her purchases?
    Click here and ask.
    And last question, I know that they only let you copy your music onto "5" computers.
    For most purposes, that doesn't apply to recent song purchases.
    (52550)

  • Hard Drive Crash--Restoring music files from External Hard Drive

    My hard disk crashed, but I think (at least I hope) that I'm backed up. I had copied all of my Itunes music onto an external hard disk before the crash, although I'm not sure I copied everything that you are supposed for a full backup (i.e. all files in the Itunes folder). I'm uncertain as to the process to get everything restored.
    Right now, Itunes is not installed on the new hard disk. Obviously I need to download and reinstall Itunes, which I'll do. But from here I'm confused, and I haven't seen a straightforward explanation of the next steps. Is it then as easy as copying all the old music from the external hard drive into the new Itunes music folder once Itunes is reinstalled, then synching? Or, do install itunes, then reopen it while the external hard drive is attached, and "consolidate" the old library into the new? Or do I first have to plug in the Ipod, authorize the new drive, and move the purchased music from the Ipod to the new drive through the manually managing music process that I've read about? Is there a relatively straightforward "step by step" process someone can point me at?
    I'd appreciate any guidance anyone can provide, or any directions to some materials that I can read. Thanks very much.

    If you copied the entire iTunes folder to the external, then all you have to do is install iTunes like normal, then start up with these instructions and point it to your backup on the external...
    How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
    Assuming that works, you can either leave everything as is and continue to use it directly off the external. Or close iTunes, then again copy the entire iTunes folder back to your internal drive, then reopen iTunes with those instructions again and re-point it back to your internal drive's copy.
    Patrick

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