Moving music folder complication

Help please! The hard drive on my sister's pc was nearly full and had a virus infection as well. In order to create space and clean up the hd I moved over 6GB's worth of iTunes music to a new hard drive. However, I did not know about the method for moving the music folder in iTunes and when her son was on the pc he could not see any of his music in his library. I attempted to move the music back but it still did not show up in the library. The library contains iTunes and non-iTunes purchased music in it. Is there any way to get the music back into the library? If I did a sync with the iPod could that update the music folder in a new directory on the new hard drive? Thanks for your help.

*If I did a sync with the iPod could that update the music folder in a new directory on the new hard drive?*
If the iPod is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from the iPod. If you didn't move the original iTunes library when you moved the music then the songs you moved will have to be added back into iTunes to create a new library: About the Add to Library, Import and Convert functions

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ITunes playlist empty after moving music folder

I have recently moved my music folder to a different partition on my PC. After doing that, my entire song list, including playlists, has vanished from iTunes.
I tried changing the media folder location by going to edit -> preferances -> advanced.
I tried holding Shift when starting iTunes and choosing the correct folder.
I tried exporting the playlist from my iPhone and importing back into iTunes (got an error message that the music could not be located).
None of the above worked...
What can I do now?
Keep in mind that I don't want to import my entire music directory back into iTunes, since I don't have enought storage space on my phone to sync the whole thing onto it.
Any ideas?
Thanks!

Hold down shift as you start iTunes. You should get a prompt to choose or create a library. Click choose. Browse to the folder for your relocated library and open the file iTunes Library.itl. If it still comes up empty, close iTunes and use the following technique...
Empty/corrupt library after upgrade/crash
Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps you shouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl and then rename the restored file as iTunes Library.itl. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
See iTunes Folder Watch for a tool to catch up with any changes since the backup file was created.
When you get it all working make a backup!
tt2

Moving Music folder

Hello, my problem is that I have multiple harddrives and since I was running out of room on one, I decided to move my music folder onto a different harddrive. Now whenever I try playing a song iTunes cannot find it, I was wondering if there was any way that I could redirect iTunes to the folder on the different harddrive, or would I have to do redo my library over. Thanks for any help

Moving the music manually (without informing iTunes) will create the '!' indication of a 'broken link'. Youll need to move the music back to its original spot for iTunes to pick it up again.
Then move the music using iTunes to the location you want (see below).
If you want to make another drive (direct or portable) on your PC the main music location for iTunes, move all song files there, as well as any future imported music from CDs, here is one method (see the links below):
You will maintain your playlists, ratings, comments, etc. This will only move your music folders location, NOT your iTunes program files or the Library database files. It is my opinion that programs (i.e. – iTunes) work better when installed on your main hard drive. At the very least, it makes it easier to manage all your programs if they are centrally located on one hard drive (the Windows default standard).
See these links for some step-by-step info:
iLounge: Moving your iTunes Library to a New Hard Drive
MacMuse: iTfW: Move iTunes music/Library to new drive
iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder
If you are moving the music to an external hard drive or network drive, after the transfer (and to work correctly), the drive must be running prior to your opening iTunes. If not, iTunes will reset the location of your music folder location to the default location (usually: ‘C:\...My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music’). If this happens, you need to manually change the path back to your external location, or future CD ‘Imports’ will be deposited on your internal HD.
Also make sure that the new drive always loads as the same Drive Letter, otherwise you will lose the references within iTunes.

Small problem after moving music folder

I moved my music folder to an external drive and used the consolidate library afterwards. All the music was moved with no problems and I have no exclamation points anywhere.
My only problem was I had purchased three iPod games. They are still located in the old folder on my Mac drive but they no longer show on iTunes so they have been removed from the iPod. How can I get these games back into iTunes?
Thanks

I posted just before you did that this was why they were not showing up. Problem is solved. The Phaze game also has a playlist and I got it to recreate the playlist by deleting it then restarting iTunes. I added songs to it and then resynced. No more problems.

Moved music folder to another drive, now iTunes won't open

I moved my music folder to another drive but when iTunes starting acting up I moved it back (in fact it got moved around and renamed a few times). I have uninstalled and re-installed iTunes now but still get the same message when I try and open it "The folder "iTunes" cannot be found or created and is required. The default location for this folder is in the "Music" folder". All my songs are still in my iTunes Music folder, everything else seems to be in place. Please help.

Do a shift-start of itunes.
Press *AND HOLD* the shift key whilestarting ituens.
Keep pressing and holding until you get a prompt to choose an itunes library.
Browse to wherever your music/itunes folder is, and select iTunes Library.itl.

HELP linking songs to ext HD - moved music folder - got Exclamation marks

I moved my music folder to an ext HD per the Apple article. Songs in my library have exclamation marks next to them & cannot be automatically located by iTunes. I can access them manually, but am looking for a way to correct whatever I did wrong that killed the link to my library & make the exclamation marks go away.
Thanks!
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.10)

A library is everything in the iTunes folder. Was the whole folder copied? If not, you only transferred media, not the whole library.
You do not tell iTunes where to find media by changing the preferences settings. You tell iTunes where to find media by either adding it to iTunes in the first place or by letting iTunes move the media. Changing preferences settings only tells iTunes where to put media from that point on.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847
What do you want on the external drive? The whole library, or only media?
Typically if you break the links to all files by moving the media folder to another drive in Finder iTunes will ask you to find a file. It will then offer to find others (takes some time). If it did not offer to do this or that didn't work then you have a non-standard folder structure and you are best off using your backup to restore everything and go back to the beginning and move it properly (we can help you with that). If you don't have a backup then it will take some effort to rebuild your library file and some data will be lost (ratings, date added, playcounts).

After moving Music folder to external disk, iTunes and iPhone Apps gone :-(

My 70GB PowerBook G4 needed disk space, hence I copied the Music folder to an external backup drive, and from there to a tiny portable drive, and then deleted it on the Mac (gained 14GB of space).
When I ran iTunes, and changed the location of the iTunes library to the portable drive, none of the music files are visible; worse yet, none of the iPhone Apps shows up. So I don't dare to synchronize, because I am afraid that I may even loose the iPhone Apps on the iPhone.
Your hints/solutions/suggestions are most welcome.
Thanks and cheers,
Veit

Thanks. John, for your excellent problem-solvers.
Since I had already deleted the itunes files on my Mac, I went the "TimeMachine restore way" and it works. Thanks! Good also to know that the iPhone Apps are always available.
Perhaps you know the answer to another iTunes/iPhone question:
On the iPhone I have some iPod music, but I hardly use it. When I sync the iPhone with the Mac, I'd rather just leave the music on the iPhone "alone" and only sync the iPhone Apps. But when I un-check the Sync Music box (in iTunes>Devices>iPhone>Music tab) I am getting a message that if I do not sync the music, the tunes on the iPhone will be deleted. How do I leave the music on the iPhone, WITHOUT syncing it with iTunes on the Mac (while syncing Apps, and perhaps photos)? Any suggestions there?
Cheers, Veit

Moved music folder to to an external hard drive - now iTunes wont open!!

I purchased and installed an external hard drive - I moved my music there with thoughs of upgrading my cpu in the future. When I tried to open iTunes it stated that the folder path contains an invalid character. - I moved everything back and it still does not work - the folder path that it is looking for no longer exists. I have tried to recreate the folder, I have tried to reinstall iTunes but I get the same message. I tried to uninstall iTunes with the hope that I could re-install but that also would not work.
I have checked the posts and cannot find this particular problem - can anyone help?

Try putting the files back where they were before you moved them, then follow the steps in this Apple document -> iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive

Re-Linking Library with moved music folder

I'm having trouble re-linking my library when I moved my mp3's to my shared folder. I know I can do it manuly one by one but I have over 5,000 files. Does any one know an easy way to re-link these files so I retain my playcounts and ratings?

Hello again guys, any luck? I'm about ready to give up, I can't believe there isn't anything that can be done about this. It seems like 1 out of 3 questions on this site come down to getting rid of the , I just can't believe there isn't a way to fix this.
I'm not sure if you guys caught the following msg I posted on Friday. I had several people recommend running this script, but everytime I try to run it I only get coding errors. Maybe this makes sense to you.
Hi folks,
I'm new to the group and posted a question in a couple of open threads without realizing it's encouraged to start a new thread. I've searched and searched and searched the archives in an attempt to find a solution, but it appears I have a common problem that doesn't have an easy solution.
I transfered my music from notebook to external HD and la la la la ...... I now have ! ! ! in front of all my files. I'm a bit anal when it comes to playcounts, ratings, etc and I don't want to lose all that info. Of the solutions I've so far discovered, using Otto's updating script http://ottodestruct.com/itunes/update.txt appears to be the best solution.
Below is the script and subsequent error I receive.
var iTunesApp = WScript.CreateObject("iTunes.Application");
var tracks = iTunesApp.LibraryPlaylist.Tracks;
var numTracks = tracks.Count;
var i;
for (i = 1; i <= numTracks; i++)
var currTrack = tracks.Item(i);
currTrack.UpdateInfoFromFile();
the variable between brackets {} are both indented once (couldn't get to do in text)
Line: 8
Char: 1
Error: object doesn't support this property or method.
I know little to none about scripting and programming in general. Has anyone else used this script (or knows how to script!) and could help troubleshoot the problem? I posted yesterday on Otto's page as well, but I'm not sure when he will find my particular comment.
Your help would be greatly appreciated,
Lacey

Moved music folder to external drive, how do I get Match/ITunes to recognise it?

Hi guys,
I've been rather stupid in restoring my computer. I moved all the music to an external harddrive before I restored my PC but forgot to bring the Itunes library file with it. I've got ITunes Match so I can stream all my songs, but is there anyway to get it to recognise the songs on my external drive? I've tried re-importing them into ITunes but it adds each song as a duplicate, so I have the Match version and then my harddrive version, I really don't want duplicates of all 7000 odd songs! Likewise I'd like to try to avoid having to download everything from Match as this will take ages and be a bit of a pain! The only reason I care is so I can use my Sonos system with my laptop, otherwise I'd just leave them all on Match. Any ideas?
Thanks, Luke

You will need the iTunes Library.itl file which generally lives in ~/Music/iTunes/. You can recover this from the backups you were making before the HDD died. Otherwise, you cannot recreate the library.

Moved iTunes music folder to HDD, Now iTunes Can't Find it--Help :-)

I finally was able to get an HDD that actually mounted and now I have moved my iTunes music folder based on the instructions here: iTunes: Moving your iTunes Music folder. I printed them out and followed them step-by-step.
Before moving the folder iTunes Music from my internal HD (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music) to the trash, I played random tracks with no problem. So I moved the folder to the trashcan, then emptied the trash as instructed. Went back to iTunes to play some music, and now all of my tracks have the dreaded exclamation point in the first column. When I click on a track to play it, I get the message "The song 'blah blah blah' could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"
Of course, I can select 'Yes' and go through the steps and locate the files on my HDD. This, however, is not an optimal process with over 2400 songs. Does anyone know what went wrong with my relocation?
Melissa
PowerBook G4 PowerPC Mac OS X (10.4.8) iPod 30G, MyBook 250GB HDD, iTunes 7.1.1

I've used that method to transfer music from one drive to another literally dozens of times and never seen it fail in the way you experienced. I'm at a loss to explain how you could have followed the instructions, successfully transfer the music to the new drive, and yet have the iTunes database still think the music should be on the original drive.
What I can suggest are two solutions: One for it you don't care about keeping your playlists, rankings, and playcounts intact. The other for if you do care.
Fast fix but loses the meta data: Quit iTunes. Open your home directory, find the music folder and open it. Trash everything you see in your music folder and restart iTunes. All your music and playlists will be gone. Open your new drive on the desktop, find the folder with your music, and drag it into your iTunes window. Your music will be imported into a new iTunes catalog and then you can create your playlists.
Keeping the metadata: After quitting iTunes, move the music back to its original location by dragging the music folder(s). Unmount the new drive and play some music. Remember the songs you clicked on and showed iTunes how to find? Do those songs all over again and once you've verified the iTunes library now points to all the songs properly, delete the songs from the new drive and repeat the steps to move them again.

After moving the library, itunes shows less songs than music folder in finder does

hi all.
after moving my library manually, i have this situation:
1220 songs in music folder;
1091 songs in itunes.
all the songs in itunes are regularly matched with the original file in the finder.
now. how to find the 29 files which are not in itunes? i don't care why this happened !!
thanks to all in advance

in my itunes media folder there are not audio files! they are stored in music folder of the macintosh hd, as you can see from these screenshots. do you have any suggestion?

After a crash, lots of audiobooks have somehow moved to Music folder, and links are broken - how can I fix this?

Wow, I'm surprised the forums accepted that long a title.
Anyway, the computer crashed. I started again, and when opening iTunes after the crash ... something happened. There was a prompt that I idiotically didn't write down (Moving Library? Updating Library?), that kept going for hours, and eventually I just gave up and shut it down. That was probably stupid. Also evidence of significant things happening: the next Time Machine backup was 60GB+, so something big had changed.
As best I can tell, lots of my Audiobooks (and I've got MANY) now have broken links - when I look in the "iTunes Media" folder, many of the files that were once in the "Audiobooks" folder are now in the "Music" folder instead. All are still in the same subfolder as before: so audiobook files that were in "Audiobooks / BBC Melvyn Bragg" are now in "Music / BBC Melvyn Bragg", for example. So far I've only found Audiobooks that have been messed up in this way. Music and iTunes U and Podcasts seem to be unchanged, but maybe I just haven't noticed those problems yet.
And obviously I want to fix this.
Note that my iTunes library is set to "Keep iTunes Music Folder organized". All of the organization is what iTunes has done.
Option 1: can I just restore from a Time Machine backup? If so, what should I restore? There have been a few changes in the metadata in the 3-4 days since the crash, but I'm not overly concerned with that.
Option 2: can I just use Finder and move the files back? This would seem the "easiest" option to me. Although lots (hundreds? thousands?) of audiobook files have been moved, they're within only a couple of dozen different folders. Dragging them back into the correct folder would be easy - but what kind of havoc would that wreak on the database system?
Option 3: go through each track and find the file. I can do this. It'll take hours and hours and hours. I don't want to do this.
Slightly different question: how can I make a smart playlist of all the files with broken links? (I'm still trying to get a handle on just how big this problem is.) I've found suggestions about (1) making a smart playlist of everything, (2) dragging all of those into a normal playlist, and (3) making a new smart playlist of whatever's in #1 but not in #2, but that doesn't seem to be working for this situation. Is that advice now outdated, or is there something unique to my situation?
Thanks in advance!

Following up: I went with Option 2 above, and it seems to have worked quite well. I didn't even need to quit iTunes. After the files were moved, the exclamation marks remained at first, until I played the file, or restarted iTunes - now all seems well, until the next crash anyway.

Moved Music to New Hard Drive - Required folder not found??? pls help

Hello
I have recently purchased a new external hard drive as my crappy Dell was full to the brim with music.
I have moved all my music files over to the hard drive and re installed itunes.
Now when i drag my music folder into the itunes library it updates but the shortly after an error message occurs that says:-
'Itunes Libray music file cannot be saved. Required folder not found'
Previously i have saved my itunes folder within my music folder?.
Now everytime i close down itunes all my music has gone from it!??
Any suggestions....sorry if being really ignorant..not too profficient on computers..
Thanks in advance.
Sam
Dell PC Windows XP
Dell PC Windows XP

I think itunes by default looks inside you my music folder. In the itunes preferences screen there is an option to select a new folder to your library. Change the path to the music folder on your external drive. Make sure to always have the drive turned on before launching itunes though.
You may also be able to replace the my music folder with a shortcut to the music folder on the external drive. This behavior may not work in windows though so I'm not sure.

I'm new to mac I have a macpro retina and moved my music over from my pc into my music folder would like to get it into iTunes any suggestions

I'm new to mac I have a macpro retina and moved my music over from my pc into my music folder would like to get it into iTunes any suggestions

Pull down File > Add to Library, navigate to the iTunes folder and click "open." This will add all the music to the new iTunes library.

Moving music folder complication

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