My itunes can't find the music on my external hard drive.

My itunes was working fine using my external hard drive. Then I played a song that was not part of that music folder. Now itunes says it can't find any of the songs that are listed. The little evil exclamation point pops up. How can I reconnect to the hard drive without having to start all over?

Thanks for the clarification of check vs click. I guess once I saw the word "double" I stopped reading. I ended up "reloading" the drive to itunes. The interesting thing is that itunes isn't setting the location for the external drive. It is set for a folder under "my music" The actual songs aren't there, but the folders are there. When i put my external drive music to a new itunes library, i did so without copying the songs. So about 100 gig of music is in a folder that is really only about 300mb. I noticed before i restarted that the location was this folder. When i opened it, it was empty. After redoing everthing all of the songs are on the folder. I probably should have just changed it to go to the external drive like you suggested. Just for fun i changed the location to the external and bypassed that small folder. It worked great. It only took about 2 minutes to update, and it works great. I thought i had to use that stupid little folder. Thanks for all of your help!!

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How can I play the music on my external hard drive with my laptop?

Look before everyone points out that this has been asked lots of times before, I wanted to state that in this particular case it might be a little bit more complicated. You see I think I've been an idiot.
I backed up all my physical music onto my external hard drive, but only the physical music. So now I have my nice new laptop and haven't got a clue how to play the music off my external hard drive, since I don't have an itunes library on my external hard drive.
Anyway any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Am I being a plonker, but it doesn't seem as simple as that. If I try and import via itunes it seems to want me to select the individual music file not the folder which holds all the music.
Also if I simply import it, won't my mac copy the files from my external hard drive back on to my laptop? Which makes me think I change the location where all the music is stored in itunes...?
Thanks for the help!

Why can't iTunes find the music from an external hard drive?

I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop. Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music. I have to go through and manually select a song for it to find it one and then it says should it use this to find the rest of the songs. Then it crashes. I have reinstalled iTunes tonight with no real improvement. I want to be able to create a playlist to upload to my new iPad as well as updating music on my iPod but I can't do any of it. Please, any advice!

angelafromlanchester wrote:
I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop. Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music.
Has the new laptop given the external drive a different drive letter?
The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links.
If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
tt2

How can I find the path of an external hard drive?

I am using Virtual Box to install linux to an external usb flash drive. It gives me a list of drives:/ dev/sda, /dev/sda2 (type: ext 4), /dev/sda5 (type: swap). Which one is my external flash drive. This is very import and so I don't write per my current operating system, so please be certain. How can I find out which one is my external flash drive? Thank you!

Open the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder, click on the partition, choose Info, and look at the disk identifier.
(113804)

My old computer has broken and I had not backed up my Itunes. I now have the hard drive from my old computer but cannot transfer the music. How can I transfer the music from my old hard drive to the new laptop?

My old computer has broken and I had not backed up my Itunes. I now have the hard drive from my old computer (windows 7) but cannot transfer the music. How can I transfer the music from my old hard drive to the new laptop (windows 8)?

Copy the entire iTunes folder from \Users\<User>\Music on the old drive into your music folder on the new computer.
Or see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

Can I have iTunes Match recognize that the Music is on my Hard Drive?

My PC (Windows 8.1) computer hard drive crashed. My old computer was using an iTunes media file on an external hard drive so I still have that, but I also subscribe to iTunes Match. After replacing my old internal hard drive, I went to set up iTunes, and I changed the iTunes media folder location so it would use the one on my external hard drive. However, once I turned on iTunes Match, all of the music still shows up as being in the Cloud. I can't figure out how to have it recognize that my music is already on that external hard drive. It just wants me to download everything from the Cloud. I have tons of music, and it would take days to download everything. Is there a way to associate it with my previous library on the external hard drive?

CHRISRMOR: With iTunes match, as long as you uploaded all of your songs to begin with, the music should be there when you open a new iTunes on your new hard drive. You will just have to download it all from the cloud. If you use iTunes match on other devices, you can download any or all of your songs from the cloud too. So to answer your question, yes, you are correct. When you download iTunes onto your new hard drive, authorize the computer and turn on iTunes Match and update it, then all of your songs should be there. There is a symbol of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward that will show that it is in the cloud. If you right-click on that symbol you can download an individual song. Or if you select all or a group of songs, you can download all of them with a right-click.

HELP WITH FINDING MY MUSIC ON MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

OK here goes need some help,i have my music on my external hard drive that i dragged on to my itunes everythings fine no problems there.But i went to tidy up my music in my external hard drive but can't find the mp3's all i see is the album folder.I know that the music is there because it say's on my hard drive and all the music in Itunes plays no problem can someone help me figure this one out.

It points to my external hard drive, it's just when i go to the external hard drive and go to the music folder theres just the artist and album name no mp3's

Can I move just music to an external hard drive?

I'm trying to set up our home network so that everyone can access our large music library through a hard drive attached to apple extreme, but manage all of their other iTunes media files (apps, podcasts, etc) on their own devices. Is it possible for iTunes to have this type of split personality?

Um, it could be set up, but not easily, and might be fragile to somebody doing the wrong thing.
Here are some variants:
iTunes: How to share music between different accounts on a single computer - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1203 - relocating iTunes' media folder to a shared area but leaving separate library files - extra tip at https://discussions.apple.com/message/17331189
Chris CA's instructions on sharing one iTunes music library between multiple user accounts - https://discussions.apple.com/message/8974074 - Multiple users using a single library file - similar post at: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3753008

How do i get itunes 11 to stop adding music played from external hard drive to itunes library

I use itunes 11 to play music from my external hard drive and when i am finished using the hard drive and disconnect it the artist and songs appear in the itunes libary and when i click on it to play them it cannot locate the file and i assume this is becuse under the advanced prefrences tab i unchecked the auomaticly add played music to itunes library. I do not want my external hard drive music to be added to itunes library which at this point it does not but it is still showing the music in the library even though it cannot be played this is very fustrating please help. how do i get the artist and songs played from the external hardrive from appering in the itunes library.

Do you have a working copy of the library anywhere? The key file is called iTunes Library.itl and normally exists inside <User's Music>\iTunes. This is the file that knows what is in your library and each of the playlists, and holds ratings, play counts etc. Changing the media folder path in preferences tells iTunes where you'd like it to store media in future. It doesn't magically connect iTunes to any media that might already be there, or fix links to media that has been moved, or make it pick up a non-existent library file. If the worst comes to it you will need to import the media into the new empty library.
See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device if you have any of these to recover ratings, play stats and playlists, and to associate your device with the new library.
tt2

ITunes can't find the music - long post

Here’s the situation; apologies for length, I want to get all the details down.
The music collection:
8Tb (and growing) in lossless format, on an Ethernet network, accessed via the Mac Mini running OS 10.9.2 that’s my entertainment centre. The music is stored on a D-Link server in a RAID 1 setup. I’ve disabled the iTunes import features keep the iTunes media folder organised and copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library because with a very large library of opera and other classical music with multiple artists, this produces chaos. I’ve tried editing the file info before import, but the organisational results are still awful. I put the music files into folders named by composer, then subfolders for each work named by composer and performer(s), then add them to the library. If I didn’t do this I’d have (and have had), e.g. Turandot sorted by artist into eight separate albums. I’m sure many of you know the problem already, I just want to make sure everything’s clear.
There’s also a separate, lower bit rate, collection for my iPod.
The music library (.itl) files:
There are two, the complete library file for home listening, and the separate library file for iPod music. I’ve tried keeping the library files on my hard drive so they’re included in Time Machine backups; and keeping them on the server with the music collection. The same problem happens whichever way I do this.
I option+click when loading iTunes to select the library file I want to use, to make iTunes point to the correct media file location. I make sure I’m connected to the server before I do this(!)
The problems:
Every time I select a playlist either the playlist doesn’t list any tracks but shows me how many songs there are in the playlist; or iTunes tells me it can’t find the first file in the list - do I want to locate it manually? I do locate it and then I have to tell iTunes to find the other missing files; it finds the files in that playlist but then takes several minutes to tell me that it can’t find all the other ‘missing’ files in that big library. Meanwhile, I’m not able to listen to any music.
It seems to me that iTunes only works properly if the music is actually on the local hard drive but how many of us have that little music? I buy DVDs and rip the music myself, at max bit rate, I don’t buy downloads.
One problem seems to be that the Mac OS doesn’t index external drives automatically, is this true? This morning I’ve forced Spotlight to index the server drives using the terminal mdutil command but it’s made no difference, the problems are still there. What is Spotlight supposed to do? I’ve followed the instructions for using it and researched using it on the Web, but it’s never been able to find files I know are there, yet EasyFind has no trouble locating anything on the local drive, the music server or other external drives. I suspect that there are more fundamental bugs in the OS affecting this, because sometimes I’ve looked at a folder count in the Finder and know that the displayed number of files is wrong, it’s less than the number of files I know are there. Get Info will give me different numbers for the same folder at different times when I haven’t added or deleted any files in it.
I’m looking at Music Collector as a replacement for iTunes, but if iTunes’ problems are based in the OS, there doesn’t seem any point in switching. The price is reasonable, I’m happy to pay for it if it will work properly on the Mac OS. If I’d had to pay for iTunes I’d be getting my money back as it obviously isn’t fit for purpose. I’m in the EU, we have proper consumer protection laws here.
The Mini is 17 months old, still under a 3-year high ed warranty and has just come back from servicing at an Apple retailer, which fixed a software problem that prevented the OS from loading, so it should be problem-free... right?
Do you think reimporting the whole music collection again, using the two iTunes settings I’ve disabled, would make iTunes retain its links? I have the server space. It’s a nightmare scenario, imagine that Turandot again, 55 tracks split into eight albums, by soloists, conductor, and orchestra, and iTunes’ and/or Mac OS search facilities not working properly. How would I find all the tracks and create playlists for everything? There’s a lot of CDs that would give me the same problems. I have a 50-CD set of the Berlin Philharmonic covering 100 years of recordings, trying to organise this into coherent playlists multiplies the Turandot problem many times over. It goes on. That’s why I switched to organising the music myself in the first place, I was getting migraines trying to find everything to create playlists and not listening to any music.
I’ve been running various Linux distros on a dedicated box for several months, but again, music is the obstacle to switching. I haven’t found products that do what Audio Hijack Pro (especially) and Fission do, on Linux. Everything else on that platform works for me.
Sorry about the length, but music is the most important thing my Macs do. I’m disabled and music matters a lot. Any tips, links or advice generally would be much appreciated. I don’t mind spending a reasonable amount of money to get something that’s reliable, because iTunes doesn’t seem to be it, although I wish it was.
TIA.

Is this a NAS type of setup (of which I know very little)? Mine is not a response based upon strong technical knowledge but iTunes seems to have problems with those. Just about everybody has issues with iTunes but you say it is not fit for the purpose. What is that? I bet for 99% of people it does. Not everybody has 8TB collections they are trying to use with a RAID structured external server. iTunes is really a mass consumer piece of software. Yes, many people have expanded beyond internal drives, but NAS arrangements seem to add levels of complexity beyond a direct external drive that is Mac formatted and at most served by an Apple brand wireless router which I suspect is probably how everything is tested. Anything more is fortuitous in terms of support. Except that you say the library files are on the external drive too it sounds to me like the server is asleep when you say it cannot find files and then suddenly can when you go to find one.

HT204370 I have changed my internal hard drive on my macbook pro. I have put old hard drive into a capsule and have this plugged into my laptop. I can't find the movies on my old hard drive now? Any idea how I can move them to iTunes again? cloud taking H

I have just changed my internal Hard drive on my MacBook pro. I had recently downloaded some movies on iTunes which I want to put into my iTunes library on my new internal hard drive. I have put my old internal hard drive into an external capsule but when I open the icon of the hard drive from the desktop I can't find my movies.
At the moment I have the new movies downloading again from the cloud but it is literally taking hours for even one movie to load.
When I changed the internal hard drive I restored my info from my old external hard drive which hadn't been backed up in a month and hence does not have my latest movies...
I am concerned that I might go over my internet usage limit (flatmate is refusing to change to unlimited package!!!!) by downloading all the movies again from the cloud never mind how long it is taking...
Is there any way to restore all my info and media from the old internal Hard drive in the capsule as well as from the external hard drive?

It means there is no bootable system on the drive. If you still have access to the old drive, then I suggest you boot from it then clone it to the new internal drive. Use OPTION boot to boot from the Recovery HD on the old drive:
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Source means the external old drive. Destination means the new internal drive.

Itunes can't find my music on an external drive

Hi...new user here. I have 75G of tunes on an external usb hard drive and just synced with my new classic. All went well. Have since disconnected/reconnected the HD a few times and now itunes can't "see" the HD. Have made sure the path is correct in itunes and actually re-set the path and set it again. The itunes message it get is "the song can not be played as the original file could not be found, do you want to locate it".
I can play a playlist from itunes but not the list of all tunes.

If you try to start iTunes with the external drive disconnected, iTunes will default back to the internal drive.
DO you know if you have your iTunes folder containing the library files on the internal drive or the external drive.
If the iTunes folder that you are using is on the internal drive then you need to set the location of the iTunes Music folder with Edit>>Preferences>>Advanced.
IF you had your iTunes folderon the external drive, hold down the shift key and start iTunes. Keep holding the shift key until you are prompted to choose a library. Navigate to the iTunes folder on the external drive and choose iTunes Library.itl.

Is it possible to set a default music player for the music on my external hard drive while still keeping my iTunes the default player on my Mac ?

Is it possible to set a default music player for the music on my external while still keeping my iTunes the default player on my Mac ?
Message was edited by: Pellseidon

There is no setting in the iPhone to set another default music player. The default is Music. If you are using another application, you are at the mercy of how that application operates as far as what occurs when it stops or errors out. The car is looking for music to play.

HT1751 How can I copy only music to an external hard drive from Itunes and not video?

I only have 32 GB worth of space and 54 GB worth of itunes. I only want to transfer the music on to a drive for back-up. Please help!

Drag and drop the music from your Itunes to your desktop - to the external hard drive.
- Works for me, Works for you.

How can i minimize the iTunes screen to see the files in my external hard drive to enable me to compare files to see if all have been transferred to iTunes?

how can i compare music files on my external hard drive to my iTunes library?

how can i compare music files on my external hard drive to my iTunes library?

My itunes can't find the music on my external hard drive.

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