Transfered all songs to an external drive and now cant access them

I thought I could move my songs to an external drive and still access them the same way I did when they were on my PC. I have the external drive plugged in Itunes gives a message "the song could not be used because the orriginal file could not be found. Would you like to locate it." I can then search and find it on the external drive one song at a time. I wnat the Itunes to work as if the song were in their orriginal location. Can this be done with out mooving them one by one back to an almost full hard drive?

Yes you could move everything back to your computer start over with a new a new library if you wish. Just so long as you aren't concerned about things like ratings or playlists or the number of times something was played etc. If the songs are all in one folder you could add that folder to your new library and it would bring all the songs with it just go to Edit>Add Folder to Library. To create or access a second (or more) library, hold down the Shift key in Windows when launching iTunes. In the resulting dialogue you will get the option to create a new library or open an existing one: Using multiple iTunes libraries -Windows

Similar Messages

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.

How to download all songs from my external drive into my itunes library

I have enough Gbytes to not use an external drive for my music.
How do I proceed to download all songs from the external drive on my internal drive?

Hello there, Laetidela.
The following Knowledge Base article offers up some great steps on how to move your iTunes library from an external hard drive to your computer:
iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4527
External drive
This option requires more work than Home Sharing, but it creates a backup of your iTunes library on the external drive in addition to moving your content.
Notes before you start:
You can use most iPods as an external drive.
Windows operating systems don't recognize Mac OS-formatted disks (HFS or HFS Plus formats). Because of this, you can't use a Mac-formatted iPod or external drive to move your music to a Windows PC. See iPod: How to determine iPod's hard disk format if you're not sure how your iPod is formatted.
Mac OS X can read Windows-formatted iPods and drives. This means there are many ways to migrate your information from your old Windows-based PC to your new Mac.
Mac OS X: To be sure external drives appear on your desktop, choose Preferences from the Finder menu. Be sure the options for "External disks" and "Hard disks" are enabled.
Part 1: Locating and consolidating the iTunes Media folder
Part 2: Copy iTunes folder from the old computer:
Part 3: Get iTunes ready on your new computer
Part 4: Back up any music that's already on your new computer
Part 5: Copy music to your new computer
Part 6: Add preexisting music that was on the new computer back into the library
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro.

HT1364 If I already moved Itunes media folder to external drive and now music is not matching up in iTunes?

Dear Itunes Community~
This is my first time using glad you are here, but all the passwords!!
Question/Quandry:
If I already moved Itunes media folder to my external drive and now my music is not matching up in iTunes, what should I do? I have tried my solution !?, and now I have 17,000 songs, instead of 9,000!
Should I just uninstall Itunes, and then reinstall Itunes, and let it do it's thing, and then figure out how to move to the external hard drive later?
Help, I screwed it up all on my own!
Any/all help and Itunes educated suggestions appreciated!
Thank you very much,
Doris =:o
PS ~~ Is there anyway to easily delete duplicates?? Seems not?

I have a very similar problem. Hope I don't confuse people trying to help us since the solutions may be different.
I had my iTunes path directed to a 2nd internal hard drive. Everything was working fine - except I found that purchased Apps were still being downloaded to the Mobile Applications folder on my main hard drive instead of the 2nd internal drive. I decided to retry directing the iTunes path to my 2nd internal drive, hoping that might get iTunes to save my Apps there. Big Mistake. Suddenly, there were no Apps showing in my iTunes Library Apps window at all. I verified the downloaded apps are still in my main hard drive's Mobile Applications folder, but I cannot get iTunes to display them in my Apps Library window anymore.
I decided to try downloading a new app and, sure enough, iTunes once again downloaded it into the very same Mobile Applications folder on my main hard drive, where all my (now orphaned) original apps are, but the only one iTunes will only display in my Apps window is the new one. I read you can redownload purchased apps, but my apps are not missing. iTunes just won't display them in the Apps window anymore.

I moved my itunes library to external drive and now itunes wont work.

I moved my itunes library to an external drive and now itunes cannot find the library. I followed a youtube video and all seemed to work fine until i deleted the old library and emptied the trash. Prior to deleting and emptying the trash I checked preferences to verify the path of Itunes was to the external drive. It seemed to work even when I moved the original library to the trash.
Now when I launch itunes the song listings show but the songs cant be found. I checked the volume of my itunes that I moved to the external and it was about 4 GB that i moved. I have approx 2000 songs.
Any suggestions?

Hold down the alt/option Key when you start iTunes a dialog box will open
Select Choose Library and select the itunes library on your external drive

Renamed my external hard drive and now cant find photos

After renaming an external hard drive, what do i do to 'update my folders in lightroom' where to go to find my pics i edited and save to that drive. i originally had it named 'My Book' and renamed it "external 2". i even renamed it back to 'My Book' and lightroom still doesn't show them in the folder area.
thanks for the help

thanks for all the great info!!!!!
Show me your passion and I'll immortalize it.
Scott [email protected]om
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 16:04:43 -0700
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Renamed my external hard drive and now cant find photos

HT4539 I sign up for the racing post app each month but didnt print past invoices off and now cant find them anywhere and need them for my books how do i find them

I sign up for the racing post app each month but didnt print past invoices off and now cant find them anywhere and need them for my books how do i find them

If you wish to submit comments to Apple, the best way is to use their feedback pages.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html
It's not likely that anyone from Apple will see your comments here among the thousands of other posts.
Regards.

Ive backed up my phone and restored it after updating the software and now a lot of my apps have waiting next to them and i cant access them from the interface

Ive backed up my phone and restored it after updating the software and now a lot of my apps are greyed out and i cant access them via the phone interface
I can only access them via the App store

I did plug it into itunes and then backed it up to the cloud (im actually wondering if thats my problem)
then restored it from the cloud.
Maybe I should restore it from the computer (when its plugged into itunes?)
thanks sberman

All files from x hard drive or mp3 disc have a "!" symbol in front of the song titles in my library, and i cant find them on my ipod

all files from an external hard drive or mp3 disc imported to my itunes library have a "!" symbol in front of the song and i cant locate them in my ipod.

The exclamation point means iTunes cannot locate these tracks/files in the location you originally imported them from. Meaning either they were deleted or moved to another location. Right->click on any track and select Get Info. Then under the Summary tab look to see the location where iTunes is looking for the track.
If nothing else, removed all your missing tracks and re-import them.
B-rock

How do I delete all songs on an external drive?

iTunes recently decided to scan my computer for addtional music and it found and added all the songs in a backup folder on an external drive. Now I have duplicates of over 2000 songs in my iTunes. I want to delete all the backups and use only the original songs on my hard drive in iTunes. Unfortunatly, I cannot tell them apart just by looking at them in the list view. To delete them manually, I have to "get info" for each song and check the "where" at the bottom to see which folder it is from. This is taking forever. Is there a way to delete an entire folder from iTunes, just like you can add a folder? Is there a way to display the folder address in the list view so I could sort by that and delete them all. Any suggestions? Thanks.

cdharris wrote:
Thanks, I tried that, but iTunes also added a lot of songs from my hard drive on that same date that I do not want to delete. So I cannot just delete every song added on that date.
OK, here's what to do. Unplug the external drive. (Nothing will change immediately about your iTunes library.) Next, sync your iPod. iTunes will tell you which songs it could no longer find, and also it will note them with an exclamation point. Then you will know which library entries to delete.

Library only showing one project. ALL others are gone. I exported one folder to external drive and now ALL projects are gone from Aperture library. WHERE ARE THEY? TIA

I exported one folder to an external drive. Now ALL my projects in Aperture are gone! WHERE ARE THEY? I've tried to rebuild and repair database. It only shows the one project I had exported because I opened it in Finder back into Aperture. HELP PLEASE!

I found them. Sorry, don't know how to delete post.

ITunes library help - moved to external drive and now my apps are gone?

I moved my iTunes library to an external drive, but now my apps are gone? I do have iTunes match and iCloud, so my songs are all on the cloud, but none of my apps are showing...
I copied everything over, consolidated, but I must have messed something up as I think I have too many library files on the external drive now. I can see all my files on the external drive, but they are not showing up when I open itunes. It looks like it linked to a new copy of a library as only my most recent apps are showing, nad none of my existing ones are on itunes. What should I do to fix this? How do I know which files to delete?
Thanks.

I followed the instructions from Apple support to move itunes to an external drive, did what it said (obviously I messed something up). I then started itunes and missed the part where it says to tell itunes where the library was, and consequently itunes created a new library with none of my apps or anything in it.
All of my music is on icloud and I als ohave itunes match, so all of my music is on the cloud.
I have read some of the other postings to delete the newly made (and missing apps) itunes library file and ithen point it to the correct library file, but I am now paranoid I would delete the wrong one.
Thanks in advance for your help.

I'd love some help trying to figure out why my 2008 MacBook no longer recognizes my external drive and now is not downloading photos from my iphone....?

After many years of having no problems at all on my Macbook, I recently figured I should finally upgrade my OS. I did that about three weeks ago, updating to Snow Leopard (10.6.8). I used Time Machine at least once after the OS upgrade but now Time Machine no longer recognizes the external drive I have used for all these years to back up. The MacBook does not "see" it. (Disk Utility does however.) The computer then also stopped recognizing another La Cie back-up that I have and now... my iPhone cannot download photos? Yikes.
I have, of course, shut down numerous times, used different cables (that worked for some) and the two USB drives. I even used a firewire. Nothing worked. I also tried to "Repair disk" on Disk Utility. It didn't work either, giving me an error (that I didn't save, sorry).
I read many other discussions on the file format of the external drive and of course I'd be happy to reformat the external drives--however, it is obviously a tad nerve-wracking to reformat drives before having an accessible back-up. Suggestions? I do not remember what file format they have but am pretty sure it's not the Mac file system someone mentioned. The drives are a 2009 WD "My Passport Elite" and La Cie 2007 d2 Quadra,
In terms of other hardware available, we do have another MacBook Air but it has started rejecting both drives as well (without the Snow Leopard upgrade). We have an old Dell but it wouldn't have the disk space to help out much.
Any thoughts on the process involved would be welcome. Any ideas on the iPhone rejection would be helpful as well! It is a 30gig iPhone 4 that has 20 or so gigs free (not clear as iTunes says that there are abour 18 Gigs on the phone but 24 free gigs? I may be bad at math but that's 40 gigs...).
I am checking out iCloud but apparently there are only 55 gigs available?
Will be glad to hear any thoughts. Thanks!

Good afternoon Lyssa,
Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...these blogs are always comforting help!
So, to answer your questions: For the age of the hard drive.Well, I added memory a couple of years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amount of gigs with photos of my kids and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced the original drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that in March 2010. If there is some way to verify that (whether or not I replaced the entire drive), I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigs free, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
Question 1- What formats...
The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At the time that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
The WD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I again tried to repair the WD last night and this is the error message: "Error: DiskUtility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Also, Time Machine tried again to back-up and gave me this error: "Files can't becopied onto the backup disk because it appears to be 'read only'. You may needto repair or reformat the disk using Disk Utility. If the disk can't berepaired, you must use a different disk for backups. Open Time Machinepreferences to select a different backup disk."
Question 2. Other cables...
I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't change anything.
Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it is indeed present, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.
So, in summary...
I can plug in the La Cie and it is functional on the MacBook, visible on Disk Utility but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and not functional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... Also, the iphone photos did, in the end, get downloaded, so it is not something more general.
Causes...
I forgot to mention that there is a "lost+found" file on the WD which apparently points to a UNIX /OS issue?
Some kind of "insurance"?....
I'm curious about how people avoid this kind of issue. You just regularly replace back-up drives and hard drives before problems come up? Time Machine is great and saves many of us from disasters, however, knowing that your Time Machine back-ups are vulnerable makes the whole system insecure. No way to have alarms ring before the drive goes out?
As for ways ahead...
It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD to the MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, I haven’t been able to see its contents except on random occasions. If you have any ideas on how to copy the Time Machineback-ups from the WD, again, I'm all ears!
Good afternoon Lyssa,
Phew. First of all, thanks in advance...
So, to answer your questions:
For the age of the hard drive. Well, I added memory a coupleof years ago (RAM and hard drive). Being a mom leads me to eat up a fair amountof gigs with photos of my kids ….and, in fact, I think I entirely replaced theoriginal drive, so it is a couple years younger than 2008 since I did that inMarch 2010. If there is some way to verify that, I'm all ears. I have 311 Gigfree, so it is not a space issue. I verified the startup disk on Disk Utilityand nothing showed up.
Question 1- What formats...
The La Cie is format Windows NT Filesystem 3G ....At thetime that I bought it I was still using a PC as well as a Mac and was told by afriend to use this format...
The WD is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I again tried torepair the WD last night and this is the error message: "Error: DiskUtility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible,reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
Also, Time Machine tried again to back-up and gave me thiserror: "Files can't be copied onto the backup disk because it appearsto be 'read only'. You may need to repair or reformat the disk using DiskUtility. If the disk can't be repaired, you must use a different disk forbackups. Open Time Machine preferences to select a different backup disk."
Question 2. Other cables...
I used two other cables with the WD and that didn't changeanything.
Question 3... Fire Wire from the La Cie
Yes, I used the Firewire cable from the La Cie and it isindeed accessible, though still not visible in Finder. Since it is not Mac OSExtended I know that I can't use Time Machine with it.
FYI...
So, in summary... I can plug in the La Cie and it is “functional” on theMacBook but not visible in Finder. The WD drive is not visible and notfunctional. So we can think it is indeed the WD that is not working.... ALSO,the iphone photos did, in the end get downloaded.
As for ways ahead…
It seems that I ought to be able to copy off of the WD tothe MacBook then erase it and reformat it and start over again. However, Ihaven’t been able to “see” its contents except on random occasions…
Any further thoughts are welcome!

Moved itunes folder to external drive and now lost playlists

To free space on my hard drive, I moved the folder to my external drive. Now, I successfully can access my music library, but my playlists aren't listed and I can't figure out how to get them/point to them. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Compaq Windows XP

polydorus, you are my hero. I launched itunes with the shift key down and was able to select the library on the external drive. I would not have thought of that. Thanks so much.
shockme, I found changed the folder name under the advanced tab wasn't enough. I used File>Import and imported the music from the external drive no problem.
mlevin, I was really scared deleted the original file too. I checked several times that the exact number of bytes were moved in case I wanted to go back. Change the music location, do the import, fix the playlists and get all going and then I assume you can delete the contents in the music folder like I did. Then I did a defrag to clean things up. Good luck!
Compaq Windows XP

TS2972 transferred all songs to file in another computer now want to transfer back

transferred all songs to file on another computer, turned on home sharing, set up new computer and now want to seperate the songs to our own computer..

Make sure you have the Latest Version of iTunes (v11) Installed on your computer
iTunes free download from www.itunes.com/download
If you already have iTunes Version 11 installed...
From the View menu > Select " Show Sidebar "
http://osxdaily.com/2012/11/29/5-tips-make-itunes-look-normal/

Transfered all songs to an external drive and now cant access them

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for