Troubles with iTunes on an external drive

I'll try and make this brief. My music library had become too large for my computer, so a few years ago I started keeping it on an external drive. This worked much better until I decided to change drives for a variety of reasons. The first time I did this, no problems. Everything transfered fine.
Recently, I upgraded again, or went sideways since I'm still using the other hard drive, just for different purposes. This time, not so good. First off, my iTunes is still reading all my files as coming from the convoluted place I squirreled them away on my older drive, even though I tried to put them on my new one.
To make a long story short, I now have duplicates of every song in my iTunes library, one of which is in the old drive, and the other of which is supposed to be on the new one but isn't really. When I did the whole consolidating my library thing, it ended up erasing all the actual songs from the new drive, which scared the **** out of me. Thankfully, like I said, it's still on the old one.
Now here's the weird thing. Going into the info for the songs that are supposed to exist on my new drive shows a pathway like so:
Music:.Trashes:501:Athletes:Vehicals & Animals
Music is the new drive, Athletes and Vehicals & Animals is the music, but what the **** is .Trashes:501?
The other pathway is:
LaCie:Old Drive:Backup:Music:iTunes:Athletes:Vehicals & Animals
LaCie is the drive, Old Drive, Backup, Music, iTunes are various folders, etc.
I should mention, I get that obnoxious exclamation point if I try having just the new drive connected, but with both, the music that has the new drive's pathway works fine. What the **** is going on? If you can figure this out (or convince me to simply bring it in to an apple store and beg for help) I will be so ******* happy. Thanks.

Well I just went through the same thing. I had a Lacie Porsche mobile drive at 80GB and changed to a Lacie Rugged 250. I keep all my music on external never local. Not a fan of loading my laptop. Anyways.... I was getting those same errors. I had copied all the itunes library contents from the Porsche drive to the Rugged drive. It took quite some time to transfer so you knew it was working. Then changed in the preferences of iTunes to save in the Rugged drive. If you trashed or deleted any files from the new drive and just put them in the trash without emptying you get that 501 trashes path. I found I had multiple duplicates of songs with the name of the song followed by a 1.mp4a. I think the library.xml file is the key to a clean transfer of music. I think this file is stored locally in your user folder and then it's used to direct to the alternate drive but from what I've read it's the file with all the playlist information and stuff on it. If you find it and move it over to the mobile drive then hold option and boot up itunes then tell it to look for that file on the new mobile I think you'll have no worries. I'm actually gonna try this myself.
You don't want to know how it got it working. I physically opened every music file on the rugged drive to make sure the were all where they were supposed to be. All 70'gb's of music. Never doing that again.

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File Structure with iTunes on an External Drive

This is an image of the file structure on my external drive that holds all of my iTunes music:
Is this correct, or should I have set it up differently? I am asking since it is differnet the the iTunes file structure on my MacBook Pro and some files will get uploaded to my external drive and others will go onto my MBP,s iTunes Music folder. All of my iPhone/iPad apps, Album Artwork, Mobile Applications. I have Book folders on both drives and the both have books on them.
I should say that I had a major problem a few years ago, which has nothing to do with the above problem, with one of the iTunes updates which disconnected most of my songs from their respective files. I tried a solution a friend sugested, which really messed up the files and now many of the files have different info inside the song files, i.e., Otis Redding as the Artist on a Radiohead track. Or another groups cover for a Beatles album. I have a large library and have gone through slowly and fixed many things, but it is still quite messy and a huge bummer.. As a proud new owner of a Late 2011 MacBook Pro, I would love to be able to have a solution for this as well.
TIA

Well I just went through the same thing. I had a Lacie Porsche mobile drive at 80GB and changed to a Lacie Rugged 250. I keep all my music on external never local. Not a fan of loading my laptop. Anyways.... I was getting those same errors. I had copied all the itunes library contents from the Porsche drive to the Rugged drive. It took quite some time to transfer so you knew it was working. Then changed in the preferences of iTunes to save in the Rugged drive. If you trashed or deleted any files from the new drive and just put them in the trash without emptying you get that 501 trashes path. I found I had multiple duplicates of songs with the name of the song followed by a 1.mp4a. I think the library.xml file is the key to a clean transfer of music. I think this file is stored locally in your user folder and then it's used to direct to the alternate drive but from what I've read it's the file with all the playlist information and stuff on it. If you find it and move it over to the mobile drive then hold option and boot up itunes then tell it to look for that file on the new mobile I think you'll have no worries. I'm actually gonna try this myself.
You don't want to know how it got it working. I physically opened every music file on the rugged drive to make sure the were all where they were supposed to be. All 70'gb's of music. Never doing that again.

Two computers with iTunes and one external drive

Hope someone has an idea.....I have internet at work, but not at home. I do have iTunes8 on both, but can not download or store my music library on the work computer. I have created a large music library on the home computer already and now need to get some missing album art and track info. How can I move the library to the external drive and then use the iTunes on my office computer to get the art and track info then take it back home?

You might find this article useful: iLounge - Managing your iTunes Library on an External Hard Drive

IPod Classic won't sync with iTunes library on external drive

iPod Classic 160 is recognized by iTunes. It knows the library is bigger than the iPod, and it allows me to select parts of the Music and Podcasts to install on said iPod. It whirs for a long time, pretends it's writing to the iPod. When I disconnect, there are no songs and no Podcasts on the iPod.
It did the same with a NEW iPod I bought yesterday.
How can I fix tbhis so I can write part of my library to at least one of my iPods?
Thanks for any help.

After searching this issue out and trying a bazillion different things (with no luck), I deselected 'Enable Disk Use' then re-enabled, and everything is working now.
Dear Apple -- What is up with that?

I just bought a Macbook Air. I also have an external harddrive for which to transfer and save all my existing music from my PC. Will I have any troubles with iTunes recognizing where my music is located if I keep it on the external harddrive?

I just bought a Macbook Air. I also have an external harddrive for which to transfer and save all my existing music from my PC. Will I have any troubles with iTunes recognizing where my music is located if I keep it on the external harddrive and not save it on the computer's harddrive?

Just be sure to Follow the steps here to transfer your iTunes to an External Drive...
Backup iTunes to an External Drive
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

I redirected iTunes to an external drive and moved my iTunes library and folder, but my hard drive is still low on space. How can I be sure that my music is all on the external HD ONLY, especially with the new iCloud technology?

I redirected iTunes to an external drive and moved my iTunes library and folder, but my hard drive is still low on space. How can I be sure that my music is all on the external HD ONLY, especially with the new iCloud technology? It doesn't look like I created any more space by doing this, AND I totally lost all my iTunes playlists. I'm not sure if because I added old library materials manually if this messed up my playlists, or if the new location is just not reading my moved library. In any case, I followed step by step instructions and found a few holes and thought I'd just "figure it out" but I guess I'm not as smart as I thought since I'm still scratching my head many hours later.
Thanks for any support ;-)
Eaglerocker

Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the option (alt) key (shift on Windows) so you get a prompt to select a library, then guide it to the 'iTunes Library.itl' file in the moved iTunes folder.
If this is to a new computer and you put the copied iTunes folder in the default location of Macintosh HD > Users > *User Name* > Music then you don't even need to start with the option key held down, iTunes will automatically look for it there. (Make sure there isn't anything already in the iTunes folder there that you want to keep since you will be replacing it with the one you are moving.)
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music [library] to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527 - a somewhat bewildering and not always easily understandable set of options.

Moved Itunes to an external drive. When prompted to update versions, the download would not install, now I get an error message indicating file msvcr80.dll is missing.

I moved my ITunes to an external drive. Whe I was prompted to run the update for a new version of Itunes, It downloaded but would not install. now when opening Itunes I get an error message indicating the file msvcr80.dll is missing. How can I restore this, and e

Try the following user tip:
Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates

Question on iTunes libraries on external drives

Back a few years ago I put my itunes music library lived in a NAS drive. If the drive was not mounted however when you launched iTunes the library would reset resulting in a blank iTunes.
This was such a deal breaker for me in the end I ditched the nas.
Now I have my itunes library on an external USB Harddrive. If for some reason the drive is not attached when launched, all that happens is you see your library of music but when you select anything a little alert icon goes next to it with a warning the music could not be found. When you attach the harddrive all is well again.
A friend has an extreme base station with his music folder on. And has just explined to me the self same issue as I used to have.
Can someone explain why iTunes will sometimes work fine, and sometimes reset depending on how it feels? Is there a way to predict this, and more importantly ensure that iTunes simply says it cannot find the tune, and not reset the whole library. Which is a most odd behaviour anyhow.

Your iTunes folder on your Startup Drive (in your USER>MUSIC>ITUNES folder) contains a file that is the roadmap to all of your songs, ratings, playlists, etc. Your iTunes application (in the applications folder on the startup drive) is, well, the application (like an engine) that runs iTunes.
By default, your iTunes Library (where all your actual MP3 files are stored) is in that iTunes folder (in your USER>MUSIC>ITUNES folder). However, when you store it on an external drive, you usually change it's location (in Preferences) so that iTunes knows where the Library is located.
So.....what's probably going on is that you have iTunes set up right for an external drive and it will run properly when that drive is plugged in. iTunes knows where everything is because all that info is contained in the file I mentioned. When you start iTunes and your external drive is not plugged in, iTunes will default to the iTunes Library in the folder on your Startup Drive (USER>MUSIC>ITUNES folder), which is probably empty. It knows where all your songs are on that external drive, but can't access them b/c the drive is off or disconnected.

Why won't iPod sync with iPhoto library on external drive?

I've run out of room for my iPhoto library on my Mini's 80 gig internal drive - especially now that the iPod cache takes up an extra 7 gig! So I've moved the iPhoto Library over to an external firewire drive - but now I'm getting the dreaded error -50. The iPod synced OK with the same iPhoto library when it was hosted locally, but now it's on an external drive it won't sync at all, even if I host the iPod Photo Cache on my internal drive and link back to it with an alias.
Is this a known problem, has anyone else had this and found a way around it? Fixing permissions, trashing preferences, etc won't work. The iPod will sync with folders on the external drive, just not with the iPhoto library.
I'm running the latest of everything (60 gig iPod Photo with firmware v1.2, Mini running 10.4.2, iPhoto 5.02, iTunes 4.9).

You have to rename your Photo Library (before deleting it, a precaution). Then launch iPhoto...it will ask you where your library is...tell it the external HD...then when everything's hunky dory, quit iPhoto, launch iTunes and try to sync with iPod.
after everything's working fine for a few times, delete gargantuan renamed Photo Library on internal drive.
I've always run iPhoto and its library from an external FireWire drive for a number of reasons.

Backing up iTunes located on external drive to another external drive

Greetings,
I'm on iTuens 11.3 and in preferences have chosen an external drive to keep all my music. I would like to back-up the contents of my iTunes to another external drive.
I have NOT chosen: iTunes - File - Library - Organize Library
Perhaps this is my problem…?
The external hard drive that has my iTunes library does not have a single iTunes folder. Instead, each artist has a folder within which are multiple albums, single albums or songs.
It seems there should be a single file folder somewhere that I can copy to another external hard rive in order to make a back up.
Any help will be much appreciated.

There will only be a single folder if you've told iTunes to organize your library. You need to either do this, or drag all of the individual folders to the second drive, or clone the first drive to the second.
If desired, you can move the iTunes folder to the first drive, launch iTunes with the Option key held down, and choose it before organizing the library.
(123377)

Moved iTunes to an external drive, library files can't be located - help?!?

So ok, I knew it couldn't be that easy...
I copied my iTunes to an external drive to free up space on my laptop - followed the instructions for moving files on a PC - and got to the part about moving the old iTunes folder to the recycle bin. Well, the recycle bin wasn't large enough for the folder, so it deleted everything straight out of MyComputer. Apparently the "library files" went with it.
Now I can see all my songs/movies/videos in folders on the external, but can't get my iTunes to associate with it when I open it.
Is there any way to fix this? I'm tearing my hair out, here. I have a full backup on DVDs - will that help?
Thanks!

got to the part about moving the old iTunes folder to the recycle bin.
There is no part about moving the _iTunes folder_ to the recycle bin.
There is a part about moving th _iTunes music folder_ to the recycle bin.
Did you move them to the external by using iTunes menu File -> Library -> Consolidate?
Or did you move them to the external yourself?
Which folders exactly did you move?

New iTunes folder on external drive...move xml file there?

About a year ago, I created a new folder on an external hard drive and I thought that I followed the apple designated steps to move my itunes music to that folder. I then selected the advanced tab in preferences in iTunes and selected the new folder on my external drive as my "iTunes" folder. iTunes seems to have worked OK for this past year using the folder on the external drive. After updating to the latest version of iTunes (11.1.1), I tried to sync some apps to my iPhone 4, and I got the message that the external drive folder I am using as my "iTunes" folder on the external drive is not the one associated with my iPhone. iTunes asks if I want to erase my iPhone and use the contents of my external drive folder on my phone. This is the first time I have seen this message, even though it has been a year, and I have connected my phone to iTunes during that time.
In investigating this, I see that the .xml and .its files are not in the folder on the external hard drive. In fact, there is no folder at all called "iTunes" on my external drive. They are still in the "iTunes" folder in my music folder on my internal hard drive. This is what is still in the music folder in my home folder on my internal drive:
Should I manually move the .xml, the .ita and the other files into the folder on the external drive?
Thanks

In my message above, I tried to include a .png file of what my internal hard drive has in the music folder, but that did not work, so I am trying to paste it in here. I am wondering if I should manually copy these files to the music folder on my external hard drive. There is no folder on my external drive names "iTunes".

Is it better to store iMovies, iPhoto or iTunes on an external drive? I'm running out of space.

Is it better to store iMovies, iPhoto or iTunes on an external drive? I'm running out of space.

Movies for obvious reasons. Photo libraries can get extra large too. When that happens, you have to decide if all your metadata is worth losing, or if you want to keep the entire Pictures folder on a couple external hard drives on their own. Remember, you should never have less than two copies of your data at all times (meaning just before erasing anything, you'll have at least three temporarily). You can always switch the active library with an iPhoto rebuild. command-option keys held down when you startup iPhoto. That lets you pick the Library XML file in the Pictures folder in question out of the Users folder.

Want to run iTunes from an external drive, how?

I want to run iTunes from my external drive, I have already made back ups of my library and media files but I can't figure out how to save iTunes to the external drive? When you download itunes it just automatically downloads to the computer. Can you even do this? If not, how can I use the saved info on my external drive (library and media files) with my itunes on the computer. The problem we are trying to solve is a lack of space on our computer and we want to free as much space as possible. Thanks!

I want to run iTunes from my external drive, I have already made back ups of my library and media files but I can't figure out how to save iTunes to the external drive?
Drag the iTunes library to the external drive, launch iTunes with the Shift key held down, and point it there.
(56927)

I am having all kinds of trouble with itunes and updating my ipad. when I open up itunes, it seems to just sit there, never going to itunes store. when I connect my ipad, I check update and it starts, but then I get this message:backup can't be saved on

I am having all kinds of trouble with itunes and updating my ipad. I open itunes up but it doesn't do anything except open to a blank screen. I try to access the itunes store but it won't go there. When I connect my ipad, and try to update it, it starts and then I get a message that says backup cannot be saved on this computer. I have tried everything suggested to no avail. This is the 2nd or 3rd time I have had problems with itunes. Sometimes I even get a message that I am not connected to the internet.
I have uninstalled and re-installed. Any help?

You might not have enough space left on your hardrive.

Troubles with iTunes on an external drive

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