Why can't iTunes handle a library on an external drive?

I put all my music files on an external drive and imported them into iTunes. So far so good. The first time I ran iTunes while the drive was disconnected - all my songs suddenly got that dreaded exclamation point next to them. Yes, while the drive is connected, I can still go to any song and double-click it to play; but the vast majority of songs stays "exclamated" and greyed-out. Shuffle ignores them. Even if I use some method to re-recognize all my songs, next time I open iTunes without first attaching the drive, it'll all go down the drain again.
Apple - this MacBook air is great but it only comes with 256 GB of built-in storage. I HAVE to use an external drive in order to have my music library. Why can't the MacBook recognize the drive, remember it, and know when it's connected and when it isn't?

You're welcome.
Yaniv Eidelstein1 wrote:
I still think Apple should improve iTunes, by making it a bit smarter, and aware of connected drives without needing to relaunch.
I agree and have made that suggestion to Apple in the past. You may submit your polite feedback using this page: <http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html>.

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HT1751 Why can't iTunes handle a music library on an external drive?

I put all my music files on an external drive and imported them into iTunes. So far so good. The first time you run iTunes while the drive is disconnected - all your songs suddenly have that dreaded exclamation point next to them. Yes, while the drive is connected, I can still go to any song and double-click it to play; but the vast majority of songs stays "exclamated" and greyed-out. Shuffle ignores them. Even if I use some method to re-recognize all my songs, next time I open iTunes without first attaching the drive, it'll all go down the drain again.
Apple - this MacBook air is great but it only comes with 256 GB of built-in storage. I HAVE to use an external drive in order to have my music library. Why can't the MacBook recognize the drive, remember it, and know when it's connected and when it isn't?

If you mistakenly open iTunes with the drive disconnected, close iTunes, connect the drive, open iTunes, then visit iTunes > Preferences > Advanced and reset the media folder to the external drive.
Better yet is to move the iTunes library folder into the root of the external drive as <Device>/iTunes, then connect to it by holding down option as you start iTunes. Once iTunes "knows" your library is on the external drive it will complain of a missing library when you try to start with the drive disconnected. Cancel the warning, connect the drive, start iTunes.
For maximum portability you should set the media folder to <Device>/iTunes/iTunes Media and consolidate the media to that folder. You should then backup the drive to another for security.
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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?
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This 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, or that 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 cancel when asked to try to locate the track. 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, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
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How can I move entire ITunes library to an external drive

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Or can't this be done - I have the 80G Ipod & the files take up so much space that I want to move it to the new G: drive.
I thought I had it figured out but nothing would play from the G drive, so I had to restore everything back to the C: drive.
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This is actually the 5G iPod forum, not the iTunes folder.
However, To move your iTunes music...
1 Quit iTunes.
2 Move the entire iTunes folder including music to the external drive.
3 Restart iTunes holding the Shift key in Windows, Option key in Mac.
4 iTunes will ask to Create new library or Choose existing library. Select Choose existing library and select the library in the folder you just moved.
5 Move the old iTunes folder to the trash but do not empty it.
6 Restart iTunes normally and verify the songs work. If they do, empty the trash.

Why can't iTunes handle a library on an external drive?

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