Dragging a song from iTunes to a new folder on desktop now moves instead of copies?

[james-bailey]

Hi just as the title says, I have encounted a serious problem in the fact I wanted to make a folder of 60 particular songs from searching for them in my iTunes and dragging them from iTunes to a folder on desktop to then zip and send.
The songs were all originally located on a removable usb hd.

However ive now realised those particular songs dont play as the locations are missing due to the files being MOVED rather than copied, which to me sounds a ridiculous bit of programming and i am sure this must be quite a new thing as I have successfully managed it before.
Also Ive and ive deleted the zip file :-(
Even if I did have the songs, I wouldn't remember their location anyway.

Can anyone tell me if I should of done something differently to achieve the same task, and / or if iTunes now works differently to how it used to?

Many thanks

James

 

[BrianBaughn]

When you say "originally located on a removable usb hd" do you mean that your iTunes Media folder used to be on an external but now it's on your system drive?

 

[james-bailey]

When you say "originally located on a removable usb hd" do you mean that your iTunes Media folder used to be on an external but now it's on your system drive?

not quite, I mean that 99% of my music is stored on a removable HD, to save space on my MacBook as i am a DJ and its a lot of data.
When I dragged the song from an iTunes playlist, to my desktop it in turn moved it from the removable HD to the desktop. and so iTunes can no longer find it. I totally assumed that that drag would of copied and not moved? Im sure it always used to?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Are you running Catalina?

Just tested in High Sierra. My iTunes library is also not on my system drive. I dragged a song from a playlist to the desktop and a copy was created there. The original remains on my drive.

 

[james-bailey]

Are you running Catalina?

Just tested in High Sierra. My iTunes library is also not on my system drive. I dragged a song from a playlist to the desktop and a copy was created there. The original remains on my drive.

On High Sierra myself and it certainly moves the MP3 file.
I’ll try and troubleshoot tonight with different methods