iTunes: Cannot Import Music From External Hard Drive

[Ray&Paula]

Hi, I recently transferred my iTunes library from a PC to my new 2016 15" MacBook Pro. Everything went smooth....... I also have an external hard drive with music that was never used in iTunes. I can bring up the folder and play the music from this (PC formatted) hard drive on the MacBook Pro. My problem is that I cannot import the music into my iTunes on the MacBook Pro. I did the following procedure which failed to work;
iTunes>File>Add to Library>Clicked on the song>Open
I also tried dragging it into iTunes as well as a copy/paste method. Nothing works.........
In addition, I thought that it could be due to being in a .aac format, therefore I tried an .aiff as well as a .wav file........ again, no luck. If you have any suggestions I would sincerely appreciate it. Thanks, Ray

 

[Anna Leif]

Hello Ray,

It sounds like your external drive is formatted to NTFS. This would allow you to play the music but not edit the file, which in effect you are trying to do by moving it. Do you have a drive or USB key formatted to Fat32? You could then copy a music file via the external drive/pc route to the Fat32 formatted device and connect the Fat32 device to your Mac and try importing the file into iTunes. If it works, you know you're on the right track.

Anna

 

[Ray&Paula]

Hello Ray,

It sounds like your external drive is formatted to NTFS. This would allow you to play the music but not edit the file, which in effect you are trying to do by moving it. Do you have a drive or USB key formatted to Fat32? You could then copy a music file via the external drive/pc route to the Fat32 formatted device and connect the Fat32 device to your Mac and try importing the file into iTunes. If it works, you know you're on the right track.

Anna

[doublepost=1486496478][/doublepost]Tried as you suggested..... My PC wouldn't recognize my Mac formatted external drive. My default player is set to iTunes which is the latest upgrade 12.5.5. As a test, I converted a song from aac to mp3 on my PC and imported it into iTunes on my Mac without any issue. Obviously, iTunes isn't happy with the aac format. With that being said, I'll go with either AIFF, WAV or MP3. I do like the higher quality of AIFF and/or WAV over MP3. I'm going to try to find a converter that will convert AAC to AIFF or WAV. If you have any suggestions please let me know. Thanks for all your help! Ray

 

[Anna Leif]

Ah, apologies Ray. I read it as your external drive was formatted for pc, not for Mac by pc – a misunderstanding on my part. A peculiar issue though, with aac being the Apple format.

There are converters on the App Store. Personally, I use dBpoweramp (Mac version) https://www.dbpoweramp.com

If you convert from from AAC to AIFF or WAV you won't see any improvement, you will be converting a lossy file into a lossless, and much larger, format but the sound will still be the same. You can't regain what is lost during the compression process.

Basically, if you are ripping from cd, you can rip to AIFF, WAV, ALAC or FLAC to retain a lossless (cd quality) file. The file can the be converted (compressed) to AAC or MP3 for a smaller size with a loss of sound quality. If the file is already compressed, the missing frequencies cannot be restored by converting to lossless.

Anna

 

[Ray&Paula]

Thanks for your help.... I now have a much better understanding. Very much appreciated, thanks again. Ray

 

[Anna Leif]

You are very welcome Ray.
I'm pleased to have helped.

Anna