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iTunes - external Hard Drive

D

DeadRobot

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 24, 2009
15
0
Hello!

My iTunes library on my internal hard drive is COMPLETELY EMPTY. I have no music at all.

However, I have a folder on my external hard drive with about 40 gigs of music. I want iTunes to use this folder as the source for music. So any file that gets put into iTunes goes straight to that folder - not the internal hard drive.

Is this possible to do?
 
Is it really just that simple? My PC harddrive is chuck full with music and I'd like to have the external drive be the new location so that I can delete the music on the internal drive.
 
Yes, it's really that simple. Create the folder on the external drive. Move your music files there. Change the default folder location in iTunes. Done.
 
hi i tried that, changing the itunes music folder location to the external drive.

however whenever i try to play a song a dialog box still pops up saying itunes can't find the song and asks if i want to locate the song.

i have a lot of songs residing on an external hard drive....when i try to use the add folder to library it just tries to copy songs from External drive to C drive.

all i really want is for itunes to recognize (and clean up) the songs on the external drive.

any thoughts?

Update: I tried recreating the library by: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451

however now i only have one song in I Tunes (instead of over 12,000) and i can't seem to open any songs other then the one song...........this sucks. please help.
 
I am having the same problem,

I have recently aquired a 2TB TC :D and have moved all my songs from my internal HD to it. iTunes is giving me the message that it cannot locate the songs. I can however go and find them one at a time but this will be extremely laborious.

How do I tell iTunes where my music is?
 
I have all the songs on my external HD and was able to locate the .itl file so i recreated my library.

however i've tired mapping the directory under the Preferences Menu to the external HD however all it does is a dialog box pops up saying "Updating Library" for about 10 seconds then it stops and it still can't find any songs.
 
Maybe try removing all songs from the library, then setting the music folder in preferences and re-dragging the folder into iTunes?

And on a side note, if you keep your iTunes folder on an external, NEVER open iTunes if the external isn't plugged in.
 
I think the way I did it was to create a new library (hold down the alt/option key while opening iTunes) which I set up on my external. Then I moved everything from the old library into the new one on the external.

Then I opened the new library (hold down alt/option again to choose which of the 2 libraries you want to open) checked everything was working and deleted the old library.

I've never had a problem with accidentally launching iTunes when my external wasn't plugged in either, if it can't find the library it just pops up the same dialogue you get when you hold down alt/option asking you to either choose the library you want, create a new one or quit iTunes. You just quit or plug in the external and select it, no problems at all.
 
instaxgirl said:
I think the way I did it was to create a new library (hold down the alt/option key while opening iTunes) which I set up on my external. Then I moved everything from the old library into the new one on the external.

Then I opened the new library (hold down alt/option again to choose which of the 2 libraries you want to open) checked everything was working and deleted the old library.

I've never had a problem with accidentally launching iTunes when my external wasn't plugged in either, if it can't find the library it just pops up the same dialogue you get when you hold down alt/option asking you to either choose the library you want, create a new one or quit iTunes. You just quit or plug in the external and select it, no problems at all.
Click to expand...

Whenever I've made the mistake of opening iTunes without my external plugged in, it's marked every song in my library as a dead track. The library file is still stored on the internal, so it tries to load the library and thinks all of my songs were deleted. Never fun to clean up after.
 
If you have your songs in any location (such as an external drive) and that location is not available when iTunes opens, it will mark the songs in that location missing. If you then make the songs available, iTunes doesn't automatically go through the library, "re-connecting" all the songs. If you try to do it manually, you have to do them one at a time. There are a couple methods you can use to fix this situation.

First, I'm making an assumption here. I never let iTunes manage my songs. I do this by making sure the following two checkboxes are not checked. They are found in iTunes > Preferences > Advanced:
Picture 1.jpg​

This is important, because with these boxes unchecked, all the song information in your library, including the album artwork, is stored in the song, not in another file or folder. This does not happen with music downloaded from the iTunes store, unless after you download a song, you make sure everything is stored with the song, after using this option:
Picture 2.jpg​

OK, with those assumptions made, you can delete the missing songs from your library and add them again. All the song info will be back. It's cleaner than searching for all the "!" marked songs and dealing with them one by one. The only problem with this method is you will have to re-add those songs to any playlists in which they appeared.

Another method is to use a script from Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes. The script is iTunes Track CPR v1.3. Be sure to read the details on the script before using it.
 
just delete them first then import. I have done it quite a few times. not sure if there is a better way on a mac but on a pc it works.
 
I don't like itunes on an external if the drive is not connected when you start itunes it changes the location of your library back to the default. with no warning.
 
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