iTunes library location changes... know why, looking for options

[imahawki]

OK, so I have a few Apple TVs around the house and for that reason I like to have my mac open iTunes upon startup. The problem is, if iTunes cannot find your library location, it reverts back to the default /users/[user name]/music/iTunes/iTunes Music for your library location.

If you have your library on an external drive, iTunes inevitably launches before your external drive mounts. Therefore iTunes can't find it and changes its settings. Its very annoying if you don't catch it before you import new content and then have to go about moving it.

This is probably a common problem and I'm wondering if anyone has found a solution.

 

[imahawki]

No one else is running their iTunes library on an external drive?

 

[Panch0]

I don't find that to be the case. If the external drive is not available, iTunes opens but puts little Exclamation points next to all of the items, saying that the media was not found. If you then close and reopen iTunes with the media connected, it finds everything normally. I don't find that it resets itself to the default location.

I did have a similar action where another program (eyeTV) seemed to reset my library location when it tried to add an item to iTunes, but not iTunes doing it on it's own.

 

[mgipe]

Might I recommend a slightly different way of managing your files?

It appears that you have your media files and your library file(s) on the external drive. I suggest you rearrange things so that your library file is on the local disk, but it references the media files on the external disk. iTunes handles missing stuff a little bit more rationally this way. It may not be the complete solution, since you may see the missing link "!" as a previous poster mentioned, but it's only a temporary broken link.

Arranging things this way will avoid the problem of iTunes switching libraries to the default (empty) library, and any new things you add will go to the correct place on the external disk (assuming it is mounted by the time you add new media).

The iTunes library strategy is pretty crude, and doesn't fail gracefully. Some organization strategies work better than others.

 

[mgipe]

Also, take a look at this article:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive

especially the section at the end on external drives.

 

[imahawki]

Soooo I think what happened is I had some content that I imported RIGHT after a boot and it copied it into the wrong folders. I did a test and it behaved like that website indicates.