iTunes Organization Problem

[brayhite]

Here's the set-up I wish to have, and the steps I took to attain it. It worked for a little while, but somehow my media folder location changed, and now I'm having a problem.

Set-up:
Have all music stored and iTunes-organized on an external hard drive connected to my AEBS, playing the music over wifi.

Steps taken to get that:
Connected the external to the AEBS. Changed the Media Folder location to a folder on the AEBS. Let iTunes spend a day and a half consolidating and organizing folder. Worked great.

Problem:
Somehow my folder location changed back to where it was originally, and now music that I've added recently has been stored there, rather than in the folder on my external. iTunes still plays music from both locations, but I want everything on the external. How do I make iTunes change the location of the 200+ songs I've added to be on the external without making iTunes re-consolidate my entire library? And how can I avoid this problem in the future?

 

[neko girl]

See: iTunes preferences -> Advanced. Uncheck: Copy files to Itunes media folder when adding to library.

Lets you keep your music wherever it is.

 

[brayhite]

See: iTunes preferences -> Advanced. Uncheck: Copy files to Itunes media folder when adding to library.

Lets you keep your music wherever it is.

But that's what I WANT it to do. Copy files to the iTunes Media folder on my external whenever I add music to it.

 

[bobr1952]

I don't know why this happens but it happens to me--randomly. I have got into the habit of checking the location of my music before I add anything new. Frankly I don't really trust it to keep things organized the way I want so if I do find stuff accidently copied to my iMac instead of my external, I just change the preferences back to the external then manually move the files from my iMac to the external--I make sure to delete the files on my iMac to make sure iTunes gets them from the external.

 

[brayhite]

I don't know why this happens but it happens to me--randomly. I have got into the habit of checking the location of my music before I add anything new. Frankly I don't really trust it to keep things organized the way I want so if I do find stuff accidently copied to my iMac instead of my external, I just change the preferences back to the external then manually move the files from my iMac to the external--I make sure to delete the files on my iMac to make sure iTunes gets them from the external.

I just don't want to erase all my files on my MacBook pro until I can trust iTunes to keep things organized on the external.

 

[bobr1952]

As long as you check the external to make sure the files are indeed there, there is no problem with erasing them on your Mac. I just don't understand why iTunes sometimes returns to the default setting for no reason unless it sometimes cannot talk to the external and assumes it is no longer there.