I have an external hard drive with all my music on it that i want to use on a new computer i recently purchased. I changed the default itunes music folder by going to Preferences:Advanced:Change music folder and selected the external hard drive folder that had all my music on it. I also consolidated my library but to no avail no music is showing up in itunes? I've read numerous tutorials and still cant seem to figure it out so i was hoping one of you forum stars might know whats up
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Itunes wont recognize music on my external hard drive!
- Thread starter KasraS
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caveat - I'm not using an ext. drive myself for music storage; so much of this is based purely on my understanding of how iTunes works. If I'm wrong, somebody please point it out so that the TS knows. Thanks!
All the music was already on the ext. drive, but not in iTunes Library format I'm guessing?
Was the drive Mac formatted, or is it a drive that you had on a old Windows box that you've upgraded from? (if that's the case, welcome to the Mac community).
By pointing iTunes to use your ext. drive for its library, you made it so that all the library files (ratings, playlists, etc) are stored on that ext. drive. It won't just pick up all the songs automatically though. You'll need to add those into the iTunes library by dragging them all into iTunes, or alternatively selecting "Add to Library" from the iTunes File menu.
Keep in mind that there may some settings you'll want to alter in the preferences. Namely the "copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library". If you add songs from your ext. drive to iTunes with that setting enabled, then it'll copy the song to your iTunes music folder (also located on your ext. drive). So you'll wind up with doubles of all your music.
All the music was already on the ext. drive, but not in iTunes Library format I'm guessing?
Was the drive Mac formatted, or is it a drive that you had on a old Windows box that you've upgraded from? (if that's the case, welcome to the Mac community).
By pointing iTunes to use your ext. drive for its library, you made it so that all the library files (ratings, playlists, etc) are stored on that ext. drive. It won't just pick up all the songs automatically though. You'll need to add those into the iTunes library by dragging them all into iTunes, or alternatively selecting "Add to Library" from the iTunes File menu.
Keep in mind that there may some settings you'll want to alter in the preferences. Namely the "copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library". If you add songs from your ext. drive to iTunes with that setting enabled, then it'll copy the song to your iTunes music folder (also located on your ext. drive). So you'll wind up with doubles of all your music.