Moving iTunes files from External to Internal HD

[SKOTTIEG23]

Hi Everyone - I did a quick search and didnt see anything related to my issue. Please done flame me if I missed it.

I recently upgraded my internal HD from the factory 120 gig to a 500. Because my itunes library is so large (250 gigs) I had been keeping most everything on an external WD drive. Now I'm trying to figure out how to move all these files from the external to my new internal drive without having to reset all my playlists and such (I have two iphones and an ipad pulling from certain playlists. It would be a huge undertaking to redo all this).

Does anyone know of an easy way to accomplish this? I thought about just copying and pasting all the music directly to the itunes folder. But then when I go to play the song in itunes it says the file cant be located (the external HD is disconnected) and asks if I want it to search for the song. For a few songs this would be fine. But with 46,000 its out of the question.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated-

 

[FourCandles]

...when I go to play the song in itunes it says the file cant be located (the external HD is disconnected) and asks if I want it to search for the song. For a few songs this would be fine. But with 46,000 its out of the question.

If you do search for the song and find it, iTunes should then ask you if you want it to search for the other songs in the same place (or words to that effect). It should then do exactly that, and try to find everything else based on the same directory structure.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Have you used iTunes with the new internal hard drive yet?
Did you have the entire iTunes folder (with contents) on the external?

If you answered no to the first question and yes to the second question follow these instructions:

Mount your external hard drive, find your iTunes folder on it.
Open up a Finder window to the Music folder in your user directory.
Drag the iTunes folder from the external hardrive to the Music folder in your user directory on the internal hard drive.
Launch iTunes and everything should be good. All play lists, play counts, etc. should be intact.

 

[SKOTTIEG23]

If you do search for the song and find it, iTunes should then ask you if you want it to search for the other songs in the same place (or words to that effect). It should then do exactly that, and try to find everything else based on the same directory structure.

Thanks for the idea. I tried this - but it will only work for the songs in each specific album (folder). Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[SKOTTIEG23]

Have you used iTunes with the new internal hard drive yet?
Did you have the entire iTunes folder (with contents) on the external?

If you answered no to the first question and yes to the second question follow these instructions:

Mount your external hard drive, find your iTunes folder on it.
Open up a Finder window to the Music folder in your user directory.
Drag the iTunes folder from the external hardrive to the Music folder in your user directory on the internal hard drive.
Launch iTunes and everything should be good. All play lists, play counts, etc. should be intact.

Unfortunately my answers to the above are "yes" then "no."

I ended up just copying all my playlists to folders on my desktop and then erasing my itunes content in its entirely. Then I added the music from my playlist folders. Once that was done I added the remaining portion of music from my external. Its currently about 50% finished. This should work. The only thing I'm going to lose is the playcount which sucks, but I wont lost sleep over it.

Thanks again-