itunes library

[admin_exported]

Hello

Due to space i have moved my music files from my mac to an external harddrive,and now have to access that to play music,what have i done wrong?

Thanks 

 

[professorhat]

I don't understand the question...

 

[Anonymous]

I dragged and dropped my i tunes lib to a crossfire external,now when i go to play a track aÿmessageÿsays file cannot be found,of course now over in crossfire,surely some cockup made by me.

Thanksÿ

 

[professorhat]

Ah, I see, basically you'll need to reimport your library so it knows it's in the new location. There was a post about this fairly recently, I'll see if I can find it for you.

 

[Anonymous]

cheers professorhat

I appreciate thatÿ

 

[professorhat]

Sorry, finally found the post I was thinking of and it's not actually the solution for the issue you're having. However, assuming you really did move absolutely everything, I'm pretty sure all you need to do is just highlight everything in your current iTunes, right click and choose Delete to remove them from the Library, then go to Preferences > Advanced and change the location of the library to your new drive.
I have to point out, I've never done this, but from what I can see it should work. I think you may lose your playlists though. Might be better to wait till tomorrow when some of the more knowledgeable iTunes regular forum posters are on and see if there is a better way.

 

[John Duncan]

professorhat:Might be better to wait till tomorrow when some of the more knowledgeable iTunes regular forum posters are on and see if there is a better way.

If I see one, I'll let you know...

Let me just read this again and work out the best way forward - basically your iTunes database still thinks your files are on your hard drive when they're not - I thing the best way forward may be a library consolidation, will check.

 

[John Duncan]

Article here explains fully. You'll have to move your music back to the original location first to do this though. There may be quicker ways, but as prof points out you'll lose all your metadata...

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help

Worked a treat

Happy new yearÿ

 

[professorhat]

Well done John - see I knew you'd have the answer!

 

[Anonymous]

For future reference and others with this issue. I think the simplest thing to do is start iTunes while holding the 'alt' key (on Mac - not sure on PC ctrl?), this allows you to choose which library you wish to use. So, if you moved the whole lot onto a external HD (i.e. a new path, you can just navigate to the new location).