iTunes help

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#1

Well, it doesn’t look like there’s a thread for this, so here goes:

When I bought my current laptop I bought a 1 TB My Book external hard drive primarily to hold my MP3 library, which is extensive (not all of my CD collection is currently on it, however, which is why I went with a TB. The process of ripping my CDs to MP3 will take some time), among other things. In any case, everything was golden when I transferred my iTunes library from my old desktop to this drive and I’ve been running iTunes through the MyBook ever since. Last Thursday, however, I decided to go work at a local Wi Fi hot spot instead of at home and took a portable drive with a backup of my library to listen to instead. Since I tried to reconnect the larger drive iTunes has failed to locate every audio file unless I tell it where to find it, which with 57GB of music takes a really long time to do. I’ve consolidated my libraries and am currently copying the music folder from my portable drive hoping this will correct the problem (which ceases to be a problem if I have the portable drive AND the my book drive hooked up at once) but I thought I’d post on here in case it doesn’t.

Do any of you have any experience with this (it seems very common over on the Mac forums) and know how to fix the problem globally, without having to re-assign each individual track in the library?

Thanks!

#2

iTunes uses a database to keep track of where all the music files are located, so that when you click on a selection in iTunes, it knows which file to play. When you swapped drives, the other drive might have some files licated in different folders then what is listed in the iTunes database, and so it doesn’t see the file. The quick and sloppy way to update with the correct file locations is click on File->Add folder to library… and let iTunes search through your music folder in the other drive. The sloppy part of this method is that you may get multiple entries for each song in your iTunes library, but the multiple listings may be easier to clean out then looking for the original song.

#3

Sweet! Thanks, AT. I’ll give that a try.

#4

AT: it worked! Thanks. I will have to clear some doubled files/playlists, but your suggestion corrected the problem. I owe you one.

#5

Glad it work Armando! :slight_smile: When we finally meetup, you can buy me a soda!

#6

You got it!