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Ok, so my MBA which is the best bit of kit I have ever owned is full. I have bought a 1/2TB ext HDD which I have loaded up with all my photos and music and video and TV shows and work (of course) off my iMac and my PC so I can have everything together. All good so far.
I have copied over the iTunes media folder from the MBA and all the music and vids are now in a file called Music, Video and TV Shows on the ext HDD and removed from the MBA. I have changed the preferences of iTunes of the iTunes Media Folder Location, but still when I go on iTunes, it can't find the files. If I click on the name of the song and it says it can't find it, but then you can browse and find it, it works. Then it asks if you'd like to use this location for all the iTunes files, you say yes and it says it can't find them !!!!
Grrrrrr.
Any clues oh clever people of singletrack ???
Help !!
All the clever people use PC's and don't have these sorts of problems.
😉
I've done this a few times over the years... it's all about the library .itl file itself.
Have a peek at this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
I think I had this before on my PC when I put a second drive into it.
I don't know what it's called, but basically the list of music in the iTunes windows is still looking to the old location for the music. if you rip new files using iTunes they will automatically get the new path location tagged onto them, but I don't think that anything in the existing list will.
I can't remember how you do it, but you need to update the library so it gets tagged with the new location. I think I ended up deleting the library list and then 'importing' all the tracks back into iTunes, but there might be an automated way of doing this.
If I import all the files onto iTunes, does that mean that they all go back on the MBAir ?? Or is it just the link thats transferred over ??
Depends if you tell it to leave them where they are or consolidate them into your library. It's a preference. I'd tell you which one but not on my mac...
IA ???????
As far as I can remember, when you import the music you are only telling iTunes where the music is and it then compiles a library of music from what it finds. It does not move the files to a new location.
From your previous post, it sounds like you have already changed the default media path within iTunes to your external HDD?
Before you do anything though, check all the settings to make sure there isn't some kind of tick box preference to move files or keep them where they are.
Sorry I am being a bit vague, but last time I used iTunes was probably two years ago.
What do you use instead ? I have to say it is winding the hell out of me !!!
Its the only thing that I really don;t like about Apple (I know a lot of people have a lot of moans, but I don't)
Just seen your reply - I didn't bother with anything for ages; just put up with the music I had on my iPod and didn't connect it to my computer or do anything with it.
I now use Windows Media Player to rip CDs to MP3 and then Media Monkey to drag & drop files onto the iPod - although I am currently trying to get all the album info (tracks/artwork) up to date and then whack it all onto my phone.
I think if you buy Media Monkey, it will also do the file ripping for you, but the free version only gives you a set number of rips before prompting you to stump up some cash.
You can still do everything else with it though, so I haven't bothered upgrading it.
It's a fairly similar interface to iTunes. To be honest, it it sometimes hard to work out how to do things with it, but there is plenty of online info if you get stuck with it.
Sorry to come to this late, but can I suggest something simple (which I did when moving back to mac from a horrific 6 month sabatical to try out PCs again. shudder)
I copied the whole itunes folder from PC to Mac, just a copy and paste into the correct folder (so, the same as you moving the entire itunes folder to your external HDD).
Then, following mac lagic, in finder I just picked up the itunes folder and droppped it onto the itunes icon in the dock.
simples.
Has worked perfectly straight off the bat. iTines spent a wee while catalogiung everything, but after that, job done. I was amazed at how simple, effective and "mac" the whole procedure was, and perhaps you can do the same?
Does that help at all?
Kev