Can anybody help me out with an iTunes problem? It's driving me nuts!!!

My "iTunes Music Files" folder was taking up far too much space on my hard drive so I moved it to an external drive. Upon opening iTunes I noticed that all my music had disappeared.

I'm assuming this is all stored in my iTunes library files on the external drive, how do I transfer the files back to my iTunes player?

Your computer, nor iTunes automatically knows where you move your music too. Each song/file has a specified path. If iTunes can't find the file, then it won't play it. If Purple Rain is in c:\documents and settings\user\my documents\itunes but you've moved to do d:\more music, how is iTunes supposed to know that? It doesn't.

Just click (select all, or whatever), and drag the files from the new folder/drive into iTunes itself. It'll reimport them. OR Go to File, Add Files, and point it to the folder(s).

NOOOOO! Don't do that!

Edition > Preferences > Advanced > Write there the new folder (your external hard drive, eg: F:\My Music\iTunes or whatever.

You'll have to have your external drive on ALWAYS BEFORE opening iTunes or else it will search in C: again

NO! Are you guys crazy?!?

Click on Files > Options > Hard Drive Configuration > Search and search for the file path destination folders of the re-formatted files categories that were moved.

then

Options > Drives > [whichever drive you are using, ie F] > Set as Default > Command > Destroy Mysterons

Done!

PANDURITO said:

OK I was wondering how I was going to do this, becausssse.... I don't even want NEW files to be written to my C: drive anymore!

I hope that selecting the folder path is similar on OSX.

I have an external drive so that I can rip my CDs and not take up all of my hard drive space.

mcmeekle said:

Stop that! I haven't done it yet!

Don't panic.
This happened to me too.
What happened is the Library file HAS TO REMAIN ON THE COMPUTER.

I took my external hard drive and computer to The Apple Store and they restored everything. You might have to make an appointment first, though. It's easy and you can do it online.

ButterscotchPimp said:

And what Pandurito suggested sounds right. Because that's what i have to do now. I have to make sure that my external hard drive is connected before I open iTunes or else.

ButterscotchPimp said:

Your computer can't read a drive that isn't hooked up.

Thanks for all the replies, I'm still having trouble finding the lost files though

I can find the tunes on my external hard drive in 3 files named "iPod Backup" numbered 1-3. Unfortunately iTunes won't open these files. I could probably open each song in the files individually with iTunes but it would take forever as there's over 40,000 songs.

Btw, my external hard drive is constantly plugged in so is there any way in future of getting any of my new songs stored straight to the external instead of the c drive? My computer was running out of space so I assumed that tranferring the 65 GB of files to a 1 TB hard drive would be a simple task... how wrong I was!!!

pacey68 said:

Wait, you have three files named "iPod backup"? Those are just THREE files, how is that every thing on your iPod.

ernestsewell said:

Sorry, that was misleading. I should have said there are 3 Folders not FILES.

In each folder there is 49 subfolders each containing a few hundred songs... I think I've managed to work my way around this by adding each subfolder individually. I just tried adding one of these subfolders and I recovered some music files... doing things this way will take some time but I'll keep you posted, it's almost 5:30am here so I'll get some sleep & continue tomorrow.

pacey68 said:

Again, if really want to make sure it's done right you can take it to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store. they'll fix it for free, you just might have to make an appointment as they get busy sometimes. you can do it online from Apple's website and even see what times are available.