itunes help after new hard drive

[karnevil]

I have just had to have a new hard drive in my 'puter.Not happy but hey!
OK fortunatley I had backed up to disc most of my important info,pictures etc and i thought itunes but..................I have moved all the tracks into the library but when i click on a track a pop up says that the origonal file cannot be found.What have i done wrong?do I have to put all the music back in again?I backed up via the prompts in the itunes menu?

 

[squid]

This is what I hate about I-tunes. I decided a few years back to use it as my media manager.

Unless someone knows better, once you load a tune the file path sticks. Therefore if you change this it cannot re-locate the files.

For some reason loads of my tunes moved to a folder of non tagged music (ones where the track listings were not identified)

So I moved them all back and sorted out my folders better. After this I-tunes couldn't find them and unlike other file managers there is no 'search for all music' tab.

I got fed up of doing it manually so removed I-tunes and reloaded. However, it had saved the data somewhere and reloaded with the same problem.

This lack of ability to just find all music files automatically is a glaring balls up.

I'm hoping someone will say there is a way around this now?

 

[richie]

Agreed with Squid,

Bottom dollar is you can copy and paste all the music from your IPOD back to your hard disk. You need then to unprotect them and reimport them....

I just did this a few weeks back.

 

[millard]

I had this quite a few times before being told by my son what the problem was. When you originally import your music library into iTunes it recognises the disc drive letter, mine at that time was on one of two external hard drives, named "G". When I plugged and unplugged hard drives for various reasons the music drive was allocated another letter - "H" so got the same message as you. I reimported all my library into iTunes again and all's fine untill I unplugged hard drives and the same thing again. Did it three times before I was told what the problem was. So either unplug - replug drives untill they get the original letter back or reimport your library and ensure you don't unplug that drive again.

HTH

millard

 

[karnevil]

Agreed with Squid,

Bottom dollar is you can copy and paste all the music from your IPOD back to your hard disk. You need then to unprotect them and reimport them....

I just did this a few weeks back.

Sadly that will not help me.I have about 5000 tracks on the ipod but 12000 odd in itunes!
I will just have to start again.How shite is that?

 

[richie]

Sadly that will not help me.I have about 5000 tracks on the ipod but 12000 odd in itunes!
I will just have to start again.How shite is that?

Go and take a look in your backup set first.

Unhide any hidden folders.

They might still be there...

 

[karnevil]

Go and take a look in your backup set first.

Unhide any hidden folders.

They might still be there...

They are all on the back up discs.When a disc is in the drive the appropriate tracks play.When one removes the disc they do not.
Question i am asking is how do you get all the info back to the 'puter so it all stays there?

 

[EggChaser]

I am not sure of a way round needing to put them back in original folder structure when recovering the system - with some work it is possible to find out where the files used to be by looking in the iTunes Music Library.xml file. However if you do this I hope you had the option to
"Copy file to iTunes Music folder when adding to library"
enabled as otherwise any CD's you sampled directly into iTunes will be in the correct place but any mp3 files you added will be wherever they were when you added them which will mean a lot of manual work to correct.

Once you have the the tracks all back and working you can move them all to somwhere else.

1) From iTunes Menu Bar, select Edit --> Preferences
2) Click on Advanced Tab
3) Click Change next to iTunes Music folder location
4) Specify the new location and click OK
4) Click OK again
5) From iTunes Menu Bar select Advanced --> Consolidate Library

This will copy all the tunes into the one location
It is a copy not a move so you it will use twice as much disk space and you will need to delete the original locations to correct this.

 

[EggChaser]

Kind of just had another thought because I don't normally backup using the inbuilt iTunes backup mechanism and you obviously did

I think that if you backup using the iTunes in built backup system you don't have to restore the iTunes database itself as the restore puts the song references back into the system for you. As such you might run into some odd ball issues restoring if you also recover all of the database files that index the songs (by for instance restoring all the files in "My Documents")

Someone who does backup using the internal mechanism might be able to confirm this.

-----------------

Also just noticed that you can export your complete list of music which is an easier way of working out the original file paths

From iTunes Menu Bar select File --> Export
This will give what looks like a tab delimited text file

 

[squid]

I don't understand why they have made this so difficult. It is obvious at some point people will change the file structure for one reason or another.

If I am not mistaken, in windows media player you simply run a search for music and it sorts everything out for you?

It took me weeks to correct just part of my i-tunes and I only have about around 35 Gig of music. The music now mostly plays but many of the playlists are a mess.

 

[EggChaser]

I found the following info on a Google search relating to not wanting to manually find each song one at a time when the folder structure had been changed outside of iTunes:

Your iTunes is still looking for music in its original location on your hard-drive. Probably C: My Docs/iTunes/iTunes music.

You've moved it all to a different location, therefore it can't find it.

The library that you see in front of you isn't the actual file, it's just an index of songs that iTunes thinks it has in it's library.

You'll have to re-index them to get iTunes to know where they are again.

The quickest way of doing this is to clear everything from your iTunes library (in iTunes, not their new location), and drag the folder on your new external drive into the iTunes Library window.

This will re-index everything, and point iTunes to their new location.

Trust me, I've done it loads of times, honest guv.

The implication from the rest of the thread is if you drag your whole drive over (or if dragging is not your stong point use the Add Folder to Library option) instead of a folder it will search the whole drive and add any music files it finds to the index.

Note I have not tried this and also suspect it might lose album artwork if you use this function

 

[karnevil]

See what i do not understand is where is the origonal location?it is a new hard drive its clean it has nothing on it.I have reinstalled itunes.and as i am told i put the back up disc in the drive.i select the drive,select all and drag and drop into the library the titles then appear on the screen,when all the titles have appeared it goes off looking for the art work.when it has done that i ask it to play.i get an exclaimation mark and a pop up says it dont know where the file is and asks me if it should look for it well obviously yes but where?if it means the real origonal one ,i.e the fist hard drive well its sat in a computer shop thinking is a toaster or a piece of cheese.Personally i fink itunes is a bit shite err what else will hold all me music and play it like the ipod?

 

[karnevil]

OK think i have sorted it.This is what i did.
Load the disc into the CD/DVD drive.
In my documents find my Music.
Open my music.
Find Library.XML
In my computer click on the disc that is now in the drive.
Select all.
Drag the selected items to the XML icon.
As if by magic the library then installs it self in to itunes!!!

MAGIC

 

[karnevil]

OK think i have sorted it.This is what i did.
Load the disc into the CD/DVD drive.
In my documents find my Music.
Open my music.
Find Library.XML
In my computer click on the disc that is now in the drive.
Select all.
Drag the selected items to the XML icon.
Then when that has completed (takes a while)re-select all the files in the disc drive again and drag em to the library in the itunes page.
As if by magic the library then installs it self in to itunes!!!

MAGIC

OOps had to add a bit