rothnd

Q: iTunes 11.4 forgetting file locations

Hello all.

 

I'm a little perplexed on this one so I thought I'd turn to expertise in this forum.  I recently upgraded to iTunes 11.4 (also had the tethering issue in the upgrade but seem to have fixed that) and also recently moved my library to a new external hard drive (from an old external hard drive).  Now what's baffling is that every time I open iTunes, iTunes seems to forget the locations of 6-15 songs.  When I manually locate them, thru the iTunes locate dialog, it finds all the songs it has an issue with but for some reason this keeps occurring.  It's a nuisance more than anything because to find 6-15 songs with the stupid exclamation point (which by the way, it would be most helpful to be able to SORT the library by that exclamation point) I have to scroll thru my library of 35K+ tracks...  It's getting a little old....

 

Anyhow, running iTunes 11.4 on a USB connected external.  I used iTunes Consolidate option to move the library and the location of the library is correct in preferences.  Also have Keep Folder Organized and Copy To checked in preferences.  This is running on a 08 Macbook running 10.7.5.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Posted on Sep 13, 2014 7:25 AM

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Q: iTunes 11.4 forgetting file locations

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  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Sep 13, 2014 7:34 AM in response to rothnd
    Level 9 (54,277 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 13, 2014 7:34 AM in response to rothnd

    Consolidate doesn't move your library it only moves your media. The rest of your library is still on the internal drive.   iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

     

    What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660

     

    More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management

     

    What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html

     

    Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

     

    What happens if you try and play a track showing a broken link?  Has it really lost track of the file?

     

    I don't know for sure what is going on but it could conceivably have something to do with the split library.  Is everything else according to the book with this library?  USB drive Mac formatted?  Nothing unusual?

  • by rothnd,

    rothnd rothnd Sep 13, 2014 7:40 AM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Sep 13, 2014 7:40 AM in response to Limnos

    That was a mistaken expression I suppose.  Yes, the Media is what I moved to the external and the Library files remain in the original iTunes folder on my internal.  This is how I've run it from day 1.  The external appears to have no other issues.  I did, however, elect to format this external as exFAT so to be able to share across OSs rather than straight Mac OS.

  • by rothnd,

    rothnd rothnd Sep 13, 2014 7:56 AM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Sep 13, 2014 7:56 AM in response to Limnos

    Oh, and I forgot to address your last question there of what happens trying to play one of those tracks.  Yes, it has broken/forgotten the link.  Double-clicking to play a track with the exclamation point results in a dialog box asking to Locate the file or not.

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Sep 13, 2014 8:12 AM in response to rothnd
    Level 9 (54,277 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 13, 2014 8:12 AM in response to rothnd

    Conceivably the exFAT format could have something to do with it.  Is it always the same files?  I know people have issues with using NAS with iTunes, often resulting in broken links.  NAS tend to use non-Mac formats and while it should work in theory there's probably something in the file designation that doesn't translate well.  Media on an external should work (it does for many others) but the one difference in your case is using exFAT.  Now I have copied files to FAT formatted flash drives dozens of times but what you are trying to do is more involved and it may simply be that there is something iTunes or your Mac doesn't like.  It will be tricky nailing it down to one thing.  It could be, for example, because iTunes wants to store files with certain names in folders with certain names that something in the naming of your tracks is messing up with exFAT.

  • by rothnd,

    rothnd rothnd Sep 14, 2014 7:55 AM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Sep 14, 2014 7:55 AM in response to Limnos

    I will think about that thanks.  I think at least a majority of those that break locations are consistently the same but am trying to nail that down now and figure out exactly when and how the breaking occurs.  What would you say if it is always the same files?

  • by John_M_,Solvedanswer

    John_M_ John_M_ Sep 15, 2014 9:00 AM in response to rothnd
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Sep 15, 2014 9:00 AM in response to rothnd

    I agree with Limnos on this one and your use of exFAT is the cause of your problem. It's likely to be down to the fact that non-alphanumeric characters used in the titles of your music tracks are handled differently by the two different filesystems. Look out for track and album names (which are translated into file- and folder-names, respectively) that have non-alphanumeric characters in them. An album called, say, "Greatest Hits: Volume 2" has to be stored as a folder called "Greatest Hits_ Volume 2" because the colon character has a special meaning within the HFS+ filesystem. Similarly, names that include quotation marks, slashes, asterisks or question marks have to be translated. The translation will be done assuming that the underlying filesystem format is HFS+ but one of the translations may result in a filename that is illegal on an exFAT volume. It will be something pretty obscure, but then again there are song titles and album names out there that contain some pretty obscure characters. I'm not sure of the specifications but it's possible that HFS+ can cope with longer path names or folder names than exFAT, so look out for very long track names or album names - some classical CDs can result is very long pathnames, for example. I strongly believe these are the issues that affect people who experience problems when they keep their iTunes media on NAS devices. The simple solution is to rename the affected tracks. A more sophisticated solution might be to store the media within a sparse image.

  • by Limnos,Helpful

    Limnos Limnos Sep 15, 2014 9:09 AM in response to John_M_
    Level 9 (54,277 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 15, 2014 9:09 AM in response to John_M_

    Pretty much as  John_M said.  If it is consistently the same tracks then it probably has to do with the file or folder name and characters used in the name that are not acceptable on the exFAT format.  If you don't see anything immediately suspicious such as commas or quotations marks or slashes or something then it could possibly even be an issue with font translation.  A name is using a strange font that when copied to exFAT translates into an illegal character which get replaced to produce a file name that no longer exactly corresponds to the one iTunes is storing in its database as the file it needs to play.

     

    If it is only a few files and you don't mind changing the track data then that will be the easiest solution.  The other solution would be to completely disable iTunes managing your music so it no longer renames files to match track data but that would be a drastic change.  Of course you could reformat the drive to Mac format.

  • by rothnd,

    rothnd rothnd Sep 16, 2014 7:50 PM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Sep 16, 2014 7:50 PM in response to Limnos

    You are all correct.  Sorry for the confusion.  I've been catching up on articles that I wanted to read over the past couple years and came across one about exFAT.  I do believe that this particular article was from Lifehacker.com and am even more in opposition of anyone using them as a resource for anything.  Every single thing I have tried from their 'tutorials/recommendations' I have found erroneous at best and destructive (such as this case) at worst.  I'm still trying to get my iTunes library back in order.  This hasn't been fun.  I decided to try and nail down the offending files and it was as you said.  Some naming convention in the exFAT file format has screwed with the iTunes database naming format.  I think I found all the files that it's having problems with but I'm having to do multiple copy operations to get things back in order.  Apparently the offending files copy just fine, but if you leave a Finder window open to that location you will see the system generate duplicates of those 'offending' files at random.  And now that generation is making moving the media difficult...  So in earnest learning here, the lesson is don't use any format but a native Mac format for anything Mac.  That's the point of Mac systems anyway, they just work...   Thanks for helping me resolve the underlying issue here thoough..