HT201625: Manage and back up your iTunes media library

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SethGekko
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: All my media is on a portable hard drive.  The drive letter has changed, and now my library cannot locate anything.  Is there a quick way to re-link the library to the new drive location?

All my media is on a portable hard drive.  I installed Itunes on a new computer, and scanned the portable hard drive, thus creating a new library on the new computer.  The portable drive now has a different drive letter.  Now, the library cannot locate any of the songs because when it was created it (I assume) linked to the other drive letter.  Now, from what I understand, I can select a (song, album etc) and then browse to the new location.  But I have thousands of songs.

I need a way to re-identify as the whole group.  And because this is a portable hard drive, this could happen on a daily basis, so I know there must be some other process I am missing.  I guess I could delete the library and rescan the drive and create a new library every time I reconnect the hard drive, but that seems inefficient and time consuming.  Oh, Windows 8.1 and Itunes 12.1.1.4, if that matters. 

 

Am I missing some simple step to this?

iPod classic, Windows 8

Posted on Apr 30, 2015 8:16 PM

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SethGekko

Q: All my media is on a portable hard drive.  The drive letter has changed, and now my library cannot locate anything.  Is ... more

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  • by hhgttg27,

    hhgttg27 hhgttg27 Apr 30, 2015 9:06 PM in response to SethGekko
    Level 5 (5,407 points)
    iTunes
    Apr 30, 2015 9:06 PM in response to SethGekko

    See turingtest2's user tip on Make a split library portable - the best approach is to have the complete library (database, artwork, etc. as well as media) on the external drive.  This layout is not only robust against changes in drive letters, but also means that the external drive can be used with any system running iTunes - just hold down SHIFT while starting iTunes and select the library on the external drive.

     

    A quick fix, of course, is to use Windows' Disk Management facilities to reset the external HDD's drive letter to match the locations stored in the iTunes database.