renaming external hard drive

If I change the name of my external hard drive, will that mess everything up in iTunes, iPhoto, etc?

Also, do hard drives have any other identifying information that complicates anything when you need to resort to a backup?

MacBook (Intel), Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Mar 11, 2008 7:59 PM

21 replies

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Mar 15, 2008 8:26 PM in response to audiofreq

Here's what I would do. Move your iTunes and iPhoto folders wherever you want. Then put an alias to them where they would normally be found on the startup volume. That way iTunes and iPhoto both think they are looking in the same place, but everything will automatically be redirected by the alias to where the actual folders reside.

audiofreq Author

Level 1

33 points

Mar 15, 2008 11:20 PM in response to Kappy

Ok, I just did some testing with another ext drive I had lying around. This drive had all (well, most) of the same music files as the original ext drive and with the same folder structure, so it was a good way to test without risking my priceless data. Anyway...

The original drive was named MEDIA, and the new drive was initially named TEST1. The entire iTunes folder was copied onto TEST1, and then MEDIA was ejected. Moving the iTunes folder introduces no problem whatsoever, you just have to hold down 'option' when you're opening iTunes for the first time to tell it where to find the Library file. Everything loaded fine.

But when I went to play a file, it couldn't find it. No surprise, since the drive had a different name. After renaming it to the same as the original drive (MEDIA), all the files played just fine.

Then I tried changing the name again, this time to TEST2, to test what would happen if I had just renamed my original drive in the first place. Well, I'm glad I tested it first, because things didn't work out so well (hence my original skepticism and reason for this post this in the first place).

Some files played, but a good number of them didn't. The ones that didn't were mostly entire albums, but there were some instances where some songs on an album played and some didn't. I checked to make sure the files that were not playing were in fact on the drive, and they were. I ordered the songs in iTunes by "Last Played" to see if maybe it had anything to do with not having played the songs in a while, but that didn't appear to be the case. I couldn't find any obvious reason why it was only happening to certain songs.

Finally, I renamed the drive back to MEDIA, and everything worked fine once again. Then I ejected the hard drive used for this testing, plugged back in the original hard drive, and felt ****** off that I apparently can't change the name of my external hard drive without totally messing iTunes up!

By the way, my hard drive isn't actually called "MEDIA", that's what I WANT to call it - it's actually called something much less logical, so I'd really like to figure out a way to change the name without messing everything up.

If anyone can assist or provide further information, it's much appreciated. Thanks.

Mar 16, 2008 12:13 AM in response to audiofreq

should I just move the whole iTunes folder, with library and all, to the ext drive

Like I said, that's not what I have done, I leave the iTunes folder just as it gets created in the home Music folder, but all my actual music files are elsewhere. I moved JUST the folder containing the music files (which at some point got named simply "iTunes") from my G4 to my new MacPro, put it in the Shared folder, and moved it from there to a second drive when I installed Leopard on that drive. That's what I'm using now. I just launched iTunes, went to the Preferences as described, and navigated to the location of the iTunes folder. The only problem I had was when moving from the G4 to the MacPro some songs weren't found, because they had never been copied to the iTunes folder to start with. I had left some music files wherever they happened to be, in such locations as the Downloads folder, or the Music folder of the first drive in the G4 (from the original 10.1.5 install on that computer), and so on. About a third of my music had been left in other locations, and it was a bit tedious to locate where in the world they were. But all the music I had actually added to iTunes from CDs, purchases at the iTunes music store, converted from aiff files, and so on, so that they were actually IN the iTunes folder I move around, were all located without a problem.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

audiofreq Author

Level 1

33 points

Mar 16, 2008 11:33 AM in response to Francine Schwieder

Hmm so I guess I could just direct "iTunes Music folder" to the folder on my ext drive where all my music is stored, (and make sure not to tell iTunes to organize the music folder). You're saying doing this would insure that iTunes finds all the files, even if I replace the drive or change the drive name?

If so, that would solve my problem, except that this whole thing has led me to another great management system. I now have my iTunes folder stored on my ext drive, which means all my Store purchases get downloaded there rather than the int drive (as it did before). Then, as an added bonus to the system, I can now have a separate iTunes folder on the int drive so that whenever I have my ext drive unplugged from the laptop, I can load up a smaller alternate iTunes Library. This is really great!

Now, if there's any fault to this system, please let me know. I don't know if iTunes wants to direct to the Music folder on the system boot drive or it doesnt matter. It seems to not make a difference.

Of course, I'm still back to having the same problem about not being able to change my drive name. I'm going to do a little more testing to see if I can figure anything out. Please offer assistance if you can. Thanks.

Mar 16, 2008 1:01 PM in response to audiofreq

I have iTunes organize the music folder, so my iTunes folder in the the Shared folder has a whole buncha sub-folders in it, and often sub-sub-folders as well. For instance, here's the actual path to an mp3 file:

"/Users/Shared/iTunes/Aaron Neville/Old Gold/Tell It Like It Is.mp3"

When I "migrate" I copy the iTunes folder with the music to wherever I want it, and copy the ~/Music/iTunes folder to my new home folder. Then launch iTunes, bring up Preferences, and point it to the location of the actual music files.

Inside the ~/Music/iTunes folder are several database things, these include the listing of all your music, your playlists, the song ratings, and so on. When you change the location of the music folder and point iTunes at the new location, it takes several minutes to update all this. As long as all the music that was in the music library is still there, then there is no problem. But this would not be the case if you tried using two different music folders with completely different content. That would be a problem, whereas simply changing the name of the drive isn't. The music folder would have the same content in that case, so you would just use the Preference setting to point iTunes to the new path, it would update its database, and all would be fine.

A completely different procedure would be necessary to use two distinct and completely different sets of music. Ask how to do that in the iTunes forum:

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=789

My guess is you would need to switch ~/Music/iTunes folders. There may be some shareware apps out there to help.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

audiofreq Author

Level 1

33 points

Mar 16, 2008 4:49 PM in response to Francine Schwieder

Great, thanks for your help, I think I see the issue now. To summarize, if you do not keep all your files in the iTunes Music folder, then you CAN run into trouble with SOME SONGS/ALBUMS when you change the name of your drive (or any other file location information?)

And you're right, this should have been posted on the iTunes forum a while back. Thanks.

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renaming external hard drive