Songs "can't be found" in iTunes
About 7 months ago, I spent a considerable amount of time putting a large collection of CDs into iTunes after purchasing an iPod classic. Because I thought the files would take too much space for my hard disk, I bought an external hard drive. I thought I had successfully set this up as the place for all my iTunes files. Sometime since then, this setting was lost in iTunes, and Edit > Preferences > Advanced > iTunes Music folder location reverted to a My Music folder on my C drive. I have now copied all the files from there to the external drvie and have attempted to change the iTunes Music folder location to match. So my .m4a files are now in folders like K:\iTunes\ABBA\ABBA_ The Definitive Collection, and the Musci folder location is K:\iTunes
But when I choose an Artist and Album in iTunes, and then click on the first track to play it, in about 75% of cases I get a dialog telling me that the track cannot be played because the original file cannot be found. If I accept the offer to locate it, I can always do so by choosing folder names to match the Artist and Album name, and then choosing the right track. And iTunes does remember the track location after that. But with about 500 albums, you can imagine how much I wish to do this in order to relocate about 8,000 individual tracks, one by one (locating one track on an album does not locate any of the others, as far as I can tell). Is there anything I can do to automate this process, and any explanation for what's gone wrong? If I connect my iPod to add recently purchased tracks to it, what happens to all the tracks that "can't be found"?
I'm currently using iTunes 8.0.2.20
But when I choose an Artist and Album in iTunes, and then click on the first track to play it, in about 75% of cases I get a dialog telling me that the track cannot be played because the original file cannot be found. If I accept the offer to locate it, I can always do so by choosing folder names to match the Artist and Album name, and then choosing the right track. And iTunes does remember the track location after that. But with about 500 albums, you can imagine how much I wish to do this in order to relocate about 8,000 individual tracks, one by one (locating one track on an album does not locate any of the others, as far as I can tell). Is there anything I can do to automate this process, and any explanation for what's gone wrong? If I connect my iPod to add recently purchased tracks to it, what happens to all the tracks that "can't be found"?
I'm currently using iTunes 8.0.2.20
hp pavilion 1340 uk, Windows XP
