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gdawirs82 Author

Level 1

8 points

Files not found after reinstall - Duplicates from Cloud

Hi All,

I’m an overall happy iCloud user, with iTunes Match enabled for self compositions and other “exotic” songs.

I reinstalled my whole iMac a few days ago.

My iTunes Library (sorry, my “Music” library) has always been on an external drive.

All music was kept “organised” automatically in the folder.

Path:

/Volumes/TERA/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl

/Volumes/TERA/iTunes/ contains 1 large “Music folder” (among others folders).

After machine reinstall, when I selected which Music library I wanted to open.

I selected /Volumes/TERA/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl

I got everything back, except that all songs have “location” showing “Cloud”.

It looks like the library is open but “Music” hasn’t made the link between the library entries and the actual file.

As a test, and as an example, I check the song “Dancing Queen” from ABBA.

In Music, when I look at which file it is, it shows “Cloud”.

While if I check in the folder, the file exists!

/Volumes/TERA/iTunes/Music/Abba/ABBA Gold/Dancing Queen.m4a

If I play the file, Music will download it, and I will end up with 2 files next to each other:

/Volumes/TERA/iTunes/Music/Abba/ABBA Gold/Dancing Queen.m4a

/Volumes/TERA/iTunes/Music/Abba/ABBA Gold/Dancing Queen 1.m4a

How can I make sure that Music “reads” the entire library to link library entries with files (and let me download what isn’t local)?

Can I do that without losing the entire set of playlists that I have?

Thank you!

Library location:

Actual file location (before download) from Music:

Actual file location in folder (not found by Music, hence the "Cloud" location):

File location from Music after download (extra file "1" appended):

Indeed a duplicate file got created, and original file is unused:

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 22, 2019 3:47 AM

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,588 points

Posted on Dec 22, 2019 5:07 AM

Music will have made a new .musiclibrary database for your converted iTunes .itl file. The original remains untouched. You could have another go at option-starting-Music to see if it is able to do a better job of converting the library on this occasion. Otherwise you should be able to add your local files to the library and Music should be able to match and dedupe so that you end up with a single local copy of each file, that retains stats and playlist membership. Test with a single album first to make sure the results are as you need/expect.

tt2

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Files not found after reinstall - Duplicates from Cloud

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