How long does it take to consolidate 8TBs in iTunes Library?

Same deal! Still 17.22TB available in G-Drive. Started out okay but was bogged down copying a song when I came back an hour-and-a-half or so later. Then this again, after having some lunch. Don't know what disk they are referring to. The G-Drive, I think, can be written to. And the other hard drives look to be okay. I figured it must be the non-extant Seagate 4TB.

Good call to check the drives. One of them (a LaCie 4TB) came up ailing. Back up if possible. It was possible so now I've whittled down the 20TB to 16.05TB. Maybe getting the LaCie to act up restored it, because after I copied all its files (1.17TB) I checked it again and First Aid said it was okay—as it has all the other drives, but it did perform repairs on most if not all of them. So that could well have been the snag.

Thanks for the link to Re-locate Selected—looks like they have some really useful tools! I'll keep them in mind in future.

Still not sure how to deal with my set-up here, but it looks like I might not be down the drain yet.

I maybe should try the Consolidation again, but I'm not eager to just yet.

Thanks again! You've been very helpful. I appreciate it.

That makes sense! THANKS!

And I should do 3 before 2, I think.

"Helpful" is grayed out for some reason, otherwise…

I'll hit "This Solved My Question" when and if…

Also, report how long it took!

I was thinking the same thing. My itinerary for today:

1. Before starting Mini, move new G-Drive to location.
2. Copy Music File
3. Do daily routine work
4. change Media Folder location to new drive
5. Consolidate (meanwhile watch triple feature on Roku Criterion Channel, maybe)
6. Close Music (hopefully by tomorrow at least—new Mini with Thunderbolt 3 is mighty fast, but 8TBs is mighty a lot)
7. Option-key Open Music
8. Choose copied Music File
9. Check Media Folder location, make sure it hasn't reverted
10. Going forward, copy new things to new drive and keep an "unchecked" playlist for songs I've used for MixCloud uploads.

I'm not sure how far or exactly what it got. Spot checking it seems like it did okay on older files but when it got to the big area that still has the music listed but with exclamation marks, it bogged down. Leaving them there until I import replacements helps me keep track of things. I figure the consolidation failed when trying to locate things that couldn't be found. I was afraid something like that might happen. What did happen was that everything is working fine but with the Library moved onto the G-Drive. Only 0.4TBs resided the G-Drive, all the rest are still located on the other hard drives. Not being too happy having a 20TB hard drive with only .4TBs on it, I made a folder named after the Seagate that still works and wholesale copied 2 or 3 TBs over to the G-Drive. So now there's about 17TBs free space, not 19.6TBs. If I do that with my other hard drives over time it all might fit pretty easily. There's quite a bit I'd deleted from Library still on those hard drives that didn't need to be kept, but the G-Drive can probably handle it. It's not the greatest, but it's the easiest way I can see to go. I have no clue how to go about "tweaking volume names and/or moving folders around a little [to] consolidate those items that have failed to consolidate so far without needing to import, dedupe and repair playlists."

I'm not totally disappointed to have the Library and media files residing on the G-Drive now, rather than have it be purely a backup. I get the feeling it might be more up to the task of managing 8TBs of data (maybe 1TB still phantom). I haven't missed a beat doing my daily ritual MixCloud ritual. Things could have been a lot worse, or maybe it would have been better if I were forced off my little hobby horse.

That would be terrific! Sounds like something worth a try. I have been thinking that giving it another go with the Library already in the G-Drive that I'm now using. Duplicate that, make a new folder for new location, meanwhile getting further instruction how to deal with exclamation-marked non-files, change media location in iTunes to new copy of library, try consolidating again.

If successful I should be able to trash the files that I've copied to the G-Drive that I will no longer need without much trouble, and maybe even change the media location back to the Seagate, keeping a back-up folder on the G-Drive going forward.

And if, by chance I lose access to the exclamation-marked it wouldn't be real bad, except quite a few of them were uncheckmarked, and I would like to keep that information.

Here's the location for one of the so-far missing tracks (awaiting my locating the original CD an importing again):

file:///Volumes/seagate 4tb/Compilations/Walking The Blues/10 Bad Condition.m4a

Everything that was on the dead seagate 4tb [file:///Volumes/seagate 4tb/] and still listed in the library will be sporting ! marks. I'm pretty sure of that. I don't know how to find it in Volumes, or if it can be found.

I see that when I copied file:///Volumes/seagate 4tb/ it got turned into a link. I click on it but nothing happens.

When I upgraded to Catalina there was a Relocated Items folder that I guess I deleted, because it's not on my desktop now. Probably shouldn't have? Otherwise, they are probably in the .xml file when Library is exported, if that means anything. I do know it's huge.