Playing music from my external hard drive

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Level 1

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Playing music from my external hard drive

Due to upgrading my iMac from a 2011 500gb hdd to a 2020 250gb ssd one I need to move my music folder to my external hard drive as the folder is over 100gb.

I have followed all the advice posted on moving my songs from music/iTunes to my external hard drive, however every time I clicked choose on the folder, it opens up to another folder then to each individual artists folder within. I can't actually just choose the main folder that contains all my songs which was created when I consolidated the file.

I'm starting to tear out what little hair I have left and each time I try it, it's filling up the other files in my storage so I'm getting less storage, which was the whole point of moving to my hard drive!!

What can I do to stop this?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Mar 6, 2021 2:35 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

278,015 points

Mar 6, 2021 4:50 AM in response to TheJHD

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for general advice on moving iTunes libraries around. There is plenty of articles on this, but they aren't all the same so "followed all the advice" doesn't really help us understand what you've done. The simplest version would be:

Copy entire iTunes folder from old computer to external drive
Move external drive to new computer
Press and hold down option when launching Music until asked to choose or create a library
Click Choose then browse to and open the iTunes Libary.itl file in the iTunes folder on the external
Chose a place to save the converted Music library, e.g. <External>/Music

If you've followed some other approach perhaps you can start over. If you've tried this and got stuck then what exactly have you done so far?

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,015 points

Mar 6, 2021 5:23 AM in response to TheJHD

Does the library still work on the iMac? What did you copy to the external drive, the iTunes folder or iTunes Media? You need the whole iTunes folder, including the iTunes Library.itl file which should be inside it. This is the core of the library which knows what has been added to the library and where to find it. In some cases on a Mac the .itl extension could be missing. You could manually rename that before attempting to import to the Music app.

If you've got as far as opening the .itl with Music, and creating a converted Music Library.music library then all of your content should be listed as before. If it doesn't play, complaining that files cannot be found, then it should be possible to repair that. We can go into details if that is the case.

tt2

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Answer 3

TheJHD Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 6, 2021 5:06 AM in response to turingtest2

Yes I’ve done that, there is no actual iTunes library file, well there’s a music library one, but then if I select that it’s not my whole library.

Basically what I’ve done is consolidated my files, copied it to my external hard drive as suggested.

Once I’ve done that I’ve pressed option clicked choose library then if I select the library file it opens but the originals are still in the old music folder and this is what music is selecting.

So if I try choosing the media folder that got copied it from music it opens up all the individual artists folder. And on each occasion there is no option to choose where to rename or save as once I’ve clicked choose new library.

If I remove the originals from music folder, music can’t locate files so it’s like I’m stuck in a cycle.

Now I’m at the point where I’m having to do a time machine restore to clear the others file as my storage is full then try again

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