Music library spread across two drives accidentally, plus Downloads accidentally deleted!
Friends,
I wonder if you might help: I'm a pretty computer-savvy person, but am at a loss and wonder if you could lend me your minds for a second to see if you have a flash of insight I haven't. In short, I accidentally deleted some of my downloads from iTunes (off a playlist), and in putting them back it looks like iTunes put the replacement files back on my hard drive, instead of on my external drive where my music is.
The stats:
MacBook Air (13 inch, 2017)
1.8 GHz chip, 8 GB memory, 120 GB internal hard drive, 5 TB external drive
OS X Big Sur v. 11.6.2
Music v. 1.1.6.37
About a year ago I transferred all my music to this MacBook Air; I set it up on the external drive, telling iTunes/Music to establish my music library there. The idea was to have all those (relatively large) files on the external drive and save space on my internal drive.
A few days ago, I was looking at a playlist and accidentally right-clicked and hit "Remove Download." I freaked a little, and was able to find... maybe "Restore Downloads" and they came back. But now, the playlists don't have those songs on them, and while some of the music files are on the external drive, some of them are on the internal drive - to the point where many albums have some songs on one drive, some songs on the other. So two questions:
First, how can I move the music files (and maybe the iTunes library file?) off my internal drive onto my external drive again? I assume I can't just drop and drag them - that would mix up iTunes, I bet. But how can I unify the two libraries so all (or at lest most!) of the files are on the external drive?
Secondly, is there a way to restore the playlists that lost songs off them? I could see the answer being no, but just in case... I thought I'd ask.
I appreciate your insights - I'm always interested in learning more!
Cheers,
Greg
MacBook Pro 15″, 10.11