itunes randomly marks files misding thay habe not been moved. i can get file info and the file is immediately found. i have to go through my very extensive library and get info for each and every file that gas an exclamation mark sometime there are just a few and other times, many. The entire library is on a single external USB drive that is set to never sleep.
Does anyone have a solution for this?
Windows, Windows 10
In addition to the points made by turingtest2, take into account that the USB drive must have the same drive letter assigned to it before iTunes is started up. Also, any change to the drive letter or to the spelling of the file or path to it (in Windows Explorer) will cause iTunes to lose track of the songs.
From my limited (but recent) experience with the exclamation mark, if the symptom is that the exclamation mark appears as soon as you start iTunes but disappears when you click to play the song, even though you have done nothing to find the "missing" song, that suggests that the drive was not ready when iTunes started up, but by the time you clicked on Play, it was ready. And yes, I am taking into account that a USB does not take time to spin up like a hard drive. The above is a symptom, not the cause.
You could try the FindTracks script that is linked to in this post: iTunes Original File Could Not Be Found - Apple Community. It may be an easier way of checking/refreshing/repairing any broken links than the method you're using now. In general iTunes normally starts up assuming every track is where it is meant to be, and only throws up the exclamation marks once it has decided that it cannot find the track.
tt2
iTunes randomly mismarks filed missing
