How to bulk change locations of items in iTunes 11

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Level 1

4 points

How to bulk change locations of items in iTunes 11

I juat bought a new iMac to replace my elderly MacBook Pro, and have found the upgrade process to be a complete nightmare. Migration Assistant was next to useless when transferring directly from the old to the new, I had to restore from Time Capsule in the end. Anyway, the specific iTunes problem I have is this: my iMac has a 256Gb SSD and 1TB secondary HD, and Migration Assistant only seems capable of writing to the first disk, in other words, the SSD. My MBP had a 500Gb HD, which was nearly full, so obviously I had to be fairly selective about what went on to the SSD. In the end, I used file synchronisation to copy the iTunes library over my network on to the 1TB HD, then pointed iTunes's media folder location setting at the new location. However, although iTunes lists all the movies, podcasts, TV shows etc, iTunes cannot find the location of each one, instead it tries to open up a connection back to the old laptop.

Now, if I click on a file and try to open it, it will do just that, trying to open up a connection to the old laptop (which is now switched off and put away), after a moment it will complain it can't find the laptop, and if I then say OK to that message, it will suddenly decide it does know where the file is after all, and point to the correct location on my 1TB HD.

So, is it possible to get iTunes to automatically update all the file locations, without having to click through each one and wait for the 30 second or so timeout?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 6, 2011 6:34 AM

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Answer 1

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Aug 6, 2011 6:50 AM in response to CtrlAltDel

All you need to do is copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder from the old computer to the 1TB drive.

Hold Option and launch iTuness.

Select Choose library and select the iTunes folder on the 1TB drive.

Nothing else is needed.

FYI: It's iTunes 10. There is no iTunes 11.

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Answer 2

CtrlAltDel Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 6, 2011 7:35 AM in response to Chris CA

The iTunes library files themselves sit in /Music/iTunes/ in my users folder, however the media files sit on the 1Tb drive. It looks like the Migration Assistant copied over the library files, but when I moved the media files to their new location on the new hard drive, it somehow picked up a reference to the network path to the originals (in other words, the files are being referenced at afp://macbookpro/itunes/ rather than at /Big HD/iTunes/. So Option-clicking iPhoto doesn't work, because I've only got the one set of library files, but those files are somehow pointing at completely the wrong place, and only "fix themselves" when it tries to open, fails, and then automatically finds the media file in the correct place.

(Sorry, I;m confusing iTunes 10 with iPhoto 11, and of course iPhoto is demonstrating its own particular inanities after the migration, but that's another story...

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Answer 3

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Aug 6, 2011 3:56 PM in response to CtrlAltDel

Just do as above and everything will sit on the 1TB drive and work fine.

You can delete /Music/iTunes/ folder on the SSD.

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Answer 4

CtrlAltDel Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 6, 2011 9:57 PM in response to Chris CA

There's still something in the .itl file that it doesn't like, it is still trying to access the media files at file://localhost/Volumes/iTunes (which is the network path to my old computer) rather than file://localhost/Volumes/Big HD/iTunes, being where I moved everything from the old computer.

In the end, I followed the advice in this posting, editing the iTunes .xml file to set the correct path, and then blowing away the .itl file and letting iTunes rebuild it. I keep my Play Count and ratings, but I lose the Date Added field, which isn't asuch big deal. My podcasts are also messed up, but that's less of a job to fix.

Many thanks for the suggestions, shame they didn't work out.

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