iTunes library on external drive

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acura dc5 Author

Level 1

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iTunes library on external drive

Hello all,

Im trying to restore my iTunes library on a new iMac and have run into some difficulty. Here's the situation:

OLD iMac:

-Due to its size, the iTunes media folder was stored on an external HDD

-Old iMac suffered catastrophic failure and was ultimately replaced.

NEW iMac:

-I assumed pluging in the external HDD and redirecting via PREFERNECES > ADVANCED > ITUNES MEDIA FOLDER LOCATION would suffice, however there was no iTunes library.xml file on the external HDD.

Any suggestions would be great. Thanks

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jan 20, 2012 6:10 PM

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Answer 1

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Limnos

Level 10

411,217 points

Jan 20, 2012 8:08 PM in response to acura dc5

iTunes does pretty much everything through the Library file (sometimes ending with .itl). A copy of the file ending in .xml is usually located in the same folder. It is the library file that tells iTunes where you music is located, what playlists exist and their contents, song ratings, etc. Without it your files are just a series of media files. If you previously had iTunes set to keep just media on your external drive then the library file was located on the internal drive of your old computer and was lost along with everything else, including possibly some artwork. Your only resort now is to make a new library and add the files to it and start again.

If I am mistaken and in fact you had your whole iTunes collection (the whole iTunes folder and everything it contains) on the external then the correct way to open the old library is to hold down the option key while starting iTunes.

What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660

More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management

iTunes: How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451

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