Change Disk Drive Letter

Question

Change Disk Drive Letter

Hi everyone,

I'm a new poster so apologies if I'm in the wrong forum.

I got a new laptop the other day and as I keep my music on an external hard drive, I plugged it in, whacked the songs into iTunes and sorted through my iTunes library for just the songs I wanted to keep.

All was well until today, when I plugged in my harddrive to listen to some music and those little exclamation marks came up on every song.

The file location for all songs is G:\ExternalDrive...bla bla bla.

Problem is, the hard drive is now located on H, so iTunes can't find the files.

I know I could just delete the songs and do it all again but that'll take two hours all over again - which was tedious enough first time round.

(All the songs that I didn't want, which belong to my housemate etc are all still in the hard drive)

I tried going into computer management to change the drive letters, which it would let me do for the hard drive BUT not change it to G again.
And there's no option to change the G drive, which is a CD drive now.

I think it's because I did iTunes as the very first thing before inserting a disc.

Not the end of the world if I haave to do it all again but if anyone knows how to either change the file locations en masse or change a CD drive letter, your help would be hugely appreciated

Thanks,
Sam

Windows 7

Posted on Apr 18, 2012 3:59 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,168 points

Apr 18, 2012 5:27 AM in response to samalexander92

You need to change the drive letter of the CD drive to, for example Z:, before you can reassign G: to your external drive.

Start > Run > diskmgmt.msc <Enter> should get you into the correct control panel where you should be able to change the drive letters of both drives. If you really can't change it then my script FindTracks ought to be able to reconnect iTunes to the files in their new paths.

tt2

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Answer 2

Apr 19, 2012 2:48 PM in response to turingtest2

Hi tt2,

Well, my external hard drive has an iTunes folder and then immediate files in there and also folders and sub-folders. A bit of a mess really.

Here's the sort of thing I was getting
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/542/findtracks.jpg/

I've ended up just putting the music on my computer hard drive too because then I'll never have the letter issue again. Now I have a newer and bigger laptop, I have plenty of room to do so. 🙂

Hope that image helps, let me know if you want me to give you any more feedback on FindTracks.

Thanks again for your help.

Sam

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Answer 3

Apr 18, 2012 10:14 AM in response to turingtest2

Hi tt2,

Thanks for your suggestions.

I used the Disk management stuff but for some reason the CD G drive just doesn't appear with the rest of them.

Thanks for linking me to FindTracks. I ran the program and after half an hour of clicking through the conflicts, I checked closed and reopened my iTunes library to see how many had been sorted and it looked like I had hours of clicking ahead of me!

So I'll just start over I reckon, might be the best option time-wise.

Thanks again for your help, really appreciated

Sam

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

274,168 points

Apr 18, 2012 11:05 AM in response to samalexander92

Hmm, I might need to revisit my file locating algorithm. I tweaked it a while back for someone else without checking if I had compromised the ability to pick up files in a "normal" location. Would you mind taking a screenshot of one the conflict screens just so I can get a picture of what's happening in a live system as opposed to my test library?

What is the location of the Media folder on the external drive? I've just realized there may be a faster way to fix things. If you copy the library files into the parent folder of the media folder, then shift-start-iTunes and open the library from the external iTunes should be able to reconnect to the tracks. Once fixed you can either keep the library there (making it immune to the next drive letter change) or copy the files back to the internal drive. If you keep it on the external you may want to rename the "parent" folder as iTunes (if not already) or if that is not possible, create an iTunes at the root of the drive and move the library files and media folder into it, then shift-start-iTunes again to reconnect to the library.

tt2

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

274,168 points

Apr 19, 2012 7:28 PM in response to samalexander92

Thanks for that. In a weird way that shows my script working as I want it to - almost. 🙂

You'd dumped a whole bunch of media together in the same folder which is rather confusing at the best of times. My script has a fuzzy matching system that attempts to connect things even when they aren't in the usual layout or have, for example minor discrepancies between the filename and the track, e.g. a spelling correction to a tag that hasn't been reflected in the file. When each album is in its own folder this will rarely cause conflicts but in your case that wasn't how things worked out.

I've a refinement in mind for resolving conflicts based on file size. Sorry it wasn't ready in time for you.

tt2

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Answer 6

Apr 20, 2012 12:39 AM in response to turingtest2

No worries,

I always keep on top of my actual iTunes, can't stand unorganisation on there but as for the actual files... haha!

If you need any more checks for the program, let me know.

Cheers again and have a good one,

Sam

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Answer 7

turingtest2

Level 10

274,168 points

Apr 20, 2012 12:48 AM in response to samalexander92

If you want tips on getting your iTunes data really organised see my article on Grouping tracks into albums. Unless you have a really good reason not to, I'd let iTunes keep the iTunes media folder organised.

tt2

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