itunes not saving new additions to its library

iTunes 10.7 and OS 10.6.8.

I'll have to look thru some screen grabs

of the exact message because when it shows up,

I usually tick the box for it to never show again.

I'll go thru these tomorrow after breakfast.

I believe it is something like: "the iTunes Library file

cannot be saved," then there's a "do not warn me again" box.

The version and OS probably wouldn't matter in this case because,

it's been working properly for years under those same versions until

the library started getting very large (nearly 8TB & 600,000 tunes now,

but began having problems around the time that it was about two-thirds that size).

I'll do more research on iTunes error codes and see if I can find exactly what mine says.

Rod

Thanks Chris for the "reset warnings" reminder.

After I did that I was waiting for the warning dialogue to return and it didn't,

so I put in a disc, added more tunes and still no warnings.

I may have fixed the problem, but the only way to know is to close and reopen iTunes

which if it isn't fixed will show as empty and I'll have to wait days for refilling it.

I'll find a "good" time to check this (if there is such a thing).

The only thing extra I did after the complete reinstall (and its following dire warnings of "not saving")

was to "consolidate files." This ran all night and may have taken care of the problem.

If it hasn't, I have this page to go to. I didn't know that "consolidate" really needed to be run and

discovered that copies are then made of the originals when this is done, so I'm hoping that has fixed the problem.

As for the "whole story" - it is not really needed here if my setup had previously and consistently been working fine over the years

and, again, there's been no change in OS or general manner of use. Yes, actually, until May 1, for many years, I have had these tunes stored on internal drives (2X4TB) with external backups working just fine. As of May 1, the tunes went to external drives and iTunes knows the new media location. The problem is not a sudden one related to any major change, but more of an accumulated one (it began small and occasional at least a year ago).

I have considered the re-writing of the library file as the problem.

The defaults on the internals and now, instead, the externals is and has been

iTunes/iTunes Media/Music for the folders and the library files have always been

username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml (and/or .itl as the case may be).

I'll close and reopen iTunes soon to see if everything is fine now.

thanks to both of you,

Rod

Well, I was sitting here writing emails and iTunes just crashed.

All the tunes had been there for a few hours and while it was

doing its automatic album cover search, it crashed and re-opened

with a window inviting me to use iTunes. I'll check the other link

I posted earlier and see if it's of some help.

Rod

Well, after some days, I've discovered that the message is this:

"The iTunes Library file cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50)."

So, a search on this gets me to other people who've had this problem,

but sometimes someone will say, "Look here for the answer" and the link

is sent to a dead page, so I'm still searching for a recent example with a

page of someone successfully conquering this problem. Maybe it's an Library.itl problem -

just guessing, but I'm still searching...

Also, I'm considering freeing up some disc space

on the drive that's holding the library.xml and itl files.

I'm using 1.81 of 2 TB there, so maybe that could be the problem.

Since it's been a somewhat gradual occurrence, I'm hoping that this is the answer.

Rod

For those people who might have this problem in the future...

After working on this for a number of weeks,

it does appear to be the cramped internal drive

space problem for the library.xml file. It was residing

on an internal drive that was nearly filled to capacity.

I had thought that the problem lie in the actual

music folders themselves, but I continued to have

this error code -50 appear even after I had transferred

all of my music from internal to external drives on May 1.

So, in short, make sure that your library.xml file is on a drive

that has plenty of room.

Rod

Yes, I do understand the 10 to 15% rule, this is why I mentioned that it was important to have the room.

I suppose you can state that both the .xml and the .itl files should have plenty of room combined.

In my case, it really was down to very little room on the drive. Probably enough to affect the relatively

large library files (about 1GB for the .xml and 200MB for the .itl) in such an increasingly shrinking small space.

Well, it's like I said above - about 600,000 tunes.