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Level 1

8 points

I recently bought a new external hard drive for my library and changed the itunes library location in preferences to the new drive. However, itunes still pulls the file location from the old external drive. How do I switch this?

I had my entire library on an external 4TB drive. I recently bought another 4TB cloud drive, copied my entire library over to the new drive and tried to point iTunes to the new drive. I went to edit->preferences and changed the location of the music files in iTunes. iTunes went through a long process to "update the library" and organize the files, but now that it's finished, when I click on "get info" for the songs in iTunes, they still point back to the old drive. Do I need to delete my iTunes library files and rebuild from scratch?

null-OTHER, Windows 8, WD My Cloud drive

Posted on Jul 23, 2015 6:25 AM

24 replies

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jul 23, 2015 1:33 PM in response to stevestutman

Of course they are, just like you said. Silly me. 😊

tt2

stevestutman Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 23, 2015 7:07 PM in response to turingtest2

Just finished the steps and it seemed to work, but iTunes can't find most of the songs in my library (the exclamation points). It seems to have found about 30,000 out of 107,000 but the rest it can't find even though they are all in the same place. If I click "locate" and click on the file, iTunes creates a new artist folder OUTSIDE the music folder and places the track there. So, my structure is this:

G:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music and all the artist folders are contained in the Music folder. I have the box checked for "Keep organized" and the edit>pref>advanced points to G:\iTunes\iTunes Media. What is the best way for iTunes to find all the tracks? I find it odd that it found a lot of them, but can't find the rest even though their all in the same place. Again, thanks for the help to this point. It seems like I should be able to fix this pretty easily. It could be the case that iTunes is just taking a LONG time to find all the files because there are so many, but that sounds unlikely.

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jul 24, 2015 2:14 AM in response to stevestutman

Ouch, that should not have happened. So it is popping artist folders up to G:\iTunes\iTunes Media instead of G:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music? Use File > Library > Organize Library > Rearrange Files. Use my script FindTracks to repair the broken links. Once everything is reconnected turn Keep off, and then back on again, to pop the artist folders back to the correct level.

tt2

stevestutman Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 24, 2015 4:05 AM in response to turingtest2

Bingo. Worked like a charm. I think I'm all set now, and truthfully the processing speed seems a little faster and there's no delay to my squeezeboxes either. Thanks again for all the help!

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jul 24, 2015 4:08 AM in response to stevestutman

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

stevestutman Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 30, 2015 7:18 AM in response to turingtest2

Hey - quick follow up - I ran your FindTracks script and the dialog box (which had the iTunes Media folder selected) was searching for 108,000 tracks when my library only has 107,400. When the script finished, it didn't find those 600 tracks. I'm not sure what those tracks are and how I can see the list. Are they music files that are in that folder but not added to my library? I know it's not the converse - there aren't library tracks that can't be located because that number is less. So, I think everything showing in my library in iTunes exists as a file on the drive and there aren't any "missing" tracks, but what are the 600?

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jul 30, 2015 8:32 AM in response to stevestutman

Try iTunes Folder Watch. It has an option to check for dead tracks on startup. It should be able to make sure that everything in your media folder is connected to the library, and everything in the library is connected to a file. If there are any anomalies you can can choose what to do, e.g. add new files and delete dead entries, or try to repair any broken links. If you've connected to any Internet Radio stations you may get some false reports on the dead tracks tab but they are easy to spot and ignore.

tt2

stevestutman Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 30, 2015 8:41 AM in response to turingtest2

Great - thank you.

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jul 30, 2015 10:08 AM in response to stevestutman

🙂

tt2

I recently bought a new external hard drive for my library and changed the itunes library location in preferences to the new drive. However, itunes still pulls the file location from the old external drive. How do I switch this?