I can't open itunes library from external hard drive!!!

Question

Level 1

4 points

I can't open itunes library from external hard drive!!!

Hello.

I can't open my itunes library from an external hard drive from my old PC to my Macbook Pro. The hard drive is NTFS formatted (whatever that means) and has a couple of files in the iTunes folder saying iTunes library.itl (have no idea what this is) and iTunes.xml.

Anytime I try to open the library, it says "The iTunes Library.itl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file". The whole thing is quite frankly frustrating as it works on the PC but not the Macbook. Please help!

MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 4, 2016 2:07 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 4, 2016 2:35 PM in response to MattDD90

NTFS means it is formatted for use on a PC, not on a Mac, not unless you buy and install special software (which I do not recommend doing unless you really, really have to leave it as NTFS). Macs can read NTFS but not write to it, something iTunes has to be able to do. You can copy the library off the drive but cannot use it on the drive until you reformat the drive.

Normally to use the library on the drive you would start iTunes while holding down the option/alt key and select the .itl file on the drive, but that won't work until you get the library onto writable media.

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Answer 2

MattDD90 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 6, 2016 1:11 PM in response to Limnos

Thanks for this.

But how do you reformat the drive as I am the most IT illiterate person ever?!

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

278,351 points

Mar 6, 2016 7:08 PM in response to MattDD90

You cannot reformat the NTFS drive without losing the data on it. Get another drive, format it as HFS+ for OS X, copy the iTunes folder across. Get it working, then reformat the original NTFS drive and clone the library back to it for security.

tt2

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Answer 4

Mar 7, 2016 5:54 AM in response to MattDD90

You will have to do this as a 2 step process and outlined in turingtest2's post.

Kappy's brief drive formatting instructions (12/2012) - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4597657?answerId=20571091022#20571091022 -- I do not know what operating system version you are using so the methods in this link may not exactly match whet you see.

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