How do i transfer the music in itunes library of my old hardrive?

Your old library's music would usually be in \Users\<User>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music. Is that where you're looking? See Make a split library portable. You might consider running the old library from the external drive, or making a new portable library that contains all your media. Either way you should also make a backup.

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Did you have a split library in the past? I.e. had you chosen a new location for the media folder so that it wasn't inside the default iTunes folder in User's Music?

You can press and hold down shift as you start iTunes to choose or create a new library, then browse to the folder that holds the iTunes Library.itl file that you want to open.

If you're going to have to start over then I recommend you create a new iTunes library at the root of the external drive, e.g. in X:\iTunes where X: is the drive letter, then move all your existing media inside X:\iTunes\iTunes Media before adding it to the library.

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It should be safe to switch between different .itl files with the shift-start-iTunes method. That said see the backup link I provided above. If you open your older .itl file and it is filled with a bunch of exclamation marks indicating broken links then, as long as you still have the files somewhere, I should be able to help you reconnect the media to the library.

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The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.

Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.

In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.

If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files, or the library has been moved from OS X to Windows, then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.

If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

1. The location of the media folder under Edit > Preferences > Advanced
2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Get Info > File > Location that begins file://localhost/
3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2.

PS. The forum is playing up at the moment. Copy and paste this link into your address bar to get to the script: http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp#FindTracks

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