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how to move songs to usb device

I have about 5TB of mp3 music files, ripped from cdroms. nothing bought from apple. this is my collection of music which was all stored on a NAS (network device).

The path to connect to the NAS is a mapped network drive letter F:

I have too much music to store ont he computer thus has to be externally.


the main reason I wish to abandon the NAS is because its too slow for itunes. I wish to use an 8TB USB 3 external hard drive. which should give me much faster transfer rates and its connected direct to my iMac vs using network.


I am not migrating from one computer to the other.

With about 5TB of songs in my itunes library and about 400 playlists, I am trying to avoid starting over....meaning delete itunes and simply drag and drop each album into itunes, than create a playlist for it. i could do this but it has taken me a very long time to get album artwork, create each playlist and what not...so i'm trying to avoid doing all this again.


my goal if possible...is to point all my music to the new location.


Itunes stores nothing locally on my imac except playlists and ringtones. I use itunes to simply sync my mp3 songs and ringtones, thats it....no movies, no apps, just ringtones (which i can easily copy n paste to new location) and my mp3 playlists.


How do I tell itunes all my mp3's are now on an external usb device?

If I remove the NAS, itunes returns the problem, cant find my music, which is expected and asks to find it, problem is, it wants to find each file one by one. this takes too long, too tedious. looking for a quick easy solution to change location.


the folder structure has not changed, all my music is stored under a root folder called /mp3

I have organized it all by hand myself into categories, albums and such. i dont want itunes managing my music as it does a horrible job and moves everything around.


one reason why i manage my music is so i can than simply copy n paste a folder into my USB keychain so i cna plug that into my car or other devices that play from a usb.


is there a way to change the path globally?

Posted on Jul 16, 2016 7:54 AM

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3 replies

Jul 16, 2016 8:52 AM in response to johnny1nut

Some of the things you state about your setup sound slightly contradictory so I am not clear on exactly how things are set up.


If you have the entire library (= entire iTunes folder) on the NAS you need to drag the library folder to the other drive. Start iTunes while holding down the option/alt key, select the iTunes Library.itl in the iTunes folder in its new location.


If you only have media on the external drive you need to use iTunes to organize/consolidate the media to the new drive. I can provide more details but don't want to have to type in all solutions to every possible configuration.


If you have been managing media yourself and do not want to consolidate you can try copying the files to the new drive, making sure the new drive has exactly the same name and folder structure as the old one so iTunes is tricked into thinking nothing has changed. However, I am not sure this will work with a NAS. I have never used a NAS and don't recall reading about a situation where somebody has done this with a NAS and gotten around to reporting back here if it worked or not.


There is no other way to change the path globally. Doing so in preferences does not change references to old files, only new ones you add. You can edit the .xml copy of the library file and use it to rebuild the library file but then you lose some metadata like ratings, date added, play count.

Jul 16, 2016 3:59 PM in response to Limnos

>Some of the things you state about your setup sound slightly contradictory so I am not clear on exactly how things are set up.


how so?

its a pretty common setup. i think most of my friends who use itunes do exact same thing. Their music collection is on external device. music is not stored locally on the computer...not on the laptop or the imac...but instead on a portable device, a NAS or a DAS.


A NAS works by mapping a drive letter and you access the music via the network, hence this requires mapping a drive letter to access the NAS since it has an IP on the LAN.


A DAS which is what a USB 3 portable hard drive would be, has the benefit of being much much faster since it hard wired directly to the computer, similar to a NAS but no network, no IP needed, simpler and faster.


I have copied all my music, the folder \MP3 to my new device, the 8TB USB hdd. I unmount the NAS. now itunes can't see the NAS. Nor can it see my music tracks, they are all missing - and thats expected.


what I wish to do is point all those songs to its new path.....but i see no method of doing this.

on my imac, itunes syncs music to my devices by using the NAS, thus there are no songs on mp3 tracks on the local computer. every mp3 track that syncs to my devices is done via the NAS, since thats where they are stored.


>If you have the entire library (= entire iTunes folder) on the NAS you need to drag the library folder to the other drive. Start iTunes while holding down the option/alt key, select the iTunes Library.itl in the iTunes folder in its new location.


this wont work because iTunes thinks its folder is local on my computer. youa re suggesting I move the itunes folder to the 8TB hdd but doing that does not help since the mp3 files dont copy over and itunes still cant find the songs. all the playlists fail to see the songs because they think its on the F:\ drive which was the NAS mapped drive letter.


>try copying the files to the new drive, making sure the new drive has exactly the same name and folder structure as the old one so iTunes is tricked into thinking nothing has changed.


i was hoping to try that method but fails because itunes is looking for a Drive letter F:\ as part of the file/folder structure....


so i'm stuck, i cant seem to find a simple easy solution.


it baffles me how something so simple is so painful and tedious to fix.

are you telling me, me and my friends are the only ppl who store mp3s externally?

what happens when your hdd gets too small and wish to move songs to a bigger hdd?


if i tell itunes to consolidate and points itunes to the folder \mp3 on my usb device it made a horrible mess of everything....

i had 5 TB of neatly organized music albums by category....after 2 days of letting itunes conslidate it have taken almost every folder and sorted them like 1 track per folder.


which meant if i wanted to copy an album say ACDC- hells bells, I had to do a search for it because it had totally changed the folder structure and category and had placed some tracks of the album into another sub folder.


in essence find the album to copy it to another device became tedious and took more time.

so I deleted that folder itunes consolidated. and started over again.. i had a backup. thus why i dont let itunes organize my music, its lame and jsut does not work for me. i am happy to manage my own folder structure.


what i can figure out is how to tell itunes how to locate my mp3 files, without having to find each track one by one.


finally

i asked my friends, what did they do when their 1tb hdd was too small for their growing mp3 collection.....their answer...was a long groan n moan, stating they deleted itunes, plus the itunes folder. install itunes a new. than simply drag and drop one by one each album or folder they wanted on their itunes so as to sync to devices.

in essence starting over. There does not seem to be any other way which seems horrible to me.


you ahve to delete your playlists and all songs in your collection...in itunes...than go to File>add library (basically same as drag n drop a folder into itunes, than create a playlist from selected songs.


i am trying to avoid this because with 5TB of music and about 300 playlists, its going to take me weeks to recreate my playlists plus get album artwork (which is not so bad as most folders on my NAS have a picture of the album.

Jul 16, 2016 6:41 PM in response to johnny1nut

Itunes stores nothing locally on my imac except playlists and ringtones.


If I remove the NAS, itunes returns the problem, cant find my music

Not clear what you mean by playlists. Playlists are part of the .itl file unless you have exported them in which case you can have playlist files but the real playlist is still part of the .itl. Ergo you have more than just ringtones and playlists, you have the entire library file and presumably supporting files and folders such as the artwork folder on the Mac drive -- a lot more than you initially say. If you did not have the structuring library files on the Mac drive then when you started iTunes with no NAS attached the application would just say it can't find a library file and make a completely blank new one. So the information you provide about having most files on the external drive does not correspond to the behavior you describe when starting iTunes which means most of the library files are on the internal drive and only media files on the NAS.


If you do indeed have the media files on the external drive and the library files on the Mac there is no way to simply remap the locations other than the methods I have already mentioned. Well, maybe one more. If you let iTunes manage your media organization and copy the media folder to a different drive you can try finding one broken link using a file on the new drive, then when iTunes asks you let it try to find others. If you do not let iTunes organize your media it will not find any of them and you are discovering hte disadvantage of manual media organization and switching drives.

how to move songs to usb device

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