Transfer external HD with 500 movies to new Mac-mini

Question

Transfer external HD with 500 movies to new Mac-mini

I have an external HD with 500+ movies and home movies on it. I was using it on a previously owned ATV1 which I ran through iTunes to view on my home video screen. I just purchased an ATV4, but it doesn’t have a USB input so I plugged the external HD into a Mac mini to use in it’s iTunes App and I reset the iTunes Library as the external HD. I also set all of our iPhone 6s+, iPad 2 Air and iMacs to use Home Sharing.

In iTunes Prefs I pointed the App to the external HD that has the movies and the home movies which are in separate folders but when I go to iTunes the movies do not show up. I do not want the movies to copy to the Mac mini but stay on the external HD. I thought about grabbing both folders and dropping them on the iTunes app but I was afraid there would be duplicate movies.

How do I make this work?

Thanks

Andy

Posted on Dec 12, 2017 10:58 PM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

411,169 points

Dec 13, 2017 9:37 AM in response to andyhutch1947

iTunes preferences do not tell iTunes where to look for media. All it does is tell iTunes that is where you want to store any future media added to the iTunes library. You want to undo what you did.

iTunes uses the iTunes Library.itl file to store all its information about what is "in" iTunes. This file contains a list of file locations for each media file you add, plus various other stuff. So the only way iTunes knows about a media file is for you to add it to iTunes so it can generate a link. It will then put a copy of the file on the drive where it is storing media files and generate a reference link in its library file telling it that is the file to play when you see movie XYZ in the iTunes window. If you wish to keep the media files on the external drive you can do this by holding down the option key while dragging them to iTunes. Note that keeping files on an external drive needs special attention because iTunes doesn't really like this and you can end up with broken links if you forget to start the drive before starting iTunes.

I don't know anything about AppleTVs or how it uses media files.

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