Drive Letter config.

Elliot6267 · 13 Mar 2011 at 17:21

I recently purchased and installed a new hard drive. this is working fine. my only problem is that now my external hard drive has decided to change its Drive letter. Now this wouldn't normally be an issue except that all my song are stored on here and linked via the drive letter to itunes. this is where the problem arises.

I could live with the hard drive now being drive G: rather than drive F: But i don't want the have to manually relocate the file path for over 7,000 songs!

I have been in Device Manager, and it seems that when my iPod is connected that takes the letter F: when its not connected, a phantom cd drive takes the letter, so I can't seem to change it back.

Any thoughts??

Liquid · 13 Mar 2011 at 17:49

right click computer - manage - look under storage for disk management, right click on drive and select 'change drive letter and paths' for the drive you want to change, make sure external hard drive is running too.

Ch3m1c4L · 13 Mar 2011 at 19:28

can you also not just clear out your library and then tell itunes to monitor that drive/folder and it will add them automatically? If not, then Itunes really does suck more than I thought, and I already detest it.

Liquid · 13 Mar 2011 at 20:38

Ch3m1c4L said:
can you also not just clear out your library and then tell itunes to monitor that drive/folder and it will add them automatically? If not, then Itunes really does suck more than I thought, and I already detest it.

You could do that but tbh wouldn't it be far simpler just to set the drive letter back as it was?

If you feel more comfortable doing it the itunes way, then that's the way to go, either way you will have sorted it out

Deleted member 77746 · 13 Mar 2011 at 20:55

Liquid said:
right click computer - manage - look under storage for disk management, right click on drive and select 'change drive letter and paths' for the drive you want to change, make sure external hard drive is running too.

This is the way to do it.

Ch3m1c4L · 13 Mar 2011 at 21:30

Liquid, yea I know its not as fast

Was just curious as the OP said he had to manually update each song himself :/

Elliot6267 · 13 Mar 2011 at 21:41

Liquid said:
right click computer - manage - look under storage for disk management, right click on drive and select 'change drive letter and paths' for the drive you want to change, make sure external hard drive is running too.

I have tried this, but its saying that the letter is already in use, therefore can't be selected. its coming up as a cd drive that doesn't exist, so isn't showing up in disk management.

Ch3m1c4L said:
can you also not just clear out your library and then tell itunes to monitor that drive/folder and it will add them automatically? If not, then Itunes really does suck more than I thought, and I already detest it.

I could do this but then I loose all the song data. i.e. play count etc....

Surveyor · 13 Mar 2011 at 21:46

Change the drive which is currently 'F' to something else and then change your external hard drive to 'F'.

Liquid · 13 Mar 2011 at 23:06

Elliot6267 said:
I have tried this, but its saying that the letter is already in use, therefore can't be selected. its coming up as a cd drive that doesn't exist, so isn't showing up in disk management.

do you have any software that provides a virtual drive? mount iso file etc, if so go into the software and change the drive away from the one you would like for the itunes drive.

PhillyDee · 13 Mar 2011 at 23:27

Elliot6267 said:
I have tried this, but its saying that the letter is already in use, therefore can't be selected. its coming up as a cd drive that doesn't exist, so isn't showing up in disk management.

You need to change the drive that has stolen the letter to say, S:. Then restart. Then change the drive back to whatever it was.

wilko49 · 14 Mar 2011 at 02:16

From iTunes, I'm pretty sure you can just set the library path to the new path (ie, just change the drive letter), and then there is a menu item somewhere called 'consolidate library' which will fix the path names. Backup the library file before you try it.