moving music files and itunes

MichaelHo

MichaelHo

MichaelHo

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Joined
19 Jan 2006
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London, UK
How would I move my music files from my hard drive to an external hard drive and have itunes monitor this move?
I know if i move music files from one directory to another itunes can monitor this but when you move from one HDD to another it just copies and doesn't move.
 
Cut and paste your entire iTunes folder to the external drive, then just point iTunes to the location of the library in the preferences and it should just work :)
 
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It doesn't let me cut, only copy.
What I've just done is copy my music collection on to the external hard drive and added it to the itunes library.
However I lose the ratings and number of times played, I use the 'my top rated' and 'most played' auto playlist quite often so keeping this info is quite important for me.
is there anyway to move the music and keep the rating and times played?
 
The above has been talked about quite a lot on the Maccast podcast recently you might want to try giving it a listen for tips.
 
You need to copy the entire iTunes folder to the external harddrive.. this contains all the playlist, ratings and library info etc :cool:
 
go into the options and change the itunes location to the new location you want to put your music... then go to consolidate.

it will then copy all your must to your new location... delete your old files :)
 
MichaelHo said:
It doesn't let me cut, only copy.
What I've just done is copy my music collection on to the external hard drive and added it to the itunes library.
However I lose the ratings and number of times played, I use the 'my top rated' and 'most played' auto playlist quite often so keeping this info is quite important for me.
is there anyway to move the music and keep the rating and times played?
Click to expand...

You have to copy the music, the XML for the your library, EVERYTHING to retain this information - then go into your preferances pane in iTunes and point it at your new library!

Rich
 
Robotica said:
go into the options and change the itunes location to the new location you want to put your music... then go to consolidate.

it will then copy all your must to your new location... delete your old files :)
Click to expand...

thanks, this was exactly what i wanted.
 
titchard said:
You have to copy the music, the XML for the your library, EVERYTHING to retain this information - then go into your preferances pane in iTunes and point it at your new library!

Rich
Click to expand...
Basically what I said ^^ too :)

Seems he chose the consolidating method though.
 
I can't seem to get it to work your way EVH.
I copy the music to external hdd, copy the itunes folder over too. But when i load up a file which i rated 5 stars it just shows it as a fresh file :s

what did i do wrong?

edit: ok i've made a mistake and want to go back to my original library. I still have the music on my hard drive and the original itunes folder is still in it's place. How do I get itunes to revert back to the original library using the original info?
What i have done is delete music from the itunes library, imported the original music back in and then went to Preferences --> Advanced --> General tab ---> itunes music folder location to Music:itunes which was the original.
 
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