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How do I move my music to another HD and keep my Playlists?
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Currently I have two hard drives installed on my computer and I'm running out of space on my main one. I'd like to move my 8 gig Music folder to my other drive to free up some space, but I'd like to do this in a way that keeps all my iTunes playlists. I do not have a "Music folder" set inside iTunes, all my music was manually added to iTunes.
Thanks for any help.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Madison, WI
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Why not just move the contents of the Music folder to your other HD, then select that folder in iTunes prefs? Your playlists should still work.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Originally posted by Macola:
Why not just move the contents of the Music folder to your other HD, then select that folder in iTunes prefs? Your playlists should still work.
Well I plan on moving the folder to the other HD, but like I said, I don't have this folder currently selected as my iTunes Music folder.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Northern California
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Would iTunes not keep track of where a file is if you move it to another drive? If not then it probably wouldn't matter if your music was in the set library folder anyway, the actual Library inside of iTunes keeps track of files no matter what. Test it out with a file or two, and if it can still find them, then you should have no problems.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Feb 2003
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Originally posted by itistoday:
Currently I have two hard drives installed on my computer and I'm running out of space on my main one. I'd like to move my 8 gig Music folder to my other drive to free up some space, but I'd like to do this in a way that keeps all my iTunes playlists. I do not have a "Music folder" set inside iTunes, all my music was manually added to iTunes.
Thanks for any help.
If you follow the Apple instructions for moving your iTunes Folder to another hard drive, you will lose your playlists and ratings. You can try this shareware.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Yorktown, VA
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I think you could let iTunes organize your music and then tell it to use a new folder.
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"I'm virtually bursting with adequatulence!" - Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Here's what I tried doing (didn't work though):
I moved my Music folder to the other drive and edited the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file to search and replace all instances of the previous path with the new path. I even deleted my old Music folder and deleted the binary "iTunes Music Library" file, however, when I launched iTunes, all I got was a bunch of exclamation marks beside all the song names, and when I went to edit the xml library file all instances of the new path name had been reverted to the old pathname. I made backups of these files however, so everthing should OK, but this problem is preventing me from moving my library to the new HD
I tried using ListSaver, but sadly it isn't designed for doing this. I don't see why this is so difficult, I can imagine a lot of situations where such a task could be necessary.
I also tried exporting my Library to a Library.xml file, changing it to reflect the correct path, moving my Music folder to a non-readable directory (using root) and re-importing the xml file. What happens is that even though I deleted both files in my iTunes Music folder in my Documents folder, the files still get re-created somehow! Where are they being re-created from? If I could find that, I think I could solve the problem.
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Last edited by itistoday; Nov 4, 2004 at 08:17 PM.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2001
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There's a script available that does this very thing. I haven't used it in a while, but it's recently been updated. iTunes Library Manager. Enjoy! Let us know how well it works.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Originally posted by lavar78:
I think you could let iTunes organize your music and then tell it to use a new folder.
Yeah, it seems like this is the only way. Originally my music was all in my Music folder�just files, no artist/album folders. Now I've decided to give in and let iTunes organize it. At least method works :shrug:
Thanks guys for your help!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Madison, WI
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Originally posted by itistoday:
Well I plan on moving the folder to the other HD, but like I said, I don't have this folder currently selected as my iTunes Music folder.
It doesn't matter. The default selection will be your Music folder. Like I said, just move the contents over to your other drive, then go into the iTunes prefs, and select the new music folder. I've done this on a couple of Macs and haven't lost any playlists.
Maybe I still don't understand what the problem is...if so, I apologize...
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Originally posted by Macola:
It doesn't matter. The default selection will be your Music folder. Like I said, just move the contents over to your other drive, then go into the iTunes prefs, and select the new music folder. I've done this on a couple of Macs and haven't lost any playlists.
Maybe I still don't understand what the problem is...if so, I apologize...
Oh... maybe I didn't understand you... crap... I should've tried this before it went and sorted all my songs into folders... oh well, it's not really that bad anyways, the only pain is when you rename an artist it doesn't rename the folder.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Here's something to try. First export all your playlists. Then move the files to the new location. Clear your library and add the songs back from the new location. Direct iTunes to use the new location as the iTunes Music Folder. Then delete your playlist, and import the one you just exported. I did something similar when I switch from PC to Mac. I was able to transfer my playlists with no problems.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2001
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Originally posted by raynebair:
Here's something to try. First export all your playlists. Then move the files to the new location. Clear your library and add the songs back from the new location. Direct iTunes to use the new location as the iTunes Music Folder. Then delete your playlist, and import the one you just exported. I did something similar when I switch from PC to Mac. I was able to transfer my playlists with no problems.
Ok, if I have to do this again I'll try it, but I already solved it by using the iTunes music folder preference. Thanks though, I just don't want to mess around with it anymore.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Yorktown, VA
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Originally posted by itistoday:
Oh... maybe I didn't understand you... crap... I should've tried this before it went and sorted all my songs into folders... oh well, it's not really that bad anyways, the only pain is when you rename an artist it doesn't rename the folder.
Yes it does.
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"I'm virtually bursting with adequatulence!" - Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
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