please help- iTunes not finding music!

basically I tried to move my music onto my external HD. So it didnt work, and I changed the location on my music file in itunes to what it was, in Music the iTunes Music etc. Now it wants me to manualy find each song! Is there an easy way of doing this? also all my ID tags, rating play count etc, mean a lot to me....I dont want to lose them!\


Thanks!

Yes, there's an easy way to do it. What it requires is that you have your library file telling itunes what is in your library on your internal HD, so don't delete that, but you can move everything onto an external HD, but you must specify that location as the iTunes Library Location in preferences.

Yeah, i did that, then moved it back... now when I point it to the ooriginal place on the HD it wants it all being linked up again. Is there an easy way to do that?

Not sure if Im explaining myself... it says that the file cannot be found, and asks if I want to locate it...

Mark

Try this: iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder

mark.spiro said:

basically I tried to move my music onto my external HD. So it didnt work, and I changed the location on my music file in itunes to what it was, in Music the iTunes Music etc. Now it wants me to manualy find each song! Is there an easy way of doing this? also all my ID tags, rating play count etc, mean a lot to me....I dont want to lose them!\

Click to expand...

Do you just want to move your iTunes library to an external hard-drive? Easy.
1. Go to iTunes preferences, Advance tab, General
2. Make sure you have "Keep iTunes music folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder" checkboxes checked.
3. Now, it's probably a good idea to let iTunes organize your library first on the internal hard-drive before you go any further, especially if you don't have both checkboxes above checked previously. Without any other changes, exit out preferences, click Advanced on the menu, and pick Consolidate Library. This will copy all the music in your iTunes library to the specified iTunes music folder.
4. You probably get the idea by now. Now that you have iTunes organized your library, go back to iTunes' preferences, Advance tab, General, and now point the iTunes Music folder location to a folder on your external hard-drive.
5. Exit out, and do the Consolidate Library again. Now iTunes will copy all your library to your external hard-drive. Note that iTunes doesn't move the files, you still have copies of them on your internal hard-drive. Once you verified everything works, you can delete the library on the internal hard-drive.

For more details, check this site: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

Thaks very much.

I used the ilounge article called Moving the Library Database and it worked great!