tried something "out of my league" now im stuck

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So last week I ran out of space on my computer last week mostly because of my itunes files. I decided to purchase a 1tb Segate external hard drive and try to make my itunes run off of my external hard drive so i could free up space on my computer. I had a friend who claimed he knew how to do this, but it didnt end up working so obviously he didn't. So what happened is I went into my Macintosh HD and then drug my itunes folders into my external hd. After that finished, I changed my itunes media folder location to my external hd. Then I was convinced to do the stupidest thing in my life... drag my itunes files into the trash and then emptied it. Now when i go to my itunes everything has that little (!) next to all of my media. I still have everything on my external hd and can play the stuff from their, but just not in my itunes. If anyone has any helpful tips for me it would be greatly appreciated.

P.S.
Im using my 13' mac book with os x snow leopard and 1tb seagate FreeAgent GoFlex external hd.
 

BrianLachoreVPI


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March 2011 15" MBP 2.3GHz i7 Quad Core 8GB Ram | Mid 2011 27" iMac 3.4 GHz i7 16 GB RAM 2 TB HDD
Have you gone back in under Advanced Preferences - and made sure that your new folder on the external is showing as the new media location?
 
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yes the new media location shows up as my external hd.

to be specific "/Volumes/FreeAgent GoFlex Drive/iTunes Music"
 

BrianLachoreVPI


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Can Unix or Mac OS X handle spaces in names? (This is really a question to the gurus on here) I can think of a few instances where they definitely can't.
 

Slydude

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I don't remember for sure about the spaces in filenames but I might be able to help the OP out here.

Is your external hard drive with the iTunes conent mounted on the desktop when you launch iTunes? If not quit iTunes, make sure the external drive is mounted and then re-launch iTunes. That is easier than re-adding all of the files from the external drive.

This used to happen to me fairly often with a drive that was slow to mount for some reason. I solved the problem by creating an Automator workflow that used the Connect To Server command to mount the drive and then launch iTunes.
 
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okay i just drug everything back onto my itunes, but now i have 2 of everything on my in my itunes library and only half of them work. is their a way to separate the songs that work and dont work without going threw every song?
 
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chas_m

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Stop.

Here's what to do.

1. Put the entire iTunes folder -- be very sure it's the ENTIRE iTunes folder -- back on the external drive.

2. Launch iTunes *holding the option key down.*

3. You will be asked if you want to create or open a new iTunes library. You want to open, NOT create.

4. Point it to the new location of your iTunes folder.

That's it.

Once you've tested it to make sure everything is okay, THEN you can delete the iTunes folder on your boot drive. ONLY THEN.
 

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