Moving the iTunes folder? Please help???

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Hi. Basically, I'm trying to move all of my music onto one external HD.

Details: I'm on an '09 macbook pro, with the newest OS (lion?) and the newest version of itunes. Originally, I was just putting music on my computer as most people do. Eventually, I bought an external hard drive for school and started putting additional music on it as well. However, the external started having some connection issues so I've recently bought a new one....

So now, I would love to move all the music (both from the computer itself and from the dying external) onto the new external in such a way that itunes will recognize it.

As of right now, i've physically copied and pasted all of the music files from both the computer and old external onto the new external, which I now know is different from what apple recommends. However, if I go back and do what apple says to do (moving the itunes folder and "consolidating" the library files), I get this lovely error message about 5 min. into the copying saying that the location is a file, not a folder? (idk)

Please help?!?! This is a major headache and I just wanna listen to some music :)
thanks!!!!
 
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chas_m

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Can you tell us if you a) let iTunes build its own library of music or b) forced it to use folders organized by you?
 
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Well, both... the folder on my mac is the folder that itunes automatically made and organized, while the folder on my old external is just a folder of lots of music (organized by artist and album, like the itunes folder).
 
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chas_m

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Okay. Ultimately what you should do is fuse these collections into one in the iTunes library. Here's what you should do IMO:

1. COPY not move COPY the existing iTunes Library (the entire iTunes folder it is in) to the new external drive you want to use.

2. Open iTunes holding down the option key, it will ask if you want to create or open a new iTunes Library. Don't create a new one, just point it to the one on the new external drive. From now on, it will use that library as the default.

3. Okay, so that's all your Mac's iTunes music sorted. Now Phase Two: copy the "old external" music files into one folder somewhere (on the new external if you want). It doesn't matter if you keep your folder hierarchy or not, we're going to be adding that music to the "new" iTunes library so iTunes will re-organize it as you had it anyway.

4. Drop all those music files into iTunes' open window: this will copy that music into the iTunes library and organize it automatically (depending on your tagging).

Now your iTunes Library should be unified. You can get rid of the old external drive's files and folders wherever you copied them to. You're done.
 
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I think it's working! Starting up itunes while holding down option seemed to do the trick. I can't know for sure, as I'm still copying over the 4700 songs from my old external, but I think it's going to be fine :) Thanks for your help!! And just out of curiosity; is it ok (will my computer get all buggy) if I delete most of the music library that was previously on my computer to make more space (now that it's moved onto the external), but maintain a small selection of songs on my computer, so that I have something to listen to if I don't have my external with me at the moment?

Also, will newly downloaded albums and podcasts from the itunes store be put onto the external, now that it's considered the library?

Thanks so much ^_^
 
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Ok, so now there is actually a problem... I had dragged the files from the old external into the open itunes page so that they would be copied over into the itunes library...but then I got an error message saying "the iTunes Library file cannot be saved. You do not have enough access privileges for this operation". What does that mean? I'm the administrator and only user of this computer, so I can't imagine not having access... and when I click OK, it just pops up again in a few seconds.
 
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chas_m

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It could mean several things. I assume you mean the iTunes library that is currently on your boot drive.

If so, that's probably a permissions issue that can likely be fixed with Disk Utility on OnyX.

It could also mean that your iTunes Library has been moved somewhere it shouldn't have been. Where it should (at least for now) be located is Users/[your account]/Music/iTunes. If it's not there, put it back there.
 

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