I finally found some instructions for doing something I’d been wanting to do for some time — shift my 25Gb iTunes library from my notebook hard drive to an external hard drive.
The instructions were actually official Apple notes. I went through the steps, very straightforwardly, and left it all running overnight. Essentially, it’s just changing the location for the music library to the new drive, then running the Consolidate Library function. So far everything is working just fine.
What I haven’t done is taken this next step, which is moving the iTunes library files (as opposed to the music files they point to) to the external drive. I’m thinking I should do so (it would make the music completely portable). I just haven’t done it yet.
What’s a bigger question is what to do with half my hard drive free again …
And… I just lost all my iTunes music.
Bugger.
So… know any way to restore items that you recycled and then deleted? Otherwise, I just lost all my playlists, even if the music is still safe and sound on my external hard drive.
Gah!
There are supposedly ways to undelete trashed-and-flushed files, but I haven’t used any of them in several years.
I’m afraid to ask what happened.
I was already using an external hard drive for all my music, and then I tried to do the next step, and consolidate my library and then clean iTunes off my main drive — but I didn’t read closely enough that you’re not supposed to delete the library files.
Ah well.
Most of my playlists I can put together again as I need to. I usually just hit shuffle anyway.
🙁
Sorry about that.
Dave,
After consolidating the files to the new location in step 10 it says:
11. After the folder has been copied, locate your original iTunes Media folder, and drag it to the Recycle Bin.
Note: Don’t remove the iTunes library files that may be in the same location as the iTunes Media folder. For more information about the iTunes library files, see What are the iTunes library files?
I looked at the two different file type examples (.iti &xml) in the “”What are the itunes library files? link. However , I cannot find these files in the user folder. Where could the original media folder be located? When I originally set it up, I let Itunes select its placement……I guess I’m not sure what the media file looks like.
I’m an idiot!
After reading what happened to KTBUFFY, I don’t want to make the same error.
Hrm. That’s understandable.
The library files for me are, as noted, the .xml and .itl files. For me they showed up, by default, in my (under Vista) Music/iTunes folder.
I *think* (and bear in mind I did this almost a year ago) that you can *move* those two files to a new location; when you start up iTunes next, you can then open up the library in the location you’ve moved them to. As long as they internally point to where the files are now located, you should be all set.
As with all things, back up early and back up often …
I accidentally deleted a folder and had to resort to commercial software to recover the files. Data Recovery Wizard from Easeus worked beautifully. It was simple to use and astonishingly fast (I guess because the files were still there and just had to be made recognizable). Of the thousands of files that were deleted, I have noticed two that were corrupt after restoration. Give it a look-see.
I’ll remember that — though for most my backup/restore needs I find Backblaze does the job pretty neatly.