iTunes Question...
So I've just acquired a largish external HD that I'd like to move all my .mp3s to. Well, I've copied them all over, but I can't seem to get iTunes to look to the E: drive for its library. It keeps stubbornly looking at the C: drive, even though I've changed the iTunes Music folder location to the correct directory on the E: drive. Am I missing a
In the meantime, two options to try in a Mac world that I'd expect to translate to a windows world.
Option 1: tweak existing metadata
Shut down iTunes
Back up and rename the existing iTunes Library database file (it is in your Music/iTunes folder.
Make a backup copy of the iTunes Music Library.xml file.
Open the .xml file with a simple text editor that can do a basic search and replace - notepad, not wordpad will work. (Wordpad adds things like carriage returns to files when it shouldn't). Do a search and replace on the first part of the path, C:\foo->E:\foo.
Restart iTunes. It will create a new copy of the db file basedon the content of the tweaked .xml file, but some metadata like rating may be lost.
Option 2:
Take a backup - this will hurt if it goes wrong.
Copy the file tree from the original location to the new one. Open iTunes and delete everything, telling iTunes not to just remove, but actually delete. Make sure that the checkbox in the Preferences file does *not* copy everything to the iTunes library location. Drag the new music folder into iTunes, and let it reimport everything. You will lose all of the metadata this way - playlists, ratings, # of times played, etc.
A possible windows-only option:
Go in with regedit. I don't know the details. You'll probably still have to do some level of the first option above as well.
A possible OS X option:
See if you can create a soft link from ~/Music to /Volumes/foo/bar, see if it blows up when the external drive is unavailable.
Good luck!
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