One solution for iTunes 'can't find file' problems
Dec 01, '06 07:30:02AM
Contributed by: Mac Berry
If you have your music stored on an external drive, and then run iTunes with the drive disconnected (I have a MacBook Pro, which is only connected to my FireWire drive in my office, but often open iTunes at home to add new music, etc.), you may find that iTunes will report that it can't find the files (a little exclamation mark icon appears next to the song) the next time you run it with the disk re-connected.
This happens because if iTunes can't see your external drive, it returns its music folder location to the default on your hard drive, and it then goes through the library trying to find tracks in certain situations, even if you don't play anything. My solution to this is a bit clumsy (see the caveats), but it's the best one I've found so far.
To stop iTunes from trying to find files while the drive isn't connected, only open iTunes with the root of the library active. Make sure the view is not in a playlist, especially a smart playlist, and use only the list view (so not grouped with cover art, or in coverflow view). This is difficult because you have to remember to deselect playlists and change views when you close iTunes prior to disconnecting the drive.
If you fail to set up iTunes correctly before disconnecting the drive and launching iTunes again, here's how to recover:
- Start iTunes without the external drive connected.
- Connect the drive.
- Go to Advanced -> Consolidate Library. This will copy all music from the external drive to your hard drive.
- Close and re-start iTunes.
- Go to Advanced -> Consolidate Library. This will copy all music from the hard drive to your external drive.
The final two steps above will bring the library and the actual file locations into line. With 3,729 songs, this took me about 20 minutes, which compared to the alternative -- going to each song, double clicking, and manually locating the file -- is a great result.
Caveats: You obviously need enough hard drive space for your entire library; this will only work if you normally keep all your music in one place; and you'll need to manually delete the copied files from your hard drive after it's done. Please check to see that all files have been properly copied before deleting any, though you should be OK because "consolidate" only copies files, it doesn't move them.
You could do it by re-adding music to the library, which seems to be what most available scripts do, but that loses all your ratings, play counts, date added data, etc. All of those are retained by this method.
[robg adds: I talked this one over with occasional Hints editor Kirk M., and neither of us could come up with a simpler solution that retained all the proper metadata. Personally, I would use the "copy new songs to the library" solution, and just forget about the metadata, but I'm curious to know if there are better solutions out there...]
Comments (19)
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20061127040718624