I tunes problem

[Darrell]

We have a problem with the computer at the bar.

We use I tunes and have approx 44000 songs stored on a hard drive. There are another 3000 songs stored on the laptop. Every morning we connect the hard drive to the laptop and then open up I Tunes and I will select a relevant playlist.

What is now happening is that many songs won't play and a little exclamation mark appears beside the track. Some songs will play (the ones on the laptop) and some songs won't (the ones on the hard drive).

If I click on a particular track the following message appears 'The song 'Perfect' could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?.

Any ideas why this is happening, it is doing my head in and my guests are probably fed up with hearing the same music over and over again.

 

[219]

Sounds like either your external hard drive is faulty / the laptop can't read it ; or maybe the location for your iTunes library has been changed - check in iTunes prefs .

I'm not sure how it will work , having the iTunes library split across two locations ?

I keep all my music on a network drive which can be accessed by any machine in the house with read/write access on only one machine and read only on the rest .

 

[Darrell]

Thanks for taking the time reply.

I think you might be right saying the external hard drive is on its way out. It is 7 years old and a real heavy old piece of kit. I don't mind having to buy a new one. Good music is at the heart of our bar.

My next problem is how to take the stuff off the old hard drive and put it onto a new one.

 

[AMGeed]

My next problem is how to take the stuff off the old hard drive and put it onto a new one.

Get an external HD, USB plug and play, open both drives and just drag and drop all the files from the old drive over to the new one.

I thank God I have never had anything to do with i-tunes. One of the worst pieces of software ever inflicted on the unsuspecting public.

 

[Giantvanman]

It is easily remedied.

From what I remember reading when I had this problem, it occurs when the link between the music files and iTunes is broken. There are lots of 'How to' articles about this and if I remember correctly, a couple of YouTube video tutorials.

If you haven't changed any settings, songs should be in the iTunes - Media Folder (or Music Folder for older versions).
When in iTunes, go FILE - ADD TO LIBRARY - from there, I can't remember what the sequence is on PC's but on Mac select HOME (the little house symbol), then iTUNES - iTUNES MEDIA - MUSIC- there will a list of albums. Open an ALBUM and select/highlight some songs the OPEN.

They will import into iTunes or ask if you want to add duplicates if they are already there (assuming it is the same as on Macs).

 

[hitenhirani]

Is there any other 'media' plugged in?
If the drive letter of the external hard drive has changed, then its reference in the library file won't match.

i.e. if it was E:\Music\...\...\ when you imported into iTunes then it will look for that reference.
if the drive has changed to F:\ , for example, then the path has changed and iTunes will still look for E:\Music\...\...\

Hope that helps.

 

[automaniaman]

Its not your hard drive, its i tunes cannot locate the file . You need to go into i tunes library the go into organise, then you go into consolidate files and then ok it....

 

[219]

As stated in my earlier post , it could either be your external drive that has 'died' - it does happen , or the location of your iTunes media folder has changed - , you can check this in iTunes prefs under the advanced tab .

If the external drive has died , it may well be either the power supply or the drive caddy - you can often get a replacement drive caddy and remove the internal HDD from the old caddy and put it in the new one to regain functionality . At this point , if you get it working again , it is a good idea to buy a new external drive and copy everything across to it , then set the new one up as your iTunes media folder .

 

[Darrell]

Quick update.

Thanks to all that replied.

Hard drive is working fine. I followed a tutorial on YouTube and tbh I had already sussed that part out on my own.

The problem is that I can only locate one song at a time, I have 37000 songs to locate. Rather than spend the whole winter moving a song at a time does anyone have any other ideas?

 

[Benzowner]

I have just read this thread, after posting a problem I have and it has made me wonder if iTunes is the problem after an update or something. I usually don't use iTunes, but have recently switched from PC to Mac. The Mac has taken all my tunes from the PC, but iTunes will only pick up about a quarter of them. Anyone know if a recent iTunes update could be causing the problem?

 

[IanMSpencer]

Something has changed your drive allocation, some other bit of kit so you need to find out what path the files used to be on and where they are now.

I can't off the top of my head remember whether you can get to getinfo on a broken file.

Anyway, what you need to do is fiddle around to get the drive back to its original drive name. On XP there was a way of forcing a drive assignment, but in a quick rummage round on Windows 8 I can't spot whether that still exists. Otherwise it is a case of unplugging everything, restarting and plugging things in one by one to get the right drive assignment.

 

[Giantvanman]

This is the Google search - itunes can't find my music

This is the general answer iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads

This one of the several tutorials iTunes can't find songs - Fix in 30 seconds with no software - YouTube

The songs, once located, can be imported or linked en masse; I did it myself some time back. It's all about identifying where the songs are located and the pathway to the folder if I remember correctly.

The shortest way to 'make it all happen' is of you have the songs on an iPod or iPhone….once plugged in, iTunes will ask if you want to import them to your library.

 

[Darrell]

This is the Google search - itunes can't find my music

This is the general answer iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads

This one of the several tutorials iTunes can't find songs - Fix in 30 seconds with no software - YouTube

The songs, once located, can be imported or linked en masse; I did it myself some time back. It's all about identifying where the songs are located and the pathway to the folder if I remember correctly.

The shortest way to 'make it all happen' is of you have the songs on an iPod or iPhone….once plugged in, iTunes will ask if you want to import them to your library.

Sorted. My wife used the second link in your reply.

Happy to have all my music back together and all our guests are over the moon that Hed Kandi isn't on for 10 hours a day. Shame we are closing on Friday though.