iTunes library moving issues
March 24, 2007 5:22 PM   Subscribe

I've moved my iTunes folder from a network drive to a local drive. I need to reformat the remote drive... but Apple says I need to leave certain files from the old directory in place. Also, there's a big size difference between the old and new folders. Help!

Apple's support page says its safe to delete the old iTunes folder, but not "the iTunes library files that may be in the same location as the iTunes Music folder" (see step 13 in the link above).

I need to wipe the network drive clean, but I'm concerned that I'll nuke some critical aspect of my music collection.

Another concern: on the 'old' drive, the iTunes folder took up 97 gigs of a 126 gig partition, but the new iTunes folder is only 53 gigs. I ran the 'consolidate library' function in iTunes, so the new folder should have everything, but what might account for the missing 44 gigs?

(Oh: I'm on a PC).
posted by onshi to Computers & Internet (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
FWIW: I manually "sync" my iTunes libraries between my desktop and laptop by copying the iTunes folder from My Music from one computer to another. The file paths are completely different (different drive letters, and I managed to spell my name wrong on one computer), but iTunes works fine everytime I do this.

I wouldn't worry - just copy the entire iTunes folder (after consolidating, which you've done)
posted by niles at 6:20 PM on March 24, 2007


What Apple refers to as "the iTunes library files that may be in the same location as the iTunes Music folder" are the files named "ITunes Library" and "iTunes Music Library.xml." These are database files that keep track of the locations of your files, the contents of your playlists, and so on. On a Mac these files are always in the folder ~/Music/iTunes, even if you have told iTunes to put your music library elsewhere. On a Windows machine they are probably in your user folder somewhere, not on the remote drive.

The missing 44 gigs could be files that are in the folder that's not in the iTunes library. It looks like there are plenty of Windows programs that can be used to reveal the differences between two folders; perhaps you should try one of those out?
posted by kindall at 7:22 PM on March 24, 2007


Response by poster: The other iTunes files are, in fact, on the remote drive. That's what concerns me. Also, there is nothing else whatsoever on that drive.

As for the difference in folders sizes, it seems that windows was incorrectly interpreting the amount of used vs. free space on the network drive. When I checked the size of the respective iTunes *folders*, rather than just the free/used space on the network drive, they were the correct (smaller) size.
posted by onshi at 10:19 PM on March 24, 2007


I expect iTunes has moved them to your main drive already, but sure, back up those two files just in case. Actually, the only one you really need is the XML file; the other file is just an index into the XML so that iTunes doesn't have to parse it. The program will recreate it if it's missing.
posted by kindall at 12:01 AM on March 25, 2007


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