Prior to the demise of my system disk, I noticed that it was getting very full. Examination of the contents revealed much of the data was taken up by music. I moved those files to another disk and successfully made my iTunes program see that disk. Then, my system disk failed and I created a new system disk, installing a new copy of iTunes on it. I cannot seem to make that new iTunes installation see my old data (the second disk is still in the computer). I went to Preferences and found where iTunes was looking for the music; it said c:\user\music. I changed that to d:…where I had put the music files, but iTunes still doesn’t find it.
While it seems like you should be able to just reinstall iTunes, change the Media Folder Location, and Bang! All done! unfortunately it’s not that simple.
First, what OS are you using?
Second, is your music still listed in iTunes or is it blank?
DCnDc; I’ve been using Win7 all along, although I’m going to use Win10 on a new computer. I was hoping to copy my entire Music folder to the D: drive of the new computer, and am trying to make sure I don’t have this same problem again.
My music folder is very complicated, probably due to the many times I have moved it around. The simple answer is that there is an iTunes folder under music, which contains an “.iTunes preferences.plist” file and a subfolder called “iTunes Music”. Under “iTunes Music” are a lot of folder with the music in them (some labeled with the composer’s name and some labeled with the artist’s name), and another “.iTunes preferences.plist” file.
My understanding is that in order to change the iTunes folder location, you hold down the SHIFT key while starting iTunes. Did you already do that?
Thanks, markn+, I didn’t try that, but will try. I did manage to get iTunes to find my music files, but many of them are duplicated in multiple folders. This creates another problem - duplicate copies of the same music (each copy shows up on iTunes). If I delete one copy outside of iTunes, I know that I can remove the missing copy manually, but if I do wholesale changes in the music files, how do I get iTunes to recognize these changes? What does the “Keep the iTunes Media folder organized” command actually do?