Another option does exist. He could use the symbolic link and call it
done. We called these aliases back in the day. You move your iTunes
folder to anywhere you desire, but make sure to create a symbolic link
in its original place. No XML editing, and you trick your Mac into
being polite. This works for many other things, including removal of
massive media files like the GarageBand stuff in Application Support.
So, let's say you rarely if ever use iLife apps. You've got a ton of
the included media files wasting space that you could use for other
stuff. But once in a while, your friends or family just love making a
DVD, Movie, or get addicted to Magic GarageBand. Well, symbolic links
and cheap external storage to the rescue.
Ryan
On Jan 16, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Esther wrote:
Hi Jessie,
I've retitled the subject thread, because this is really about moving
libraries, and not about podcasts.
On Wed Jan 16, 2008, at 04:59AM, jesus hernandez wrote:
hello guys just got me a new external 500 gb hard drive and have
transfered all my music and podcasts to it. how do i tell itunes
that
the pod casts are there so when i go to play them it doesn't say
invalid location and have to tell itunes where they are?
This would normally be handled with the "Consolidate Library"
option under the Advanced menu on the iTunes menu bar where
you first change your iTunes Music folder location under your
preferences (under the Advanced menu for iTunes preferences,
and under the General tab) to a location on your external hard
drive, and then use "Consolidate Library" under the Advanced
menu of the iTunes menu bar to copy the files over to the new
hard drive location.
If you've already moved your files to the new drive outside of
iTunes then I'm not sure what the easiest solution would be.
You could add all these files to your iTunes library again by
simply using the command+O "Add to Library" option under
iTunes and pointing to the new folder on your external hard
drive, but that wouldn't get your podcasts showing up correctly
under the podcasts library because there's no easy way to
distinguish them from regular music files by their file names.
It would also mean that you'd still have to remove the duplicate
wrong entries.
You could edit your iTunes Music Library.xml file to use
a "find and replace" on all entries that begin with a path on
your original hard drive with the path on your new hard drive.
For example, under each location keyword in your
iTunes Music Library.xml file you'd have to change the
beginning
file://localhost/Users/<username>/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/
to the corresponding folder on your external hard drive that
you now use to store Music. (Make sure to make a copy
of the original iTunes Music Library.xml file in another location
before you try editing!)
If you have room on your original Mac it might be easiest to
move your music files back there (or at least, any that you
haven't identified to iTunes in their new location) and just
go through the "Consolidate Library" process in iTunes.
There was some discussion about this in an old thread on
the mailing list archives:
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg23153.html
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Esther
