Location of files after copying on new drive with different name

Thanks for getting in touch.

While it may feel like you just renamed a drive. To TuneSpan and iTunes, you technically copied the files to a new drive.

iTunes and TuneSpan can do a good job keeping track of file and finding the new location if the actual drives name was changed or some folder was renamed or some folders moved around on a drive. But when copying between different drives, as you did, iTunes needs some help, that's what TuneSpan was made to help with.

To make sure everything stays up-to-date and located, it would have been more appropriate to copy your other files between the drives, but use TuneSpan to span the media files from the old drive to the new drive. That way, TuneSpan would copy the files for you and update the new track locations in iTunes.

But, it is not hard to get TuneSpan to find the new file locations, and update the appropriate information in iTunes, even if the original drive is not connected and available.

So, here's what you can do:

1. In TuneSpan, go to the "All" media type and drag all the old drive from the Media Locations browser into the Spanning Queue. The drive and all the files should have the question mark icons, that's fine.

2. Set the Span Location to the location on the new drive. If the original path was some "Spanned Media" folder on the original drive, set the Span Location to be the same relative "Spanned Media" folder on the new drive.

3. Click "Span..." and confirm the span. TuneSpan will check to make sure it can locate the files before beginning a span. But, it will not only check at the current path, it will check at the new path in the selected Span Location. In this case, TuneSpan will not find the files at the current path, but will find them at the new path, so you should not see an alert about missing files. TuneSpan will simply update the locations in iTunes and in its own database to the paths on the new drive without needing to copy any files since they are already there.

That should be it. Let me know if that doesn't go as expected or if you get any kind of alert about missing files when you try to start the span.

Hi Pico,

thanks a lot for your quick answer.

I absolutely agree with the optimal method to change drive using tunespan. But unforuantely in this case my external drive was not working properly, so i had to move all files in a temporary one while waiting for replacement of the original drive... This explains why i did not use tunespan.

Anyway, i have followed your steps (i think i have tried this before writing the post), but unfortunately it did not work (see screenshot below).

I still get an error message asking to locate the files.

If i press to locate, tunespan attempts to locate the files, but at the end of the process the files still have the question mark

Is there anything i am doing wrong?

Otherwise, is there ay other solution?

Thanks,

Kind regards,

Tommaso

From TuneSpan's Media Location list in the screenshot It looks like your previous Span Location was actually at "/TOSHIBA EXT/Music/TuneSpan/". Your current Span Location seems to be set to "/Toshiba/Music/".

So, I think you just need to set the Span Location to "/Toshiba/Music/TuneSpan/" to match the same relative path. TuneSpan does not "search" for the files, it just checks the exact paths it wants to copy to.

Let me know if that's it, or if we have something else to figure out.

Hi Pico,

thanks.

The previous location was in fact "/TOSHIBA EXT/Music/TuneSpan/Music", while the current location is "/Toshiba/Music/TuneSpan/Music".

Is the use of the same name for the folder before and after TuneSpan the problem?

Thanks,

Tommaso

Sorry I didn't get back right away.

Most likely that Music folder what created by TuneSpan, it makes specific folders for different media types.

So, your actual Span Location may actually be that TuneSpan folder.

Can you try the span to that folder? Is that the case?

Hi Pico,

no problem, different time zones anyway: i also see the reply after a while.

I tried your last suggestion and it did work exactly as you said.

Great!

Thanks a lot, problem sorted. I hope it can be useful for some other user of this very good program.

All the best,

Tommaso

Awesome! I'm glad to hear that!

I think this covers all the bases if another user happens to run into this situation, so thank you again for getting in touch and posting this issue.

Feel free to get in touch directly "pico (at) randomapplications.com", or on here if you run into anything else or have any questions.