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Random Applications Support Topic Question TuneSpan

Problem switching to a new Mac

Richard Sleator shared this question ago

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On my old iMac (which I still have for now), I had a small SSD and a HD, and I used TuneSpan to access my music on the HD. I tried to use an external drive to transfer my music to my new iMac, so on my old iMac I told TuneSpan to move my music to a folder called "Music Library RS" on the external drive. That went fine. On my new iMac, TuneSpan said "Main iTunes library file missing: it wasn't found in its current location: (...)/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl (...) Whenever you change the library location in TuneSpan, you must make sure i`Tunes is set to load the same library." So I opened iTunes on the new iMac, went into Advanced settings and selected the path toward "Music Library RS" on the external drive. iTunes asked me if I wished to let it move and rename the files in the new iTunes Media folder, in accordance with the preference "Let iTunes organize the iTunes Media folder", I clicked yes. Then I reopened TunesSpan, which said Please allow TunesSpan to access files in "Library (on Mac HD)", but after I selected the path to "Music Library RS" on the external drive, I got the same error message "Main iTunes library file missing, etc". What am I doing wrong?

Thanks, Richard

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Replies (1)

Pico Mitchell ●

Thanks for getting in touch.

What do you see in iTunes? Did you migrate your iTunes Library files to the new iMac?

It sounds like you may be thinking that the iTunes Media folder contains iTunes Library files, which is not the case. iTunes keeps it's iTunes Library files in ~/Music/iTunes/ regardless of where the iTunes Media folder is.

If you haven't migrated those files from your old iMac, you'll need to do that before TuneSpan will be able to load any information from iTunes.

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Richard Sleator ●

Thanks Pico for your reply.

Along with the rest of my data, I migrated the iTunes Library files using Time Machine with an external drive. ~/Music/iTunes/ does lead to several iTunes files and folders.

Searching for the right response to "Please allow TunesSpan to access files in "Library (on Macintosh HD)", I found that home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl worked. Nice :-)

Now I'd like to bring my music files back from the external drive to the new iMac's larger drive. I gave permissions to "restore" as the requests came up, but the result was that all files were "skipped", without an explanation. Did I miss a step somewhere, or maybe it's because I have to span to the new iMac's drive instead?

Thanks, Richard

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Pico Mitchell ●

Glad you were able to get the library loaded.

Now, to get TuneSpan and iTunes to know where your files are, you basically need to re-span them.

So, select all the missing tracks in TuneSpan to span (drag them into the Spanlist area) that you know are actually located on the Frodo drive.

Then select the correct Span Location and span the tracks normally.

Hopefully TuneSpan won't prompt about tracks be missing because it will see that the files are at the span location and will update locations without moving any files.

Please let me know how that goes.

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Richard Sleator ●

Thanks for your reply. Re: "Then select the correct Span Location", given that, like most people, I have different media types, what should I select in the folder hierarchy: Mac HD/Users/home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/... ?

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Pico Mitchell ●

The Span Location should be the folder which contains the media type folders.

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Pico Mitchell ●

Is anything showing as missing in TuneSpan? I was assuming that before you can move things to your internal drive you need to reconnect TuneSpan and iTunes to the files on the external. So the first span location would be the folder on the external drive.

But, when you previously set the default iTunes Media folder to the external drive, maybe that took care of letting iTunes know where your media files were.

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Richard Sleator ●

Nothing's showing as missing in TuneSpan. About spanning to the internal drive: I thought I could pick a Span location in the right-hand column, then click on Span, but I saw that the Span function is currently set to the external drive folder. I'm a bit confused: should I first re-span to the latter, or should I set the new span location as the internal drive folder?

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Pico Mitchell ●

If nothing is missing in TuneSpan, and you want your media to be on the internal drive, then you can go ahead and span to the iTunes Media folder on the internal drive.

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Richard Sleator ●

Q1) Spotlight and I couldn't find an iTunes Media folder, so I looked on my old iMac, where iTunes says that the iTunes Media folder is located at /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. Do you confirm that I should use that same path in order to span to my new iMac's internal drive?

Q2) once the span is done, in iTunes on the new iMac I'll have to reset the iTunes Media folder location also to /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music, correct?

Thanks, Richard

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Pico Mitchell ●

That all sounds correct. The folder in /Users/[Your Home Folder]/Music/iTunes/ may also be called "iTunes Media" instead of "iTunes Music"

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