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I have an Macbook Pro with multiple external (USB) hard drivers. I store all of my music files on one external drive.
What I wish to accomplish is to move all of my songs to another external drive (the current/old one is dying..). Copying the files over to the new drive was the easy part.
How to I get my Music App to "point" to the new location? It current still uses the songs on the old drive...
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15
Glad you got it working. 🙂
After changing the media folder as the first part of step (1) iTunes would normally have asked if you wanted to consolidate the media into your new media folder. I've assumed Music does the same, but perhaps not.
The result in (2) is typical in macOS/OS X where content is moved or renamed within the same volume.
With (3) you got lucky. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Another more reliable approach is to swap the volume labels so the original paths are still used, but now refer to your new volume rather than the older one.
tt2
Glad you got it working. 🙂
After changing the media folder as the first part of step (1) iTunes would normally have asked if you wanted to consolidate the media into your new media folder. I've assumed Music does the same, but perhaps not.
The result in (2) is typical in macOS/OS X where content is moved or renamed within the same volume.
With (3) you got lucky. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Another more reliable approach is to swap the volume labels so the original paths are still used, but now refer to your new volume rather than the older one.
tt2
What you should have done was declare the new media folder (Music > Preferences > Files) that you wanted to be used in future, and then allowed Music to consolidate to that new path. It would have copied the files and updated the stored path in the library as part of the process. This may still be the best way to proceed, although you should move or delete the copies you've already made if you're going to consolidate to the same location. I would recommend using <External>/Music/Media as your new media folder path so that you can make the library portable in future if needed by copying the library files into <External>/Music. See Make a split library portable - Apple Community for details.
tt2
I discovered something new today.
Starting condition: all songs in the folder <ext1>/Music/Media
What I did:
I created a new folder on <ext2> with the name /Music
I then copied all of the songs from <ext1>/Music/Meida to <ext2>/Music
I found the following:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
Everything seems to be working as expected now.
Music app did not perform the consolidation automatically.
I'd take lucky any time :-)
Thanks.
You're welcome. 🙂
tt2
Moving media files from one external drive to another
