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DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Gigantic Library split over two locations

Got a new MacBook Pro M3 in Dec 2023 that has been pretty reliable. We made the switch from a Seagate 16TB USB external drive that was constantly ejecting to a RAID set-up that has been stable. This happened

in March 2024. The majority of the library (~11TB) is on the RAID unit (~20TB), but all the music that has been imported since March 2024 is on the local HD. Music plays everything without issue. Is there a good way to fix this without a giant headache? The internal HD has gone from 1TB down to 350GB left, so it's a significant amount of albums.

Drag the "Music" folder from the local HD to the RAID unit and point each album over there? Delete the folders (there are a lot) and re-import them once library knows to look at the RAID again? We use all the music for work and don't want to lose days or weeks fixing this if there's an easier solution.

Should the media file that tells music where everything is be on the RAID or the laptop?

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.5

Posted on Oct 4, 2024 8:37 AM

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Posted on Oct 4, 2024 11:05 AM

Use Music > Preferences > Files to set the media folder location to the folder containing your content on the RAID drive. You may be prompted to consolidate to that location when you set it, or you can do so via File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files. This will create copies of the files that are currently on the local HD and update the library such that it points to the new copies. Once the process is complete you can manually clean up the old media folder location on the internal drive.

There is an advantage to having the .musiclibrary package in the same folder as the media folder as the library can then be easily cloned to another drive for security. Reading the library from a RAID location may be less efficient however, so there may not be any benefit in going through the steps to rearrange the library into this shape.

tt2

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31 replies

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Oct 12, 2024 4:28 AM in response to DHeckeler

I'm not sure that duplicating it would work, but exporting the list as an XML file and then importing that should do it as only tracks that can be found get reimported. Yes, a much better approach.

tt2

Oct 12, 2024 7:00 AM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:

I'm not sure that duplicating it would work, but exporting the list as an XML file and then importing that should do it as only tracks that can be found get reimported. Yes, a much better approach.

Or export it and look at (or search) the XML, if taking that route. XML is a readable format.

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Oct 12, 2024 10:11 AM in response to DHeckeler

File > Library > Export Playlist... Choose the XML format.

Rename the original copy of the playlist.

File > Library > Import Playlist... Select the exported file.

A new playlist with the old name will be generated, only tracks that can be physically located will be added to that list.

Drag and drop a selection of tracks from one list to a new empty list should also have the same result.

I've assumed the source list is a regular playlist. If it is a smart list then the second method will give you a regular list with validated tracks.

tt2

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Oct 13, 2024 11:21 AM in response to MrHoffman

Working my way through the XML file. There are about 3800 songs that are messed up. It's looking for them on the laptop and not the RAID. We've not moved the stuff from the laptop to the RAID yet, but will do that tonight. Making a note of the songs that are a problem so those can just be added into the playlist once we re-import the XML file.

Thank you for working through this issue with me!

Anything to know before I hit consolidate on the library tonight? I'm not going to click yes on renaming files this time. Thanks again!

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 16, 2024 11:00 AM in response to turingtest2

Finally had some time to work on this again. Exported the playlist and found about 3800 errors. I'm going to have to go through the document to see what songs are issues and then re-import them into the playlist. When I re-imported the whole playlist all the error songs are still listed so the same issue is happening. I was hoping it would only create a list with the songs that it could find. No go.

I'm going to delete the problem songs from a duplicate file so he can have 50k songs, while I figure out the 3800 (I've been able to catalog about 650 so far). Will deleting the song info be enough to take it out of the playlist? Or do I also need to delete them from the end of the file too?

How each error song looks in the file:

</dict>

<dict>

<key>Track ID</key><integer>2248854</integer>

<key>Name</key><string>Now Here's The Weather</string>

<key>Artist</key><string>Whitelands</string>

<key>Album Artist</key><string>Whitelands</string>

<key>Album</key><string>Night-Bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day</string>

<key>Genre</key><string>Indie Rock</string>

<key>Kind</key><string>MPEG audio file</string>

<key>Total Time</key><integer>253074</integer>

<key>Disc Number</key><integer>1</integer>

<key>Disc Count</key><integer>1</integer>

<key>Track Number</key><integer>8</integer>

<key>Track Count</key><integer>8</integer>

<key>Date Modified</key><date>2024-02-26T06:26:34Z</date>

<key>Date Added</key><date>2024-02-26T06:01:30Z</date>

<key>Sample Rate</key><integer>44100</integer>

<key>Skip Count</key><integer>1</integer>

<key>Normalization</key><integer>5283</integer>

<key>Artwork Count</key><integer>1</integer>

<key>Persistent ID</key><string>A8272CB74CBD2B68</string>

<key>Track Type</key><string>File</string>

<key>Location</key><string>file:///Users/differentname/Music/USE%20THIS%20ONE%202024/Media.localized/Music/Whitelands/Night-bound%20Eyes%20Are%20Blind%20To%20The%20Day/08%20Now%20Here's%20The%20Weather.mp3</string>

<key>File Folder Count</key><integer>-1</integer>

<key>Library Folder Count</key><integer>-1</integer>

Songs also appear at the end of the file like this:

<dict>

<key>Track ID</key><integer>2248854</integer>

</dict>

Will deleting the top take the song out and still have a working playlist or do I need to delete both for it to work?

Thanks!

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Nov 16, 2024 11:48 AM in response to DHeckeler

Hi.

It is possible I've missed something by not going back over the whole thread, but if you consolidate (File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files - check the media folder is the right path on the RAID first) from the laptop (where everything plays correctly) to the media folder on the RAID then that should update the locations so that all items are on the RAID. Following this an exported XML version of the library should import into another library on another device, or you can simply copy the working library over to a same or newer version of macOS which will preserve date added. Also saves you manually locating 3,800 files in the library.

With that said, if you delete a track entry from the library that removes all references to that track from all playlists.

tt2

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Nov 16, 2024 12:17 PM in response to DHeckeler

The aim of consolidating is to go through every track in the library and inspect its location. If it is within the currently designated media folder nothing happens. If outside the media folder a fresh copy of the file is made inside the media folder and the entry in the library is updated to point to the new copy. Were the multiple -54 errors or just one. Did the error occur immediately, or is there any indication to suggest some files were copied over and updated?

iTunes used to have a feature to consolidate selected files, which could be handy when trying to isolate particular files that were causing a problem. There is a script here - https://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=mxrelocateselected - that sort of does the same thing, but unfortunately it doesn't appear to build artist and album folders automatically so isn't quite as useful as it might be.

If you're going to have to do everything manually then it should be possible to write something to process the XML data and fish out all of the locations from the rest of the data and pop them into say a CSV file, which could then be sorted to show the paths in order, which would simplify the search task somewhat.

tt2

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 16, 2024 1:05 PM in response to turingtest2

The error wasn't immediate, but I wasn't paying attention to how long before it popped up. I only noticed the one error and it stopped trying.

I'm not a computer/coding person, so there's no way I could write a process to search through the XML. I noticed what the location is supposed to be and then when I searched inside of Text changed it to the error path and that's when it told me about 3800 files were bad.

I'll try consolidating again tonight after work and see how it goes. Thanks for all the help.

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Nov 16, 2024 1:34 PM in response to DHeckeler

I think I've already got a suitable tool for extracting data from XML files that runs in iTunes. I could probably rewrite it in AppleScript, or I could process the XML for you via an exchange of emails. My address can be found in my profile here if that appeals.

tt2

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 19, 2024 8:35 PM in response to turingtest2

Tried to consolidate the library again tonight and about 15 mins, got the same -54 error. I'll send an email to your profile about the XML tool.

Oct 10, 2024 10:12 PM in response to turingtest2

Sorry to Hijack thread, but how can I pick your brain about Music problems turingtest2? I've sent you a message yesterday to samsoft and was just wondering if you could help,

Thanx

Steve

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Oct 11, 2024 8:33 AM in response to turingtest2

Would duplicating the list maybe fix the issues? It's going to take weeks to rebuild it. Would restoring from an old iPhone back via timemachine at least get the playlist back on the iPhone?

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Oct 12, 2024 8:17 AM in response to MrHoffman

I've never done this before. What should I be looking for in the XML file? Thank you!

turingtest2

Level 10

274,540 points

Oct 15, 2024 8:55 AM in response to DHeckeler

Backup the .musiclibrary file before you start, and double-check the setting of the media folder.

tt2

DHeckeler Author

Level 1

24 points

Nov 16, 2024 11:51 AM in response to turingtest2

Also when I tried to consolidate the library I got error -54. I changed the permissions for everything in the music folder via Terminal, but have not tried again yet.

Gigantic Library split over two locations