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I can't locate my iTunes music files after restoring my iTunes library and playlists media from an external drive

Hello all,

My laptop (non-MAC) was destroyed. I received a replacement Windows 11 Dell Inspiron. MAC users, forgive me. I needed to get all my iTunes music files and iTunes library and playlists media restored. Luckily, I have it all on an external drive. I opened up my iTunes associated with my external drive and opened up all library and playlists media. All my library and playlists were restored. However, when I click on a song to open it, it says "Unable to locate" and all the songs are denoted with an "!". However, if I go to file explorer in my external drive and click on "Music" all my artists and corresponding songs pop up and any song I click on opens fine and plays in iTunes and is added to my "iTunes" library right next to the same song which can't be located (as denoted by "!"). Is there a solution? It would take tens of hours to open up every album under every artist (I do a radio show...I have vast quantities of music files) and then I would have to delete every file with a "!" next to it. Plus, that would mess up any playlists not set up as a smart playlist and some of those are vital to me. Logic tells me I can't be the first person to experience this while restoring iTunes media from an external drive. Am I missing something obvious? Any help would be truly appreciated.

Posted on Apr 28, 2022 11:32 AM

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8 replies

Apr 28, 2022 2:24 PM in response to iTunesSupportNeeded1

The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates. See Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely if you're trying to access your media with any other media players.


Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.


In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.


If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files, or the library has been moved from OS X to Windows, then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works. It might need some tweaking if your media is in a non-standard layout.


If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

  1. The location of the media folder under Edit > Preferences > Advanced
  2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Get Info > File > Location that begins file://localhost/
  3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2


Note the addition of file://localhost/ (and the flipped direction of slashes in Windows) is normal for a file that isn't quite where iTunes is expecting to find it.


tt2

Apr 30, 2022 1:30 AM in response to turingtest2

Once again, thanks, so much, for trying to solve this. I, obviously, have little expertise with this. I've never used scripts before. When you say "You can either use my script and start the search for tracks in D:\Music," I don't know what "my script" is or where it is to start the search for tracks in D:\Music or how to globally apply it to all songs if had the script. Perhaps that's easy to do but I have no idea how.


The other suggestion to "move the artist folders down into D:\iTunes\iTunes Media where iTunes expects to find them" seems like that would be easier for me to do. Is there a way to do that in one move? In other words, can I go to my D drive and drag the entire "Music" folder containing all the individual artist folders into the D:\iTunes\iTunes Media folder and transfer all the files at once so that all the songs in the library will have recognizable locations? And if I can drag the entire music file into the D:\iTunes\iTunes Media folder, do I need to place it in the "Download" or "Automatically Add to iTunes" sub-folders under the D:\iTunes\iTunes Media folder? I'm trying to avoid doing it album by album and/or artist by artist since I have so many files. It would be very labor intensive. I'm sorry if I'm asking inane questions. Like I said previously, I have little expertise when it comes to this.

Apr 30, 2022 4:34 AM in response to iTunesSupportNeeded1

From my initial post:


If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files, or the library has been moved from OS X to Windows, then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works. It might need some tweaking if your media is in a non-standard layout.


If you're going to move the folders by hand it is important to select the artist folders only, and move those into the iTunes Media folder. Compare the path you gave for 2 and 3, ignoring the directions of the slashes. iTunes is looking for Don Covay & The Goodtimers to be inside iTunes Media, but it is currently inside D:\Music. Move that folder to the correct place and the album folder and track inside will move to their expected locations too. Move all artist folders in the same way at once and the problem should be fixed, assuming that this track is typical and there are no other issues. You cannot move the Music folder, nor should you move things into Download or Automatically Add to iTunes. The first would still leave things broken, the second would add duplicate copies with zero plays and new date added values, but leave all the broken links it place, so you'd need to deduplicate. You can either cut and paste from the D:\Music folder in batches or use Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X to select all and cut, then go to D:\iTunes\iTunes Media and use Ctrl+C to paste. If there is anything in D:\Music that you think you should leave behind you can Ctrl+click to deselect it between using Ctrl+A and Ctrl+X.


tt2

Apr 29, 2022 2:39 PM in response to turingtest2

If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

  1. The location of the media folder under Edit > Preferences > Advanced
  2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Get Info > File > Location that begins file://localhost/
  3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2


Answers to your requested detail above:

  1. D:\iTunes\iTunes Media
  2. file://localhost/D:iTunes/iTunes Media/Don Covay & The Goodtimers/Mercy!/12 Just Because - Don Covay.mp3
  3. D:Music\Don Covay & The Goodtimers\Mercy!\12 Just Because - Don Covay.mp3

Apr 29, 2022 2:05 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for replying. My comments below are with regards to your second paragraph. I selected a track with exclamation marks in my iTunes library and looked at the file tab location. I then looked at the same song on my external drive. The difference in that example is that the one with the ! in the iTunes library starts with "file://local host/D:/iTunes/iTunes Media/The Don Harrison Band/Sixteen Tons_Who I Really Am 45 single/01 Sixteen Tons.MP3. The same song on the external drive is D:Music\The Don Harrison Band\Sixteen Tons_Who I Really Am 45 single\01 Sixteen Tons.mp3. When I open the file from the external drive, it's added to my iTunes library and plays fine. It's put into the library as D:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\The Don Harrison Band\Sixteen Tons_Who I Really Am 45 single\01 Sixteen Tons.mp3 and is placed in the iTunes library right next to the same song with an !. What I just found out is that after opening the song from the external drive, if I click on the song next to it with the !, it now plays, removes the !, and I now have two of the exact same songs that can play in my library and the file detail for both songs is now exactly the same. What has changed is that for the song in the library that wouldn't play, "file://local host/" is now gone and the slashes have been reversed - i.e. all the slashes in the song that wouldn't play are "/" and all the slashes in the song that plays are"\". Basically, the difference between the two paths is for the ones that won't play, "file://local host/" is included and the slashes are reversed. Do you interpret that as being a layout issue?

I can't locate my iTunes music files after restoring my iTunes library and playlists media from an external drive

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