Music library spread across two drives accidentally, plus Downloads accidentally deleted!

Question

Level 1

4 points

Music library spread across two drives accidentally, plus Downloads accidentally deleted!

Friends,

I wonder if you might help: I'm a pretty computer-savvy person, but am at a loss and wonder if you could lend me your minds for a second to see if you have a flash of insight I haven't. In short, I accidentally deleted some of my downloads from iTunes (off a playlist), and in putting them back it looks like iTunes put the replacement files back on my hard drive, instead of on my external drive where my music is.

The stats:

MacBook Air (13 inch, 2017)

1.8 GHz chip, 8 GB memory, 120 GB internal hard drive, 5 TB external drive

OS X Big Sur v. 11.6.2

Music v. 1.1.6.37

About a year ago I transferred all my music to this MacBook Air; I set it up on the external drive, telling iTunes/Music to establish my music library there. The idea was to have all those (relatively large) files on the external drive and save space on my internal drive.

A few days ago, I was looking at a playlist and accidentally right-clicked and hit "Remove Download." I freaked a little, and was able to find... maybe "Restore Downloads" and they came back. But now, the playlists don't have those songs on them, and while some of the music files are on the external drive, some of them are on the internal drive - to the point where many albums have some songs on one drive, some songs on the other. So two questions:

First, how can I move the music files (and maybe the iTunes library file?) off my internal drive onto my external drive again? I assume I can't just drop and drag them - that would mix up iTunes, I bet. But how can I unify the two libraries so all (or at lest most!) of the files are on the external drive?

Secondly, is there a way to restore the playlists that lost songs off them? I could see the answer being no, but just in case... I thought I'd ask.

I appreciate your insights - I'm always interested in learning more!

Cheers,

Greg

MacBook Pro 15″, 10.11

Posted on Jan 11, 2022 9:16 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Jan 11, 2022 9:34 AM in response to gregbrown9

Since you are using Music on macOS Catalina or later your library file is most likely to be ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary. The media folder will reset to /Media in the same folder as the .musiclibrary file if you start Music and the external drive isn't ready. If you reset the media folder to your chosen path on the external drive you can use File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files to copy over any files from the system drive to the external. Clean up is a manual process you can do after consolidating.

Do you have Apple Music or iTunes Match, and do you have Time Machine backing up the Music folder on the system drive? It may be possible to restore the damaged playlist if Time Machine is doing its job. Details depend on whether or not you have one of the subscription services and exactly what it is you need to recover.

tt2

Reply

Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Jan 12, 2022 12:52 PM in response to gregbrown9

The reason I asked about iTunes Match/Apple Music is that if you have those then your playlists get deleted in the cloud, and when you use Time Machine to restore a recent version of the library and the library refreshes from the cloud all the restored lists disappear again. There is a workaround, but we don't need to go into it here. You should be able to close iTunes and restore a version of the iTunes Library.itl database using Time Machine from a time before you removed the playlists, then simply start iTunes to have things as they were.

tt2

Reply

Answer 3

gregbrown9 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 12, 2022 12:43 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks, tt2! That seems to have done the trick - certainly all the files are moved back to the external drive.

Now for the playlists, I am backing up through Time Machine, but I don't have Apple Music or iTunes Match. I suppose I can't go back into Time Machine and look up the old playlists?

Regardless, thanks so much for the excellent help!

Cheers,

Greg

Reply

Answer 4

gregbrown9 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 15, 2022 2:32 PM in response to gregbrown9

One more insight: I sync my new iPhone to this iTunes library now and again, and was syncing it today. I realized afterwards that it had all the playlists I'd lost... before I synced it today. <sigh> Off to do the Time Machine trick. Thanks again for the help!

Reply