Drag and drop transferring music from external drives to new computer

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Level 2

190 points

Drag and drop transferring music from external drives to new computer

First batch of files transferred just fine. They also appeared to show up in "Library.musiclibrary".

BUT, when I drag and drop music files from another external drive (with an unchecked "Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library" and a change to the Music Media folder location), it sucks up all of the tunes - shows a new total of tunes - and I think "Great!" - until I close Music completely and open it again. All of those tunes that I thought that I just added to the library listing from another drive, but not to my Music folder have disappeared from the list. It's been over 15 years since I've had to do this, so I'm obviously forgetting to do something here. Any suggestions? Thanks.

(Just wanted to say that for years, I've had the same JBOD of a 4 drive setup that's worked great for years - songs played from one of 4 drives automatically without a hitch).

Mac Studio

Posted on Mar 10, 2025 11:03 AM

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Answer 1

Rod Stasick Author

Level 2

190 points

Mar 10, 2025 12:07 PM in response to Rod Stasick

This seemed to work:

Rebuilding Music Library Cache:

Close Apple Music.

Go to ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Music/ and delete the contents (not the folder itself).

Restart Apple Music.

After clearing the cache, I added a single tune - kept in mind the total number of songs - then closed and reopened and the song was still there. I tried with a folder of tunes and it retained those as well.

Thinking I could fix all of the file paths from previous times of "drag and drop", I tried to consolidate the library (without copying files) and it still told me that there wasn't enough room on the (full) drive to do this - even tho the "Copy files to Music Media" folder was still unchecked.

So, I learned that Apple Music still checks if there’s enough space on the default drive - presumably in case it had to copy files, so I pointed to a drive that wasn't as full and consolidated and it'll run for a few hours and I'll find out if that worked later.

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Drag and drop transferring music from external drives to new computer

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