New iTunes Media Folder location won't "stick"

Yes, that looks like it should work. On the other hand you could copy your existing iTunes files directly to U:\Music\iTunes since that is where you want them, shift-start-iTunes to access the library on the new path, set the media folder to U:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media, and use my ConsolidateByMoving script to move files to your chosen media folder, which might be a lot faster than copying and then deleting.

tt2

There is a bug in recent builds of iTunes that, at least for some users, seems to stop this preference from being saved properly. See Make a split library portable - Apple Community and put your library in a shape that isn't affected by the issue, and is easier to backup and move around in future.

tt2

Difficult to say without access to the code, but when you have a split library iTunes will check that the path to the media folder is valid on launch, and if not it will reset to iTunes Media in the same folder as the .itl file. What is interesting from your post is that it is the old path that is being restored rather than it resetting to iTunes Media. Whether or not the media folder gets reset iTunes should still assume that every track is available at the last known path.

You should be able to copy the library files and Album Artwork folder into U:\Music, access them on that path, check that music still plays, change the media folder to U:\Music\iTunes, close iTunes, rename U:\Music\iTunes as U:\Music\iTunes Media, and open the library again. It should correctly update the media folder and all of the links in the library should work. I'd also suggest closing the library, renaming U:\Music as U:\iTunes to complete the transition to the standard portable shape.

tt2

I think I have found a work around to this problem which infuriated me for many months. iTunes, every time it restarted, ignored my address for the music library and put new items in the "iTunes Media" folder in the same directory as the iTunes library database file.

I have a rather huge library (over 5TB) and a small SSD drive on the computer that I use as a media server. The benefit of splitting the library is that the SSD can hold the database and the image files for the album art and an external drive can hold all the media files. This allows iTunes to respond very quickly when you scroll through a huge library. I've sent multiple feedback requests to Apple to fix this bug, and apparently many others have as well. Apple doesn't seem to care about fixing the bugs in their windows version of iTunes.

So here is the work-around. Windows lets you map any drive to an empty folder. You can map it to a folder AND also have it appear as a disk drive in your computer. To set this up you have to run "Disk Management" (right click on the Windows icon). Before you do, empty the folder called "iTunes Media" by moving the contents to the top level of your external drive if you haven't moved everything already to your external drive. If you have already moved the iTunes media folder to your external drive, move the contents of the folder to the top level of the external drive (since the drive is going to become the "iTunes Media" folder.) In "Disk Management" Select the external drive in the top window, right click, and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths...". In the window that opens select "add" and then select "Mount in the following empty NTSF folder" and then browse to the empty "iTunes Media" folder in the iTunes directory that you are using. That's it. Now the folder that iTunes wants to use is mapped to your external drive.

There is only one problem with this setup that I have found, and that is a different iTunes bug. If for some reason there is a problem with the mapped drive, like it gets unplugged, then iTunes will think all your media files are missing. It recovers from this when the drive is reattached, except that many of the album artwork images don't appear right away. They are still in the metadata, but don't reappear until you select "song info" from the first track of each album with missing artwork. When you see the metadata, you'll see that the album art is there. Closing the metadata edit window restores the artwork. Yet another infuriating bug that Apple isn't fixing...

That sounds very similar to creating a symbolic link or a junction. I haven't tested it lately but in the past iTunes hasn't always behaved well when the media folder is redirected like this, though I have used it to successfully offload iOS backup data. Make sure that you have a backup just in case iTunes ever decides to dump your data.

tt2

Aside from the mentioned bug with album artwork, I haven't had any problems after more than half a year. I have MULTIPLE backups of my music library -- onsite and offsite -- as I don't trust Apple or Windows and could not bear to ever recreate my library.

Good to know. I'll have to try to find some time to test your approach. Thanks.

tt2

Glad the script worked out for you. iTunes has its own preference files squirreled away somewhere in %appdata% and makes very little use of the registry.

tt2