iTunes library file

[Elrich]

My daughter is going to get a new iPhone and wanted to back up her old one (iPhone 6). Her phone is jam-packed with photos. She said her Windows machine was really slow, and an older Mac refused to connect to her phone (the Mac is too old, maybe?) so I reluctantly used my current Mac (a MacBook Pro bought in January 2014 running OS X 10.11.6.

"Reluctantly" because I was afraid I was going to have the problem I am now having.

To back up her phone, I changed the default iTunes library to a different external hard drive than the one my own library is stored on. Now I come back to mine and I can't figure out where my iTunes library.itl file is. My external hard drive contains no such file. I found one on my internal hard drive, but it displayed a very outdated set of tunes.

So I'm moving all the music to a different external drive, so that I can then start from scratch and drag it all into iTunes to store on the original drive. An hourslong process.

I'm baffled. iTunes obviously can't run without the library file, but where is it?

I'm going to have to put my daughter's backed-up data on her new phone, so I'm going to have to do this again. How can I make sure of the location of my own library file before switching iTunes to access her backups?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

She could just use iCloud to backup her iPhone, if she has enough iCloud storage space.

How did you change the default iTunes Library?

This article may help:
How to Use Multiple iTunes Libraries on a Single Computer

All needed files for an iTunes Library to function are stored in the iTunes Library folder.

C

 

[Elrich]

That's where they're supposed to be, but for some reason, as I said, the file was nowhere to be found on the external hard disk -- I did a search with the finder. I don't know what happened to it -- it must have been somewhere or iTunes wouldn't have functioned. Well, it's allright now --although I lost my playlists -- and I was able to make the switch again to put her data on her new phone and switch back to my iTunes without a problem.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

Sometimes, if the iTunes Library is on an external drive, there is still an iTunes folder on the internal drive in the Music folder. It depends on how iTunes was moved to the external, and how it was setup.

Glad you found a solution, but sorry you have to recreate the playlists.

C