An update - and closure. Not just a wrong turn, but off the track and in a ravine. Needed to take several steps back and start again.
My main error: Last night I updated my music files and made the two iMacs identical for content. In my excitement I got up very early this morning to copy the content to the Mac Mini external drive. But I forgot to actually copy the complete iTunes structure with library database so just had a copy of the songs. Of course the Mini library could not associate properly with the files. Second error and learning: Restoring from Time Machine with recent data also resulted in missing files and corrupt links for TV and Movies. Reason was that the external drive with movies was excluded from TM backup. I have just copied the complete iTunes file structure from an iMac to the Mini. Music and playlists are now ok. Purchased TV and Movies are all in “download ready” status and appear to be ok. This was fortunate because the Mini SSD would be bang full with both movies and music on the internal SSD. I can copy movies from their external drive source manually when needed. And Apple TV is good too with limited choice of shows. Now to get the music to the external drive and initiate Home Sharing or its modern equivalent. But not at 4am tomorrow. Wamug school teacher members may say that education is fun, but this set of learnings has been painful. Cheers Alan > On 3 May 2019, at 11:35 am, Alan Smith <sma...@iinet.net.au> wrote: > > I took a wrong turn somewhere in moving my music from an old iMac computer to > an external drive attached to a Mac Mini. Any directions to get back on > track would be very welcome. > > The iTunes app does not display any songs, only a list of purchased items > available for download. Further, the links to some Movies and TV Shows have > been lost and some metadata of individual files corrupted. A new library > database was created automatically during my work. Trash was emptied during > the exercise. > > iTunes and the Mac Mini, with Films on the external drive, has been fault > free for over 12 months. I decided to move my music collection across to > make the Mini a full media server. The eventual aim was to maintain a > single music database and invoke Home Sharing for music access on two local > iMacs. But… > > I have Time Machine and Super Duper backups if they would be helpful in > fixing my mess. > > Mac Mini is late 2014 model with 256GB SSD. MacOS is High Sierra 10.13.6 and > iTunes is ver 12.8.2.3 > > Regards > Alan > > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>
