Sounds like a fascinating thread, I know.

My 300 GB hard drive filled up completely today.
There is a folder of mucis (mostly CD rips) that is 1200 GB or so.
If I move this to another drive, anc create an alias of it in the place it's been until now, will the iTunes playlists linked to these files follow the alias? Or am I confined to little question mark hell until I can move to a larger drive?

Unfortunate typo. The mucis folder is 120 GB, not 1200.

Interesting that you typed mucis instead of music twice too.

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Ztirffritz
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." -Tom Waits

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I moved my entire iTunes folder onto my server and have an alias pointing to it, so you should be fine. I also keep a local, smaller iTunes folder, and will simply rename the alias and the iTunes folder according to which one I want to use at the time (rename one to "iTunes" and the other to anything else).

Thanks, Gareth . . . I hope that's similar enough to what I hope to do to be good news (I don't plan to relocate any of iTune's own folders).

Sometimes those mucus folders can get really large. Antihistamines can be helpful in such cases.

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guitarist
Sometimes those mucus folders can get really large. Antihistamines can be helpful in such cases.

Sp

Thanks for your help . . . moving the folder is going to be an overnight thing, I think. I'm currently stuck trying to get my netscape inbox back under 20 GB (it always starts acting wonky when it goes over . . .)

Update-- damn, didn't work. Itunes playlist entry stays linked to the file it was originally linked to, even if its folder is renamed and even if moved to the trash. Alias didn't work.
Thousands of tracks have the (!) now and will either need to be tediously repointed individually (not likely) or most of the playlists will neet to be cleared out and rebuilt.
I was hoping iTunes wasn't really this inflexible, but you get what you pay for.
At least I have 120 GB open on my startup drive now, instead of 325 MB.

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h'
Update-- damn, didn't work. Itunes playlist entry stays linked to the file it was originally linked to, even if its folder is renamed and even if moved to the trash. Alias didn't work.
Thousands of tracks have the (!) now and will either need to be tediously repointed individually (not likely) or most of the playlists will neet to be cleared out and rebuilt.
I was hoping iTunes wasn't really this inflexible, but you get what you pay for.
At least I have 120 GB open on my startup drive now, instead of 325 MB.

Before you give up, try a symbolic link instead of an alias.
[www.macupdate.com]
Also, you can drop the folder of moved tunes on your open iTunes window. use that tip with caution!!

BGnR

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"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

Why use an alias when you can specify any folder for music in the iTunes prefs?

Symbolic link or alias not necessary. It creates a problem where iTunes already has a solution.

"Why use an alias when you can specify any folder for music in the iTunes prefs?"

Steve is right.

iTunes allows and even has a process by which you move the iTunes contents to any drive you want. I did this for my mac recently. At first I thought i needed a shareware tool to do this move, but then learned (by getting a tip from someone here) to just follow iTunes' instructions. It's right there in iTunes Help, and right there in preferences. Works great.

Thanks, Steve and guitarist, but you are not understanding the problem; I did my best to describe what I needed to do. I have 120 GB in its own folder, most of it full-sized AIFF CD rips, organized independently of iTunes. No way am I copying it to the iTunes library.
BGandR understood (thanks!) but I already decided to dive in last night and just delete any playlist that had "broken" tracks in it. That still leaves me with way too many Wich there was a better way to view iTunes playlists rather than in one long (but still way too short), narrow pane..
I'll just create new playlists as I need them.
Thanks again . . .

Under View>View Options, turn on "comment" and/or "grouping" and add playlist info or your own code into that field for each track. Your playlists can then easily be rebuilt.

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btfc
Under View>View Options, turn on "comment" and/or "grouping" and add playlist info or your own code into that field for each track. Your playlists can then easily be rebuilt.

Thanks . . . that might be a good way to avoid a similar situation in the future?
If I don't have to do it for each and every track (?)-- we're talking about hundreds.

"I have 120 GB in its own folder, most of it full-sized AIFF CD rips, organized independently of iTunes."

Sound like a challenge, yeah.

An atypical way to use iTunes, and an unusual way to store it, and expect iTunes to integrate seamlessly. Whatever reasons you had for storing it independently that way, I'm sure iTunes wasn't the first thing on your mind at the time.

iTunes can be peculiar and inflexible, not as intuitive as I'd like it to be, and I hate ending up with broken links or duplicates.

Hope you got a solution!

"If I don't have to do it for each and every track (?)-- we're talking about hundreds"

No, you can select all and put in a value for multiple songs.