Most of the media players that have a "media library" functionality usually self-refresh the library when files are added or removed. As I share the media library with other media players (I use iTunes only to copy music on the iPod), I would like iTunes to automatically refresh when I add, remove, or rearrange audio tracks in the file system. How can I get iTunes to do this?
How to get iTunes to automatically refresh the media library
itunes
Related Solutions
It depends on your iTunes preferences.
1.If iTunes is running default, iTunes actually copied all that media to your local drive, and you would have to delete it manually via sorting by "Date Added" to remove it.
2.If you have iTunes set to reference the files, when you disconnect the drive iTunes has some pretty annoying behavior where it will try to maintain the link but it will become a ghost music icon, the best way to get rid of these is sort by "Date Added" in your library and remove them manually.
These behaviors can be checked under iTunes preferences, I copied this pic from the Apple support site under HT1751:
Restore he ~/Music/iTunes directory or just the files in that directory - it contains all the metadata.
Then change the iTunes Media Location and all should be OK.
Note for others - when starting with a new machine it is easier to use Migration Assistant to copy from the old machine connected as a firewire target disk then all preferences etc are copied over.
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Best Answer
What you call a “design” flaw, is not such thing. It’s a design decision made by the iTunes team. Although iTunes lets you “manually manage your library”, it’s never intended to let you move things around in the filesystem, add, remove or modify files.
The premise for iTunes happiness is that you always add the items to the library and modify things from within iTunes. You have the choice to let iTunes “organize” the library (which will copy the media to the iTunes library folder and organize it there as he wants) or you can leave it wherever you originally had it, but iTunes doesn’t “read” or “monitor" the filesystem for changes. It knows things changed when the library.xml is changed, and the only application that does that is iTunes itself.
Is this the best way?
Yes and no, it has advantages, but a lot of people miss the “Winamp-like” ease of use and it’s understandable. On the other hand, it simplifies a lot of things for a lot of people. It has decently worked for quite a few years now.
But that’s the topic for another discussion. :)