Update playlist after moving files to another drive

[Henry]

Hello, this is my first time posting in the community forum. I need to move my files from an attached storage drive that is going bad (Y:). I will place them on my D: drive. Is there an automatic way to update a playlist so that it will find the files in their new location? (one of the playlists has ten hours worth of tracks). Thank you in advance for your help.

[AndyLubke]

If you have your playlists in the *.m3u or *.m3u8 format simply open them with a text editor (of course make a backup first ). I use Windows notepad. After that symply replace, in one go, all occurances of ‘Y:\’ with ‘D:\’. You can do this with the standard ‘replace’ function in Notepad (Edit\Replace) or any other text editor.

Below is a screenshot from my notepad replace screen (sorry it is in Dutch, but the button with the red circle means ‘replace all’):

Disclaimer: This is assuming only your drive letter has changed. If you are going to change directory and/or path names on your new D: drive as well, all bets are off .

[Henry]

Thank you, Andy, for the speedy reply. Yes, that looks as if it’s the simplest way to do it. You assumed correctly that I only need to change the drive letter. Since I only have five playlists, that shouldn’t take long.

[Henry]

I have changed the drive letter in all my playlists. The lists are saved in the same folder that contains my music. I scanned that folder, so all my music has been reimported. But when I try to import a playlist, nothing happens. Can anyone help me? Thanks in advance.

[AndyLubke]

The most likely reason is that there is some error in your playlists.
Check the pathnames in your playlists:

• Are they valid? (Drive name+Colon(’:’)+slash(’\’)+pathname
• Are they exactly the same as the path of your library?
• Do you get an error message when you import your playlists?
• Have you tried to play your playlists with another program? (VLC media player etc.).
• Did you add characters in the playlists which do not belong there? (spaces, tabs, empty lines etc.)
• Compare the changed playlists carefully with the original playlists (you made backups didn’t you?). Do you see strange differences except for the changed drive letters?

[Henry]

Thank you for the speedy reply, Andy, and the helpful troubleshooting steps. I’ll work on them one by one.

[Henry]

Once again thank you, Andy. Problem solved. The path was incomplete. Previously, it was Y:\FLAC, but now it needed to be D:\Libraries\Music\FLAC. I had just replaced the Y: with a D:. Now the lists import and (more importantly) play.