[X4U] Itunes is a mess

[Stroller]

On Sep 24, 2005, at 12:46 pm, Andy Hannen wrote:
>
> My iTunes library is a mess. I moved the library to a another volume 
> and
> change the appropriate setting in iTunes. Now iTunes can't find about 
> 90% of
> my songs, I have to look for them. There are also duplicate copies of 
> many
> songs in the library sometimes as many as 4 copies.
> ...
> What would happen if I manually removed all the songs from the various
> directories in the library, deleted the library and re-imported all the
> songs back.

That has worked for me on a couple of occasions - the only thing you'll 
lose are the counts of the number of times the song has been played & 
your playlists. If, like me, you listen to songs by album or 
party-shuffle then nothing important will be lost & everything will be 
tidy.

Make sure you find ALL the song files & then back them up to somewhere 
else. I would then delete the entire library in iTunes & tell it to 
trash them and delete any other copies of the music files - the back-up 
you've made should be the master set. Set the correct new location for 
the library and ensure that "keep my library organised" and "copy to 
iTunes music folder" are checked in Preferences' Advanced tab.

You may need at this stage to close iTunes & delete the "iTunes Music 
Library" & "iTunes Music Library.xml" files in ~/Music/iTunes - I'm not 
sure, so you may prefer to try both ways. Dragging the whole back-up 
folder into iTunes should get you a perfectly-organised library - 
although it'll take a while importing the songs to the new location & 
copying the files across. You'll subsequently be able to delete the 
back-up of the music files.

Stroller.