Rudolfensis
Level 1
(46 points)
Q: Help: How to Merge Folders "iTunes Music" and "iTunes Media/Music"
Most of my music is inside the older-format "iTunes Music" folder (thousands of songs), and some of my latest additions are in the new-format "iTunes Media/Music" folder (a few dozen songs).
Running latest Lion and iTunes. The option "Keep iTunes media folder organized" is checked, and has always been.
I'd like to merge the two, but the option to do so — "Reorganize files in the folder iTunes Media" — is greyed out. (When I forcibly un-grey it by changing the 1 to 0, it doesn't do anything when run.)
What should I do? I believe have two options (each with it's own questions):
Option A) Run the "Consolidate files" command to get everything from "iTunes Music" copied over to "iTunes Media/Music", and then delete "iTunes Music"?
- Question 1: This would copy from the old folder to the new, but leave everything in the old too — making duplicates, correct?
- Question 2: Will it move absolutely everything? Thus being 100% safe to delete the old "iTunes Music" folder?
- Question 3: How would I check that 100% has been copied over? If I delete the "iTunes Music" folder, and some wouldn't have been copied over (for whatever reason), they would get a mark next to them... but that's only when you click to play it. Maybe I can somehow force iTunes to look through all the songs and see if they're all in the right places and if not then append marks?
Option B) Manually drag/move all the files from "iTunes Music" into "iTunes Media/Music" and hope that iTunes recognizes it?
- Question 4: Is this 100% safe? Everywhere I've read it advises against manually messing with stuff like that...
- Question 5: Should quit iTunes before doing this? Because if I quit, it'll still be thinking everything is in the "iTunes Music" folder when it starts up — and it won't be. Or should I leave it on? Then it can track where files are moved... or can it?
I hope to hear what you think!
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)
turingtest2
Level 10
(85,885 points)
Here are typical layouts for the iTunes folders:
If you have upgraded from version 8 (or earlier) to iTunes 9 (or later) at some point, then your media folder (everything inside the red outline) may still be called iTunes Music instead of iTunes Media. The extra Music folder inside the media folder is used if you have allowed iTunes to Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization (iTunes 9) or used File > Library > Organize Library > Reorganize files in the folder "<Media Folder>" (iTunes 10). Depending on your choices for Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library plus a little bug in which one build changed the name of the file storing the choice of layout it is quite easy for some of your files to be organized according to one layout and some the other.
If the bulk of your library is in ...Music/iTunes/iTunes Music, with just a little in ...Music/iTunes/iTunes Media, then:
1. Confirm under Edit > Preferences > Advanced tab that the designated media folder is ...Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. (If the preference is pointing to iTunes Media, update it to point to iTunes Music, then close, pause to allow files to save, and reopen iTunes.)
2. Open the menu Library > Organize Library, tick the box Consolidate files and click OK. This will pull in copies of any files outside the designated media folder inside, inside it, and switch the database entries to point to the new copies. Ratings, play count, date added etc. are preserved.
3. For peace of mind manually confirm that for a sample of random files in the ...Music/iTunes/iTunes Media folder you can see a corresponding file in ...Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder. Use the Get Info > Summary tab to check that iTunes is looking at the copy in ...Music/iTunes/iTunes Music.
4. Close iTunes.
5. Drag the folder iTunes Media out to your desktop. (You're going to throw it away later when you are happy you don't need to reverse any of following)
6. Rename the folder iTunes Music as iTunes Media.
7 Start iTunes.
8. Check under Edit > Preferences > Advanced tab that the designated media folder has automatically updated to ...Music/iTunes/iTunes Media, if not change it.
9. iTunes reads the folder layout preference from the designated media folder. If you had to change this in step one it is just possible that the Reorganize option is now enabled again. If so tick it now and apply.
10. To ensure iTunes really has your files in the correct layout, untick the option Keep iTunes Media folder organized on the Edit > Preferences > Advanced tab, apply the change, then tick the option and apply again.
11. Check that everything is OK. Throw away the iTunes Media folder from the desktop.
General advice: Backup up everything before you start. In particular the iTunes database file ...Music/iTunes/ Library. You should always be able to reverse your actions by undoing a rename or restoring a file that has been updated to an earlier version of it.
The steps above will tidy everything up into the new layout. What it won't fix is any orphaned files or folders that might be lurking in your media folders. For instance when you rename an album, and iTunes is organizing your files, it will create a new folder with the new album title, move all the tracks into it, then as it moves the last track out of the old folder it will delete the now emptied folder. If for some reason that delete folder action fails iTunes won't go back and perform any housekeeping to remove it. This it more of a problem for Windows users where other programs, such as Windows Media Player, create additional files in the album folders which iTunes doesn't move. Any files you may have deleted from iTunes in the past without sending to the trash would also be in this mix. Doug's Scripts has some tools which would let you add in any files in your media folder not in your library which you could then choose to keep or throw away properly.
tt2
