Porkpie74
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Help! iTunes has duplicated files in the album folders!

I recently moved my itunes library from PC to a NAS to use with my new Mac. With the exception of a couple hiccups everything was fine. I then asked iTunes to copy all the music to my ipod and convert the tracks to 256mb (I have re-ripped my cd collection as lossless and chosen the option to replace existing copies of the songs which were lossy).

 

I have 264GB of music in my iTunes library but when I looked at my NAS just now I saw 540GB of music backed up!! I then looked in one folder and saw every song had been duplicated so songs were named things like "Song.m4a" and "Song1.m4a", but this hasn't happened in every album folder - of course I have way too many to go through them individually.

 

Can someone explain how this happened, how I can stop it from continuing and most importantly how to clear all the duplicates from the folders on my NAS so it only holds the 264GB of music that the iTunes library displays.

 

Any advice appreciated!!

iMac

Posted on Aug 20, 2014 11:24 AM

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Porkpie74

Q: Help! iTunes has duplicated files in the album folders!

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  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Aug 20, 2014 1:07 PM in response to Porkpie74
    Level 9 (54,353 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 20, 2014 1:07 PM in response to Porkpie74

    How did you relocate the library to the NAS?  Did you relocate the whole library or just media?  And I hope you didn't do this through preferences settings unless you elected to relocate only media through consolidating/organize.

  • by Porkpie74,

    Porkpie74 Porkpie74 Aug 20, 2014 1:49 PM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 20, 2014 1:49 PM in response to Limnos

    I did it via the steps apple recommend by consolidating/organizing and everything was fine, it's only the last week that things must have changed.

     

    The only thing I can think is that when I deleted an album from itunes library it wasn't deleted from the NAS and therefore this was duplicated when I re-ripped a CD. In the cases that iTunes recognised the CD alrready existed and asked to replace the file, these would be the files that weren't duplicated.

     

    Either way, I have a sh1t load of songs duplicated i nthe folers, is there a programme I can run to get rid of them?

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Aug 20, 2014 2:01 PM in response to Porkpie74
    Level 9 (54,353 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 20, 2014 2:01 PM in response to Porkpie74

    There's all kind of snake oil, cure-all applications for Macs including some that get rid of duplicate files.  The thing is, I know I for one have files that appear to be duplicates but are not really and I personally prefer to hand-sort my duplicates to make sure the wrong thing isn't deleted.

     

    By the way, consolidating isn't moving the library to the external, it just moving the media.  A library is everything in the iTunes folder.  Even so, consolidating should not duplicate files and the was likely something else you did in all this that caused that.

     

    What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660

     

    More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management

     

    What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html

     

    Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

     

    iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847 - plus supplemental information about organizing to new structure https://discussions.apple.com/message/26404702#26404702

     

    Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7392 - and making an iTunes library portable.

  • by Porkpie74,

    Porkpie74 Porkpie74 Aug 20, 2014 2:50 PM in response to Limnos
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 20, 2014 2:50 PM in response to Limnos

    I've sussed what's happened - I just went to re-rip a CD in lossless (already have a lossy copy on iTunes) and was given the option to replace existing copies which I selected yes to, however, when it had finished and I checked the folder, the songs had been duplicated and today's copies all have the digit 1 at the end of the song titles. However, it seems that the early cds I was ripping have had their original mp3 versions replaced (not replicated) although the file in the folder shows the title with 1, the library doesn't.

     

    Is there a way to fix this so itunes actually replaces, not replicates, files? The other issue being that once I start deleting the original mp3 versions surely they will disappear from the playlists I created