Consolidating my iTunes music files

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Level 1

9 points

Consolidating my iTunes music files

I have moved my iTunes Media Folder to an external hard disk attached to an Airport Extreme Base Station. Unfortunately I did not realize that if the external drive is not mounted, iTunes automatically creates a new iTunes Media Folder in the default location. I have not yet removed the existing music files from the default location so newly purchased music is in one location (default) and not the other (external drive)

I want to share the music files with my wife and daughter so I can't simply depend on iTunes to keep track of music files in multiple locations. I need to consolidate all the music files in a single location accessible to all of us on our home Airport network. I'd also like to do so without create approximately 20K duplicates in a location. Eventually I will have an external drive for all the music files and a backup on a Time Machine back up drive connected directly to the iMac.

Is there a simple way to consolidate all the music into the external Airport drive without duplicates?

Duty First!

sgtbill

iMac, Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz, 4GB, Mac OS X (10.6.2), MacBook Pro 2.33, iMac G4 800mhz, Pismo 400 mhz,

Posted on Mar 21, 2010 7:33 AM

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Answer 1

Jolly Giant

Level 7

25,464 points

Mar 21, 2010 8:43 AM in response to sgtbill

sgtbill wrote:
Is there a simple way to consolidate all the music into the external Airport drive without duplicates?

sir, yes sir !

in iTunes, go preferences > advanced and point the location of your iTunes media folder to the desired location (external hd). next, go file > library > organize library and check +consolidate files+. hit ok.

iTunes will now copy all media files it knows of to that location (unless the files already exist there).

as you found out, it would be good if the drive that holds the media files i up and running prior to firing up iTunes. you can have that external drive mounting automatically at startup if you include the drive in your startup item. go system preferences > accounts > startup items and add the drive with the little "+" sign.

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