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)