Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I have many duplicates and several folders holding my music. I just purchased a new 1.5 TB ex drive to hold my library and moved all my music manually. Now I want to delete iTunes and start over. Is this a good idea? Is there a better way to clean up my mess? I am running Windows on my laptops and have 3 iPods.
iPod touch
Moving files manually generally confuses iTunes. Starting over afresh will remove all existing ratings, playcounts, playlists etc but if that isn't an issue then why not? Scratch that... With an iOS device you may find that it will see a new library as a stranger and immediately suggest wiping the device and reloading... See what happens if you connect the device to the empty library made in the next step before you add in the media. If you get that warning then you may want to copy in your old library file and delete all the entries from it, then start over. I'm a bit hazy on this one as I haven't tested it fully. Generally a fresh library on a new machine gets a different ID from a previous one, however multiple libraries created on the same machine might not be an issue.
I'd suggest you create a new library in the root of the drive in a folder called iTunes. Click the icon to launch iTunes and hold down shift. Keep holding until asked to create or choose a library, click create then browse to the root of the external drive and let iTunes create a library called iTunes.
Move all your media inside the folder iTunes\iTunes then use the menu item File > Add Folder to Library to add the folder to the library.
Once the files are all inside the library you can use my DeDuper script to clean up the duplicates. See this thread for background.
See also my article Grouping tracks into albums.
tt2
Moving files manually generally confuses iTunes. Starting over afresh will remove all existing ratings, playcounts, playlists etc but if that isn't an issue then why not? Scratch that... With an iOS device you may find that it will see a new library as a stranger and immediately suggest wiping the device and reloading... See what happens if you connect the device to the empty library made in the next step before you add in the media. If you get that warning then you may want to copy in your old library file and delete all the entries from it, then start over. I'm a bit hazy on this one as I haven't tested it fully. Generally a fresh library on a new machine gets a different ID from a previous one, however multiple libraries created on the same machine might not be an issue.
I'd suggest you create a new library in the root of the drive in a folder called iTunes. Click the icon to launch iTunes and hold down shift. Keep holding until asked to create or choose a library, click create then browse to the root of the external drive and let iTunes create a library called iTunes.
Move all your media inside the folder iTunes\iTunes then use the menu item File > Add Folder to Library to add the folder to the library.
Once the files are all inside the library you can use my DeDuper script to clean up the duplicates. See this thread for background.
See also my article Grouping tracks into albums.
tt2
OK, I created a new library and then added the source file to the library. It is processing now. I did clean up many of the diplicates manually and it took hours to do. When I display exact duplicates I list 3,000 songs so 1,500 need to be deleted. Ouch. I have over 12,000 songs in my library.
While I actually did IT Tech Support way back when (way back, like my degree is in Cobolt Programming), I have no idea how to run your script. Can you explain in a bit more detail? THANKS SO MUCH.
After displaying exact duplicates, use CTRL-A to select all of them then double-click the script to run it. Follow the prompts. That said it might be as well to test a smaller sample first. Especially if you don't have a backup...
tt2
double click the script where? Do I come back to your thread to get to the script or do I access it in iTunes?
Click DeDuper to visit the page where the script is hosted. Click the same text there to download the actual file. General usage instuctions are also given on that page, but basically you download it to your desktop, downloads folder, folder of choice, etc., then locate it using Windows Explorer, and double-click it to run.
tt2
PERFECT! THANKS
OMG, that was so easy. Thank you so much!
You're welcome. 🙂
tt2
You really helped me alot with my library question. Now I am trying to copy in some audio books and iTunes treats them like individual music CDs. I changed the Media to audiobooks. I looked around in here but did not understand what I was supposed to be doing.
Duplicate songs and folders
