rebuild itunes library

What are the preferences settings you use in iTunes for "organize music", "copy to folder when adding to library" and "media folder location? Do you keep your main library on the internal or the external drive? By "library" I specifically mean the library.itl file which iTunes uses and where the main active iTunes folder is located.

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

My preferences are:

iTunes Media Folder Location: /Volumes/MUSIC/Music2012

That is exactly as it is listed? I use an older iTunes and on mine it is separated by ":" You have a lot of folders called Music and I am trying to keep this all straight. You also never answered my question about the location of the library file. We need to get this all straight because in the past week there have been two 100+ post topics where we were trying to unravel this kind of thing and were not provided with complete information which made even more of a mess of it (at least for me!) If necessary, take a screen shot of your external in list mode so we can see the full structure. Use Command+Shift+4 to select an area. You can use the camera button in the editor window to post screenshots.

Ultimately we want to make sure you have a nice neat package with all your iTunes content in one place. We will do this by consolidating but we want to make sure we consolidate them to the right place, nor delete any folders still in use.

By the way, just an issue of terminology. You burn a CD when putting files onto a CD, but you rip files from a CD as part of copying them to the computer. You don't burn a CD to a computer.

Let me ask you this. Is there anything in the structure of the current iTunes library that you value highly? Playlists? Data Added? Last Played etc? How much customization in the addition of artwork? I see all kinds of things everywhere and it might just be easier to start afresh with an iTunes library, if that is amenable to you.

You also have that MUSIC/music folder and your iTunes2012/Music folder How much content is duplicated there?

Leave it for now, but iTunes can be very fussy about you renaming files or folders used in its directory structure.

How much extra room do you have on the external drive, especially in comparison to the size of your media files?

You can export the playlist as an xml format listing. You will have to re-associate the actual tracks with it.

If the files are in WAV format then names are numbers are an issue. If they are mp3, AAC or Apple Lossless then no problem.

The tricky thing will be to make sure everything is in the new library without creating a ton of duplicates. I don't know of a very easy way to do this. The one time it happened to me I spent an hour or two sorting though by hand. There are a few tools that are supposed to handle duplicates, but some of mine are not really duplicates so I didn't trust them. E.g. I have one album with the same track twice but one is electric and the other acoustic.

I would suggest doing this then. If at any stage things are not as they shold be, stop and double check back here (by the way, I have one hour left to help).

Make a new folder on that external which will be your new library home.

Start iTunes and immediately hold down the option key. When it asks you where to create a new library go to that new folder.

You will have a blank library.

Double check that iTunes preferences are set to copy music, organize, and the media folder location is inside this new folder you just created.

Make a new playlist and call it something like "Main collection"

Go to the Music folder in External > iTunes2012 Double check that it has lots of files basically equal to all your collection. If it does, drag that folder to the Main Collection playlist. iTunes will now take a while adding all those files and copying them to the media folder in your new library.

No, we are creating a brand new iTunes library using the media fodlers from the folder you presently think contain everything (as stage 1). Everything is brand new. The old things are still around too.

iTunes has several key components. One is the library.itl file. This is a database file and stores the location of which media files are in your collection and where they are located, as well as which artwork, play count, a duplicate of track information etc. The other element is all the media files.

What we are doing is rebuilding the library from scratch. In the end it will all be in one folder that will be completely portable and can be copied to whatever drive you want, intact.

The itl file would tell you that except the itl file is only readable by itunes. You can read the xml copy of the .itl file (I noticed you had one floating around where it shouldn't be so make sure you get the right copy) but it isn't easy.

My wife gets home in 10 minutes so I won't be on much before 10 pm central.

Won't work. iTunes has to do it. It doesn't scan the folder for files. Only the "automatically add to itunes" folder does that. iTUnes has a very tenuous relationship to the media files. It doesn't monitor them regularly but when it does it is very fussy about you having done things to them.

Use the automatically add.. It will move them there rather than copy them and in doing so save you space.