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How to solve multiple itunes library issue..?

Okay, so today I got an alert saying that my startup disk is nearly full and that I should delete some files - this surprised me as I don't have 250GB worth of stuff, thus, clearly something was amiss. I ran OmniDiskSweeper and discovered that basically I have two copies of my entire (? - I'll get to that) iTunes library on my computer, so that duplicated 60GB is currently sitting in my hard drive pretending to be doing something useful.


When I go to Music->iTunes, there's a folder called iTunes libraries (picture 2), which contains an iTunes Media folder where all of my music *appears* to be, but there's also another iTunes Media folder (picture 1) just sitting in the iTunes folder, also appearing to have quite a lot of my music/films etc in. It seems to be running the one in iTunes Libraries, but I don't want to just bin the random extra Media folder in case there's stuff in there that's being used - is there any way of working this out? or is the best thing to do just to backup, breathe deeply, delete the extra folder, see what happens and restore if need be? On the other hand, OmniDiskSweeper says that the lone Media folder is 69.7GB while the Libraries folder (which contains many other files besides the Media folder) is 69.0GB.

User uploaded fileUser uploaded file

I'd be very grateful for any advice, as I'm starting to think that a poltergeist is at work here. Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 30, 2012 8:57 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 30, 2012 10:00 AM

I'd do this...

  1. Quit iTunes.
  2. Drag /Music/iTunes/ iTunes libraries/ folder to the desktop. You can delete everything in this folder except /iTunes media/ folder and /iTunes music/ folder.
  3. Hold Option and launch iTunes.
  4. Select Choose library... and select /Music/iTunes/ and click OK.

Now compare what's there.


You can compare what is in iTunes with what is in /iTunes libraries/iTunes media/ and /iTunes music/ folders on the desktop. Delete from these folders if it is in iTunes. If not, add to iTunes then delete from these folders.

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 30, 2012 10:00 AM in response to alice.c

I'd do this...

  1. Quit iTunes.
  2. Drag /Music/iTunes/ iTunes libraries/ folder to the desktop. You can delete everything in this folder except /iTunes media/ folder and /iTunes music/ folder.
  3. Hold Option and launch iTunes.
  4. Select Choose library... and select /Music/iTunes/ and click OK.

Now compare what's there.


You can compare what is in iTunes with what is in /iTunes libraries/iTunes media/ and /iTunes music/ folders on the desktop. Delete from these folders if it is in iTunes. If not, add to iTunes then delete from these folders.

Aug 31, 2012 12:14 PM in response to Chris CA

Thanks very much for your suggestion - I tried a version of what you put to check what was in the folders vs. iTunes, and checked iTunes to see what library it thought it was running, and it turned out to be the one in Libraries - so I asked it to import from the Media folder to check that there wasn't anything I didn't already have in there and trashed it (after backing up). Have regained 75GB back from my hard drive, hurrah!

How to solve multiple itunes library issue..?

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