How can I bypass Automatically Add to iTunes?
I have a large CD collection (>3000) that I've ripped to iTunes in ALAC format; I only listen to CD or better quality music, so I don't have any mp3 or AAC files in my iTunes library. I keep my music on an external hard drive. I recently bought a larger external hard drive and moved all of my music to that drive. For some reason, iTunes chose to put all of my music in a folder called "Automatically Add to iTunes". This was fine, except that I could no longer see the contents of the hard drive; however, I did know that the files were there, becasue of the disc space that they consumed.
Today, I ripped two new CDs to the hard drive through iTunes and I noticed that iTunes placed the music folders for those CDs outside of the "Automatically Add to iTunes". I decded to drag the new folders into the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder. When I did so, all of the previous music disappeared and I cannot recover it. Fortunately, I have a copy of Sentuni, so I'll be able to put the music back on the hard drive from my iPods, but this process will require several hours. In addition, ripping my CD collection to iTunes required a lot of time, so I'm not pleased with the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder feature. Is there a way to disable this feature, so that I can simply put my music on my external drive and be able to see that the folders are there.
I've been a devoted Apple customer for almost a decade, so I won't get too upset over this issue, but I wish that your developers would have addressed this issue during the development stage. Thanks for your attention to this problem.
Best,
Heath
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)