Regarding Consolidation & Recreation of my library...

Consolidating won't fix any internal errors in the database. Rebuilding the library with the media will lose ratings, play counts, playlists, date added values etc. Most of the data, with the exception of date added, can be backed up and restored into a new library if needed. Just be sure to back up the exitsting .itl and .xml files before trying to create a new library. Are you sure the library is really a problem? Are there other obvious issues apart from the syncing one? Double-checking also that you've uninstalled MobileMe... If not that could be part of the problem.

tt2

If you've had sync issues following a recent update to iTunes you may want to try a clean install in the manner of Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates. It may be the rest of the software rather than the library that lies at the heart of any issues you're having with syncing.

iTunes works best when all media connected to the library is stored in an iTunes Media folder which in turn is inside an iTunes folder that holds the library files. Keeping this layout allows the libray to be easily moved to another drive or computer without breaking the links to the media. It also makes it easier to back up to another drive and ensures that any folder-style backup is ready to go when needed. You may need to buy two drives, not one. 😉

If you want advice about the easiest way to rearrange things I'd need to know more about how much data is on the different disks, where the active iTunes Library.itl file is, and the current setting of the media folder in preferences.

tt2

Start with updating your backup of your library. 😉

Make sure you have a backup of the main iTunes library folder and its subfolders, and the complete folder trees for any other locations that hold media.

tt2

I would suggest the following.

1. Connect your new drive and assign the drive letter M: to it
2. Create a new empty folder M:\iTunes
   
3. With iTunes closed copy the following from C:\Users\Echos\Music\iTunes into M:\iTunes:Album ArtworkiTunes Library.itliTunes Library Extras.itdb
   iTunes Library Genius.itdbsentinel (hidden)
4. Press and hold down shift as you launch iTunes and keep holding until prompted to choose or create a library. Click choose then browse to and open M:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl
   
5. Open the menu item Edit > Preferences > Advanced (press Alt or Ctrl+B to reveal the menu bar if needed) and, if necessary, change the media folder to M:\iTunes\iTumes Media - if you make a change iTunes will offer to consolidate files but say no at this point.
6. Open File > Library > Organize Library... and tick both boxes if possible, or just Consolidate files if the other box is grayed out, then click OK.
7. Wait until iTunes has finished copying everything over.

A couple of observations...

There are multiple .tmp files in your original iTunes folder. This is a sign that iTunes has crashed while saving the library, or that some other software has been locking up the temporary files that iTunes creates while updating the database. Sony VAIO's media content tool is a known culprit in this area, and both McAfee and AVG have, at times, been shown to cause problems for some people. I would recommend that you use the advanced settings of your AV package to exclude M:\iTunes from all real time scanning.

The list of steps given above assumes you are happy to let iTunes reorganize everything the way that it likes to, e.g. <Media Folder>\Music\<Artist>\<Album> for the music, file & folder names limited to 40 characters, etc. If you still want to reflect the subdivisions of the library as subfolders in your media folder or have a personal naming scheme for your tracks, that is potentially achievable, but requires additional effort to implement and maintain. For historical reasons (going back to an iRiver H140) my library has divisions for Classical, Comedy, Soundtracks, Various Artists and an Albums & Tracks folder with A-Z subfolders before you get down to the individual artist folders. I should have let iTunes take over years ago since I no longer use a folder based media player, but the 40 character limit in particular grates on me so I manage the structure using a custom script that moves things to where I want them and relinks iTunes to the moved files. I do not recommend this approach.

tt2

Playlist membership, ratings and other metadata not stored in tags are preserved during the library relocation and media consolidation process I have given you. Those same pieces of data are lost when you manually remove, move and then reimport media which is why we want iTunes to handle the consolidation.

There are some recent threads covering issues with ESET NOD 32 and Outlook that it might be worth looking at. This search should throw them up for you to review.

Not familiar with iSproggler but any third party tool that attaches to iTunes has the potential to cause problems. Whenever iTunes is updated there is a possibilty that it no longer behaves exactly as expected by the other software. Might be best to remove it if it isn't serving a useful purpose.

iTunes will replace any characters that are not permitted in filenames \ / : * ? " | ; with the underscore character. A leading or trailing space or full stop are also converted. If a folder name or file name plus extension exceeds 40 characters then it is chopped short. If you access the media via an application like iTunes then the exact names of the files and folders really don't matter, but if, for example you have a copy of Friday Night In San Francisco by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin & Paco De Lucía you'll find that iTunes stores it in a folder called Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin & Paco De L

It is more of an issue with long album and track names. The way iTunes access tracks also means that the entire path must not exceed 255 characters, which is probably behind the iTunes 40 character limit. An extreme example from my library is the Sufjan Stevens track:

The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'

which comes in at 288 characters all by itself! My copy (226 chars) is at:

D:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Albums & Tracks\S\Sufjan Stevens\Illinoise\02 The Black Hawk War, or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization & Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience....mp3

And if I let iTunes rename it then it would end up here for 94 chars:

D:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Sufjan Stevens\Illinoise\02 The Black Hawk War, or, How To De.mp3

If you let iTunes take control (Edit > Preferences > Advance, tick both Keep... and Copy... options, after you've reorganized the library) then you don't need to do anything special. You can rip CDs, download from iTunes, drag and drop files into the iTunes application or the <Media Folder>\Automatically Add to iTunes folder, or use the File > Add Folder to Library menu. iTunes will take care of moving things to where they are supposed to be.

tt2

IoannisGR wrote:

Updated:

- If I go on woth the above procedure and something goes wrong, will I be able to go back to my previous structure of library, folders, etc (by using a backup of the iTunes folder) ?

- I have several songs with ! and a lot of duplicates at my library. Would it be wise to clean the library from those now, or after the consolidation ?

Step 3 makes a copy of your library files and leaves all the media where it is now. You can use the same technique as step 4 to switch back to the original library at C:\Users\Echoes\Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl if you need to. Step 6 will make copies of the media folder again making it possible to revert to the older library. Assuming all goes as it should wait until you're happy all is well with the new version library on M:, then back that up, before attempting to reclaim the space from the old media folders. Good practice to rename these and check for problems before deleting just to make sure they really are no longer in use.

One way to identify the broken links in your library is to create this set of playlists:

Lost & Found playlists

Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.

However that method gets harder to use as the library grows in size. iTunes Folder Watch with its option to check for dead tracks on startup may be a better bet for removing the dead links, assuming that it won't be possible to repair them. If howvere you think some of the "dead" files might have been moved then my script FindTracks might be able to do repairs.

I had initially assumed that all your media in your media folders would be connected to the library, and everything in the library connected to a file. Since you have exclamations marks for missing tracks you might also want to think about making sure that there are no stragglers. Use Edit > Preferences > Advanced and make sure Copy to.. is unchecked, then use File > Add Folder to Library to add in each of your various media locations in turn. Only files that are not currently connected to the library will be added.

See this post regarding the duplicates.

Probably best to clean dead tracks and duplicates up before consolidating the library. Again make sure you are backed up before you start.

tt2

IoannisGR wrote:

Edit > Preferences > Advanced and make sure Copy to.. is unchecked. So we are ok with that.

Now, if I use File > Add Folder to Library and add all the locations, if I add a folder, will it also add by itself all the related subfolders of that folder ?

Yes.

Also, if I do this, won't it create even more duplicates when an already linked folder is added again ?

No. iTunes will check each filepath against the existing contents of the library. If it already knows about that file it won't be added again. However if you have manually cleaned up some duplicates in the past while leaving the original files in those folders then it is possible some of the newly imported files could still be duplicates of tracks physically stored elsewhere in your various parallel media folders. The deduplication steps will clean those properly later.

tt2

Partitioning the drive will just create new problems.

I would strongly urge you to aim for a system where your library files are stored in <Drive>\iTunes and the media is in <Drive>\iTunes\iTunes Media\<Any subfolder scheme you like>. The advantage of this scheme is that the library, or a backup of it, will work whatever drive letter is assigned. Once you have media stored outside the media folder it must remain on the same path or iTunes will lose track of it.

Does iTunes already have playlists that know what exists in each of these (and any other meaningful) folders?

• K:\Music
• F:\Music
• F:\Music\Special Files and Music
• W:\Mind Radio

If not you can create some regular playlists to represent each of these subsets of your media then drag and drop the folders to them to populate the playlists.

Once these playlists are created you no longer need to reply on the physical layout of the media for this information, but if you still want to maintain the distinction within the new library then having created your new copy of the library files at M:\iTunes and connected to them you could, for example, set the media folder to M:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mind Radio, then select all the tracks in the Mind Radio playlist, right-click on the selection and select Consolidate files. This would copy just this set of files to the new path, Repeat with other "special" folders. Once these have all been imported you could reset the media folder to the "standard" path of M:\iTunes\iTunes Media and consolidate from the File... menu to bring in all other media. As long as you leave the Keep... option disabled anything that is somewhere inside the main iTunes Media folder will be left alone.

When iTunes consolidates files into a media folder it uses the file <Media Folder>\.iTunes Preferences.plist to determine what internal layout to use. The old layout represented by the integer value 0, puts artists folders directly inside the media folder for music, while other media kinds get their own subfolders. The newer layout, integer value 1, puts music items in <Media Folder>\<Music>\<Artist> etc. If you're going to go down the more complex route I would suggest that after setting the media folder to, for example, M:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mind Radio, you check the .Tunes Preferences.plist file inside it. If the value is not 0, change it, close iTunes and reopen before attempting to consolidate the files. The main iTunes Media folder should use the value 1 so that any mobile applications, iPod games and ringtones are stored in the same place, and to keep down the clutter in iTunes Media that would otherwise arise.

Some background on the layouts:

Here are typical layouts for the iTunes folders:

If you have upgraded from version 8 (or earlier) to iTunes 9 (or later) at some point, then your media folder (everything inside the red outline) may still be called iTunes Music instead of iTunes Media. The extra Music folder inside the media folder is used if you have allowed iTunes to Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization (iTunes 9) or used File > Library > Organize Library > Reorganize files in the folder

"<Media Folder>" (iTunes 10). Depending on your choices for Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library plus a little bug in which one build changed the name of the file storing the choice of layout it is quite easy for some of your files to be organized according to one layout and some the other.

Once everything has been copied into your new drive you may find my script ConsolidateByMoving useful in the future if you want to move things from one segment to another without losing ratings, play counts, playlist membership etc.

Because the playlists only exist inside iTunes you might also want to consider setting genre or grouping fields in some way for the "special" sections of your library so that if the worst came to it you could rebuild the playlists using rules like "Grouping is Mind Radio".

tt2