How to resolve duplicate Music folders?
Previously, all music files were placed in Artist sub-folders within a content folder called "iTunes Music"
Now, that folder still exists, but another sub-folder called "Music" has been added to the new "iTunes Media" folder.
Issues:
1. That is wasting a bunch of space on my hard drive. About 150GB for each instance of main music folders.
2. Apparently, iTunes is sourcing music from both folders. But it seems random - can't find the rhyme or reason why. Very recently added music seems to show up only in the "Music" folder within the "iTunes Media" folder. But there are important music files in the old "iTunes Music" folder that were not moved over to the new structure.
Is there a CLEAN way to consolidate all the music files into just one of those sub-folders and then just keep it that way going forward? I have tried the settings in Preferences and various other advice, but nothing seems to work. If you try copying over files from one folder to the other (or into the iTunes interface window), it creates duplicates of each MP3 file with "[space]1.mp3" at the end. (Or 2.mp3, etc.). That enables iTunes to keep track of things, but then again, same problem — it's wasting a bunch of empty space on the drive by doubling up files.
If you do that and then try to remove duplicates (to reduce space) in iTunes, you invariably end up either deleting the wrong files or losing all the meta information about your albums. With a huge library carefully curated over years, this is a small nightmare.
I completely understand Apple's logic to divide up the iTunes content into separate folders within one "iTunes Media" folder. But it really should have moved over all the content neatly. Not this mish-mash of two content folders for music. Can anyone offer a simple clean way to solve this?
I've spent parts of three days on this. Would really appreciate!
James
Mac Pro Desktop, Mac OS X (10.5.7)
