Problems with duplicates in iTunes folder
For a variety of reasons, over the past couple of years I have moved my iTunes music folder to different drives and it now resides in my external hard drive. In the process of moving this folder around I took what I thought were all the necessary steps of ensuring that all of my music files were consolidated into the same music folder.
Now it appears that most (but not all) of my individual artist folders contain duplicates, usually titled with the relevant track name and the number "1".
These duplicates do not show up in iTunes when I start it up, so I cannot use the "Find Duplicates" command in iTunes to locate the copies and delete them manually. I have tried going into the individual folders and deleting the copies, but often times iTunes only recognizes the copies, thus forcing me to locate the appropriate folder manually - all of which takes a lot of time.
Has anyone encountered this problem in the past? Is there a simple way to locate the copied files (or all files not currently recognized by iTunes) and delete them all at once? The only solution that I can think of is to wipe the folder entirely and transfer all of the files on my iPod back onto the hard drive (I have an iPod Classic, and all of my files are located on that). If that's my only solution, any suggestion for software out there that can help me with this?
Thanks in advance.
Now it appears that most (but not all) of my individual artist folders contain duplicates, usually titled with the relevant track name and the number "1".
These duplicates do not show up in iTunes when I start it up, so I cannot use the "Find Duplicates" command in iTunes to locate the copies and delete them manually. I have tried going into the individual folders and deleting the copies, but often times iTunes only recognizes the copies, thus forcing me to locate the appropriate folder manually - all of which takes a lot of time.
Has anyone encountered this problem in the past? Is there a simple way to locate the copied files (or all files not currently recognized by iTunes) and delete them all at once? The only solution that I can think of is to wipe the folder entirely and transfer all of the files on my iPod back onto the hard drive (I have an iPod Classic, and all of my files are located on that). If that's my only solution, any suggestion for software out there that can help me with this?
Thanks in advance.
Comments
With your iTunes folder being on an external drive, you have to ensure that the external drive is mounted before launching iTunes. If you don't, then when iTunes can't see the external drive, it will reset the default iTunes music folder to ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/, where ~ is your home folder on your internal drive. The best way to ensure the drive is mounted is to replace the iTunes application in your dock with an AppleScript application (which you can apply the iTunes icon to) that first checks for the external drive to be mounted, then launches iTunes.
the code would look something like:
tell application "Finder"
repeat while not (exists the disk "INSERT NAME OF DISK HERE, LEAVE THE QUOTES IN PLACE")
end repeat
delay 1
end tell
tell application "iTunes"
launch
end tell
The code could be embellished somewhat to provide a dialogue whilst waiting for the external disk to mount, or to implement a timeout in case the external never appears, but it's a starting point at least.
Moving on to your actual question:
You could write something in AppleScript, dougscripts.com being a good place to start.
If you're not familiar with programming, your "erase and start again using what's on my iPod" idea is a good one, as long as you're sure the iPod's got everything, of course! My experience is that PodWorks is well worth the small $8 fee.