iTunes Library Consolidation

[goneblowitup]

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my library.

I'm about to go from AMD single core to core i7 and I have a library I'm trying to move. I'm trying to figure how I could go about moving the library with all of the library info intact (ratings, play count, date added)...

Has anyone tried consolidating their library before through itunes itself? If not, do you have anything else in mind for how I would go about doing this?

I know there are some programs that can utilize an iPod to do this (iGadget, etc.), but my 60 gb iPod is the biggest I've got and as you can see the library is bigger than 60 gb.

I could also buy an external and put it all on there...but that would take longer than I can stand...and my computer would probably pass out before it finished anyways...

The songs, although I wish they were, are not all in the same location. In fact, not even the same drive. So yeah.

And I know this isn't the best place to ask such a question, but I thought I'd ask anyways as it's the only forum I am a part of.

Kthanks

[reberto]

I always copy my whole music folder over to a seperate hard drive with the iTunes library files and all and when I copy it all back to my user folder and install iTunes it is exactly the same as when I left it.

[HuffPCair]

is that all you got?
LOL

2.6.18-6-amd64 #1 SMP Mon Jun 16 22:30:01 UTC 2008 x86_64

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
# gnump3d-index --stats
Total number of songs: 21754
Total size of archive: 116.3Gb (124964596804 bytes)
Total playlength     : 60 days, 16 hours, 52 mins 56 seconds

and thats not even the full collection

i use a upnp/daap server to handle my music so it doesnt matter where i access it, all the settings/ratings/etc are the same.

i also stream over the network/interwebz with gnump3d

Wow not really a helping comment. Instead of trying to show off next time try to help the guy.

What I do is consolidate my library so it is all in the itunes library folder and then copy that onto a backup hard drive. itunes is really poor when it comes to backup I think though. I wish apple would re work the whole program.

[pirateghost]

how about this then, since that wasnt helpful?

USE AN EXTERNAL STORAGE DEVICE SUCH AS A NAS THAT PROVIDES DAAP/UPNP SO THAT YOU DONT HAVE TO MOVE IT AROUND EVERYTIME YOU SWITCH/RELOAD OS

there ya go, i spelled it out for you, to make it a little more simple

[goneblowitup]

I always copy my whole music folder over to a seperate hard drive with the iTunes library files and all and when I copy it all back to my user folder and install iTunes it is exactly the same as when I left it.

Hmm I'm guessing that is what I would go about doing...but my only problem is the hard drive for my new rig is new and is the same one I will be installing the OS on...so I don't know how that would work...

Is the easiest way to just buy like a 250 gb separate drive for the music, put that in my current computer (with all the music)...and then assign a new iTunes folder in the 250 gb drive and then put it all there? And then I could just put that drive in the new rig and install itunes? Would that work?

Also, the song info for all my songs is a Must for me...as in I can't lose all the seperate info about when the songs were added and play count and such. How would I go about importing all that back??

Wow not really a helping comment. Instead of trying to show off next time try to help the guy.

What I do is consolidate my library so it is all in the itunes library folder and then copy that onto a backup hard drive. itunes is really poor when it comes to backup I think though. I wish apple would re work the whole program.

In doing this, would my computer have any risk of crashing in the middle and me getting effed? The only reason I say that is because I have never transported 70 gb of files all at once...And it's all over my computer...four different partitioned drives...

[NameTaken45]

definately transfer all 70 GB to an external/seperate drive. nice job, 70GB is a lot.

[reberto]

Also, the song info for all my songs is a Must for me...as in I can't lose all the seperate info about when the songs were added and play count and such. How would I go about importing all that back??

As long as you save your iTunes Libary file, it'll still be there. I always just transfer my whole music folder from my user folder do a different hard drive, just copy & paste into your new user folder when the installation is done

[yankee]

Just copy your my music folder from your old pc to the same location on the new PC once you've got windows and itunes installed. Very simple. I've done this many times.

Once you've done that, get itunes library updater (giyf) and run it to clean up file paths and make sure that all the files are where they're supposed to be.

Also, make sure that the path to your music has not changed.

[slim142]

Ok do you actually listen to all 70gbs of music?

I hope this does not apply to you, but I just hate when people are looking for a single song, they find the album (which contains 20 songs), download it and then load the entire album to iPod.

[Bobsama]

Ok do you actually listen to all 70gbs of music?

I hope this does not apply to you, but I just hate when people are looking for a single song, they find the album (which contains 20 songs), download it and then load the entire album to iPod.

Why do you hate it?

I, for one, prefer to have every album at my fingertips. In the past few years, my favorite radio station is album-oriented rock. I prefer to just listen to an entire album, as I carefully select my music.

[slim142]

Why do you hate it?

I, for one, prefer to have every album at my fingertips. In the past few years, my favorite radio station is album-oriented rock. I prefer to just listen to an entire album, as I carefully select my music.

Because most of this people add the entire album without even listening to it, or just to "add weight" to their music collection, even if there is a song they dont like or wont even listen.

Thats just me. I been downloading music for many (many) years and I only have ~10gbs of music that I once heard or Im currently listening. Thats my collection and I can say I heard all of them I like all of them. No song in my collection is "unknown" or "just making weight".

True, I also download the entire album sometimes to see if there is any extra song I might like, the rest goes delete.

[Redsand426]

Ok do you actually listen to all 70gbs of music?

I hope this does not apply to you, but I just hate when people are looking for a single song, they find the album (which contains 20 songs), download it and then load the entire album to iPod.

I think it's more annoying to have a bunch of artists with only 1 or 2 songs. I prefer to have the whole album, even if I only like a handful of songs. Maybe later down the road I will listen to the others.

[ugp]

When I get music, I only get the full album only. This is my album so far and I have a lot more music to add in and organize. I am very picky with my library. Everything has to be properly tagged and all album art has to be present. I hate when people don't tag music properly.

[Hockeydude]

Because most of this people add the entire album without even listening to it, or just to "add weight" to their music collection, even if there is a song they dont like or wont even listen.

Thats just me. I been downloading music for many (many) years and I only have ~10gbs of music that I once heard or Im currently listening. Thats my collection and I can say I heard all of them I like all of them. No song in my collection is "unknown" or "just making weight".

True, I also download the entire album sometimes to see if there is any extra song I might like, the rest goes delete.

I prefer to have the entire album so you don't constantly have to switch songs. If you're in the mood to listen to a certain type of music, you can just let it play on an artist and relax.

[antipop]

I don't know if it is of any help because I don't know if it can be applied to windows but you can take a look here :
http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/2008/...or-moving-one/

Otherwise you can buy this software:
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/01/25/super...brary-syncing/

[Jimmer411]

Ive only got 40gb, but find Itunes hell for transfering music from computer to computer. It has a nasty habit of duplicating all of my songs when I do.

[ZOMGVTEK]

I just got some spare time to organize my iTunes library... Im combining a 400ish GB FLAC library with the older ALAC libray in iTunes, and im going to be using iTunes exclusively. The FLAC is on another computer, and I dont feeling like getting any screenies of that, but the iTunes one im merging with it is somewhat sizeable...



Im using beaTunes right now, and it looks like it works somewhat well. All of my music is very properly tagged, but I also desire it to have BPM information along with a few other details...

You can download the beaTunes demo and if you are into stealing software you can find a crack easy enough.

But if all you need to do is copy it over, just copy your whole music folder. Install iTunes on the new comp, and transfer the folder.

[ugp]

Added some more to my library and still have about 1,000 songs to sort through and tag properly.

[sjg0]

It has a nasty habit of duplicating all of my songs when I do.

Ugh i know what you mean. This is because when u copy the itunes music folder, there is also a index file in there that keeps track of all your songs and ratings, etc.. For some reason, instead of using your old index file, itunes reads it, adds all info to library, then re-adds all music in a new indexing file. Thus you now have 2 links for every song, each pointing to the same file.

If anyone has a fix for this lmk.

[L33T]

Well, there's a thread I started (two actually, but of different subjects) in the network area of this forum. Anyway, an idea you might consider is to use a NAS. This way, you can access the music from anyway and just about anything (with a few asteriks following "anything", of course). Seriously though, if you find a compliant NAS, you can stream all your music from the unit.

For me, I am working on my 1TB of music. It's not that big of a collection actually. Basically you can have separate libraries in most things, including iTunes; then, you can select which library you wish to play. Thus, we have the low-fi library for the iPod/iPhone, and the hi-fi library for audiophile listening.

I wouldn't necessarily just transfer them onto a separate drive though (as in external), because then the music would be only accessible to the device it is connected to, and to devices that can connect to aforementioned device. Basically, in this case, if we have [HDD] which is your external HDD and [PC A] which is the PC it is connected to:

[HDD]--[PC A]-->(LAN)

...Then if you want to access the HDD you have to do so through PC A, which isn't necessarily that bad at all: that's what a file server is, and it's also what a NAS is (sort of; minus certain interfaces that we'll just brush over ^__-). The thing though is that it'll be lower performance. If you get a NAS (or if you have some strange desires and get a full blown server) then you will be much better off. Plus, having a NAS is just plain awesome anyway: and you'll be helping stimulate the economy by spending those dollars

Ok do you actually listen to all 70gbs of music?

I hope this does not apply to you, but I just hate when people are looking for a single song, they find the album (which contains 20 songs), download it and then load the entire album to iPod.

definately transfer all 70 GB to an external/seperate drive. nice job, 70GB is a lot.

Hmm I'm guessing that is what I would go about doing...but my only problem is the hard drive for my new rig is new and is the same one I will be installing the OS on...so I don't know how that would work...

Is the easiest way to just buy like a 250 gb separate drive for the music, put that in my current computer (with all the music)...and then assign a new iTunes folder in the 250 gb drive and then put it all there? And then I could just put that drive in the new rig and install itunes? Would that work?

Also, the song info for all my songs is a Must for me...as in I can't lose all the seperate info about when the songs were added and play count and such. How would I go about importing all that back??



In doing this, would my computer have any risk of crashing in the middle and me getting effed? The only reason I say that is because I have never transported 70 gb of files all at once...And it's all over my computer...four different partitioned drives...

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my library.

I'm about to go from AMD single core to core i7 and I have a library I'm trying to move. I'm trying to figure how I could go about moving the library with all of the library info intact (ratings, play count, date added)...

Has anyone tried consolidating their library before through itunes itself? If not, do you have anything else in mind for how I would go about doing this?

I know there are some programs that can utilize an iPod to do this (iGadget, etc.), but my 60 gb iPod is the biggest I've got and as you can see the library is bigger than 60 gb.

I could also buy an external and put it all on there...but that would take longer than I can stand...and my computer would probably pass out before it finished anyways...

The songs, although I wish they were, are not all in the same location. In fact, not even the same drive. So yeah.

And I know this isn't the best place to ask such a question, but I thought I'd ask anyways as it's the only forum I am a part of.

Kthanks