iTunes Transfer

I've got all my songs from my PC on my external and I'm wanting to set up a playlist on my MacBook. I've only got about 55 gigs worth but as it transfers, iTunes has been saying that I don't have enough hard drive space.

A) How can I stop this transfer so I can shut down and delete some stuff and start over?

B) Whats the best way for this to work so I can have my iTunes set up with all my music?

Well here's my update. I stayed up and learned how to do a forced quit haha. I'm still thinking that there's stuff that copied over multiple times and I just can't find it. Its showing I've only got 99 GB left and I know that on my PC, my music collection was only hovering around 60GB. Would something make these files expand for some reason when I transferred them?

Also, if I want to restore my hard-drive to the original settings and start over, whats the best way to do this? Thanks for the help!

In order to find all of the same songs that were duplicated you can open itunes and click File > Show Duplicates

then you can select the duplicates and delete them.

Now for the hard drive question, the easiest way is a simple reformat. Just pop in your tiger or leopard disk and run it. It will do basically every thing for you. It will take about an hour + with all the updates and every thing you need to re-install. Totally worth it though, I love a fresh computer. I reformat about once every 2-5 months.

This response applies only if the following is true:

With iTunes open, go to "iTunes>Preferences."

Select the "Advanced" tab.
See if "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" is checked.

If those two boxes are checked iTunes will import the file to its library and organize it.

If the files are on your hard drive already, iTunes does not "move" the files. It copies the file to the "iTunes Music" folder. The files will exist both in the "iTunes Music" folder and on the folder it was originally at. This may take up hard drive space.

In this case, I would recommend that you remove any music from your Mac. I would plug up the external hard drive and then add files to your iTunes library manually. With this option, you can select which files you want. iTunes will import the files to your library and copy it for you.

To answer your questions:

1. At anytime during the importing process, there is a status box right underneath iTunes. To the right there is an "x" button that you can hit to cancel anything iTunes is currently doing. This will not undo what it has accomplished already.
2. See my above response.
3. If you want to restore your hard drive, you can use disk utility. It can format the external drive for you. You also have the option to securely remove information by writing over the data one or many times over.

Thanks for the help on getting it restarted and everything. I re-formated so I can start over. Now, I have all my music files on my external hd. What would be the best way to get all these files off the external and into itunes right? Last night when I tried it, it kept giving me the message that I didn't have enough space. Now, my itunes says that I have 53 gb worth of music, etc etc etc. How did that 53 gb worth of music take up 220 gb on my hard drive? I guess I'm confused.

jlsmith83 said:

Thanks for the help on getting it restarted and everything. I re-formated so I can start over. Now, I have all my music files on my external hd. What would be the best way to get all these files off the external and into itunes right? Last night when I tried it, it kept giving me the message that I didn't have enough space. Now, my itunes says that I have 53 gb worth of music, etc etc etc. How did that 53 gb worth of music take up 220 gb on my hard drive? I guess I'm confused.

Click to expand...

That is kind of weird. I would suggest you look around in your Macintosh HD. I'm sure within 10 minutes of just looking around, you may notice where some of the space is going.

Just remember that, when you have iTunes organize things for you, movies and music imported to the iTunes library will be in the "iTunes Music" folder in the iTunes directory. If you have it elsewhere, they may be duplicates.

Good Luck and keep us posted of what you find.

I think what happened was that I just dragged everything into a folder from my external, then imported it all into iTunes and it copied everything into the iTunes Music folder. I believe I have it figured out now, everything seems to be in there and playing right as it should for the time being. Thanks for the help!