Letting iTunes organize your music...

[fiveightandten]

I'm not sure why this never occured to me before, but I figured i'd pass it on to some other new users...

I back up all my music on an external drive, but I can't stand having a big mess of files. I like them in neatly arranged folders, by band and album, respectively. The only problem is, it takes FOREVER to go through, say, a 40GB music collection and organize it all in folders. Well, iTunes will do this for you.

-Click on iTunes to open up the application. While it's loading, hold down the option key on your keyboard.
-Create a new library (in my case, on my external drive). This will be completely separate from your normal library and won't affect it at all.
-Go to Preferences>>Advanced>>General
-Check the box that says "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to Library"

Now any files you drag into your newly made Library will be added to the new iTunes music folder created when you made a new Library. iTunes will organize it all by band, and by album.

-Drag all the music you want to organize into your library.
-It will take a while for large collections, but iTunes will organize everything for you. When it's done, just delete the source folder. You will have newly organized copies of all that stuff.
-Delete the iTunes library file in your new library. Next time you open up iTunes just point it back to your original library.

Hope that helps someone out.

-Nick

 

[baggss]

That works well only if you keep all of your music on one hard drive.

 

[bobtomay]

baggss, what are u doin for back up of your vast collection?
Is that what you have all the drive space for, or are you using Mozy or something like it?

 

[baggss]

I don't "back-up" per-se, my Library is just to big. Having it all spread across 4 drives (and this is just the music, not the Video), the odds of my losing ail at once are pretty slim. I might drop a drive here or there, but with good recovery software you can retrieve most everything even from a bad drive.

All the space is simply for expansion. My video is eating up drive space left and right. I separated it from the Music so I would be able to continue to grow both without sacrificing space for one to the other.