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itunes importing question

twoodcc

twoodcc

macrumors P6
Original poster
is there any way to import only songs that aren't in your library?

in other words, i have my library on my internal hard drive, but i have my imac library on an external drive. can i import from my external, but only the ones i don't already have on my internal?

sorry i'm moving from imac to mac pro

thanks
 
twoodcc said:
well, how would you try to import only the files that aren't already in your library?
Click to expand...
How handy are you with Terminal?

Seems like something easy enough to accomplish with a bash script or other command line stuff.

e.g. cp -pRn /Volumes/External/Music ~/Music

Then import only what's on your internal disc.

B
 
balamw said:
How handy are you with Terminal?

Seems like something easy enough to accomplish with a bash script or other command line stuff.

e.g. cp -pRn /Volumes/External/Music ~/Music

Then import only what's on your internal disc.

B
Click to expand...

i'm not that good with terminal. i mean, i can follow directions, but that's about it
 
balamw said:
How handy are you with Terminal?

Seems like something easy enough to accomplish with a bash script or other command line stuff.

e.g. cp -pRn /Volumes/External/Music ~/Music

Then import only what's on your internal disc.

B
Click to expand...

well i put in what you said, except i changed 'external' to the name of the external drive, and i changed the first 'music' to the name of the folder that the music is in on the external hard drive.

it's still doing it's thing now. what exactly is it doing though?
 
twoodcc said:
it's still doing it's thing now. what exactly is it doing though?
Click to expand...
Copying all files that don't exist (with the same name) from the external to the internal.

Hope I got the folders right 😛

B
 
balamw said:
Copying all files that don't exist (with the same name) from the external to the internal.

Hope I got the folders right 😛

B
Click to expand...

oh dang. i forgot, i have multiple internal hard drives, and it's not on the main one! oh no!
 
twoodcc said:
oh dang. i forgot, i have multiple internal hard drives, and it's not on the main one! oh no!
Click to expand...
Whoops.

The flags are:

-R recurse the folder structure
-p preserve permissions/dates
-n don't overwrite any files that arelady exist

B
 
balamw said:
Whoops.

The flags are:

-R recurse the folder structure
-p preserve permissions/dates
-n don't overwrite any files that arelady exist

B
Click to expand...

so how would i do it for the other internal hard drive?

i tried to change ~Music to ~/Volumes/'name of internal'/'name of music folder'

but it didn't work. it said that it didn't exist
 
twoodcc said:
so how would i do it for the other internal hard drive?

i tried to change ~Music to ~/Volumes/'name of internal'/'name of music folder'

but it didn't work. it said that it didn't exist
Click to expand...
get rid of the ~ it refers to the folder belonging to your account.

B
 
twoodcc said:
ok thanks. hope it works 🙂
Click to expand...

well it didn't quite work. the name of the folder that the music is in is called 'itunes', and when i did this, it created another folder inside that folder, called 'itunes', and basically copied music until there was no space left.

any ideas?
 
twoodcc said:
well it didn't quite work. the name of the folder that the music is in is called 'itunes', and when i did this, it created another folder inside that folder, called 'itunes', and basically copied music until there was no space left.

any ideas?
Click to expand...
Should have been OK if the two folders were specified similarly e.g.

<external>/iTunes <internal>/iTunes

or

<external>/iTunes/ <internal>/iTunes/

You'll run into the sort of trouble you saw if one of the two folders was mismatched, like

<external>/iTunes <internal>/iTunes/

B
 
balamw said:
Should have been OK if the two folders were specified similarly e.g.

<external>/iTunes <internal>/iTunes

or

<external>/iTunes/ <internal>/iTunes/

You'll run into the sort of trouble you saw if one of the two folders was mismatched, like

<external>/iTunes <internal>/iTunes/

B
Click to expand...

well here is what i did:

cp -pRn /Volumes/external/Itunes /Volumes/internal/Itunes

and it created an itunes folder inside the current itunes folder
 
twoodcc said:
well here is what i did:

cp -pRn /Volumes/external/Itunes /Volumes/internal/Itunes

and it created an itunes folder inside the current itunes folder
Click to expand...

so what should i do?
 
It's all about the trailing slashes. You need a trailing slash on the first one to let it know to copy the contents of the folder and not the folder itself.
i.e.
Code: 
cp -pRn /Volumes/external/Itunes/ /Volumes/internal/Itunes/
or
Code: 
cp -pRn /Volumes/external/Itunes/ /Volumes/internal/Itunes
should work according to my test scenarios...

B
 
balamw said:
It's all about the trailing slashes. You need a trailing slash on the first one to let it know to copy the contents of the folder and not the folder itself.
i.e.
Code: 
cp -pRn /Volumes/external/Itunes/ /Volumes/internal/Itunes/
or
Code: 
cp -pRn /Volumes/external/Itunes/ /Volumes/internal/Itunes
should work according to my test scenarios...

B
Click to expand...

thanks, i'm gonna try it now 🙂

but if it does work, how does itunes import them without importing all the rest with them?
 
well i tried it, and i got this:

usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src target
cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src1 ... srcN directory

any ideas?
 
twoodcc said:
well i tried it, and i got this:

usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src target
cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src1 ... srcN directory

any ideas?
Click to expand...

well nevermind, i got past that now. it's doing something, so we'll know soon enough
 
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