iPod Recovering computer disk space

The iTunes consolidate command copies all my songs into one library - which means now I have more copies of the songs.

My computer's disk space is tight - how do I consolidate while getting rid of duplicates instead of creating more?

mad jew said:

You can Show Duplicates from the View menu. Maybe delete them from there.

Click to expand...

I'm not talking about duplicates that iTunes sees, I'm talking about copies of the original files that I can find searching my computer.

Show Duplicates does show that iTunes will play a few songs that are duplicated - but not either of these are shown:

C:\Documents and Settings\brazee\My Documents\My Music\Compilations\Blue Album 1967-1970 (Cassette)\18 The Balad of John & Yoko.mp3

nor

C:\Documents and Settings\brazee\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Compilations\Blue Album 1967-1970 (Cassette)\18 The Balad of John & Yoko.mp3

iTunes sees one of these, but not the other - even though it created them both.

mad jew said:

Okay, sorry mate. iTunes will see all the music files in the folder you consolidated to (which is listed in the iTunes Preferences). Therefore it's safe to assume that all music files outside of this folder can be deleted. Can you use Explorer to find all music files not within the library directory, and then delete them? Sorry, I don't know of a way to consolidate a library that involves moving rather than copying.

Click to expand...

Is there a way to be confident that I know where all of the consolidated songs are and that the other directories are just leftovers?

Besides looking at each song individually, that is?

Thanks. I checked this setting, ran "consolidate", exited iTunes, created a "delete me" folder on my desktop, and moved all of the albums in my music directory which were not in this consolidate directory to the "delete me" folder, then restarted iTunes.

It appears to be working correctly. Tommorrow, the "delete me" folder gets deleted.

I tested by searching for "yoko" in my music directory and only finding one.