I am in the process of transferring all my iTunes files to an external hard drive for the second time. The first attempt was onto a FAT32 formatted disk to be used with a GoDrive network bridge and resulted in endless problems - files disappearing straight after copying them in, numerous files getting corrupted and so on. So I've bought an Extreme Base Station to do the job in a rather more Apple way with a proper Mac formatted disk rather than FAT32. I did find I could wirelessly pick up and play the sound files that weren't corrupted or spirited away without problems (although video wasn't so good), so I'm not really concerned about the poor performance often reported when people try to use a USB drive with a bridging device rather than dedicated media servers.
So here I am with an iTunes folder on my internal hard drive, my old MBP drive which is connected via USB, a FireWire drive, and both of the 1TB USB drives - the old FAT32 one and the new Mac Extended formatted one, both temporarily connected via USB to speed up the process of transferring the media files. Each has an iTunes folder on it; some are vast, some contain corrupted media files and each contains some files the same as the others and some unique ones. Chaos!
Well I've received some good advice and copied over all the files from my internal drive via 'Add to Library' as a base to add to. The next step was to turn off the 'Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library' function, and add all the contents of the other iTunes folders. Now I've done that I can get iTunes to show up all the duplicates and separate these by time/date sorting so I only delete those added after the first files were copied across. Check 'Copy files to iTunes Music Folder' again and consolidate my library to copy the remaining additions across and I'm done. Finish up by making a complete backup before destroying all the old files that were filling up my hard drives and at last I can breathe!
But what about the corrupted files? I really need to know where they are so that I can ensure that for each corrupted file I either preserve an uncorrupted copy from one or other of the disks or I download a fresh copy while it's still available (and much of this stuff is a bit rare). I have been finding that bad files just didn't get copied across - with no dialogue box or anything to alert me to the fact that one of my files was faulty. If I delete the iTunes folders I won't know they haven't been copied across and will possibly destroy my only reference to the file - so I won't even know what it's called if I want to find a duplicate on-line (I'm now talking about long talk files - interviews and suchlike - rather than music).
Years ago we had Norton Utilities and it used to check every file on your HD and tell you to replace anything dodgy. However I have been searching in vain for a similar utility. I only want to LOCATE the files, not recover them, fix them or delete them. I certainly don't want a whole list of every music file on each disk (including empty space) as that will tell me nothing about which ones are faulty! I don't mind moving them into a new folder (that would be good!) but I want to deal with them my own way and I need them separated from all the thousands of good files. Is there ANYTHING that will do this for me?
So here I am with an iTunes folder on my internal hard drive, my old MBP drive which is connected via USB, a FireWire drive, and both of the 1TB USB drives - the old FAT32 one and the new Mac Extended formatted one, both temporarily connected via USB to speed up the process of transferring the media files. Each has an iTunes folder on it; some are vast, some contain corrupted media files and each contains some files the same as the others and some unique ones. Chaos!
Well I've received some good advice and copied over all the files from my internal drive via 'Add to Library' as a base to add to. The next step was to turn off the 'Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library' function, and add all the contents of the other iTunes folders. Now I've done that I can get iTunes to show up all the duplicates and separate these by time/date sorting so I only delete those added after the first files were copied across. Check 'Copy files to iTunes Music Folder' again and consolidate my library to copy the remaining additions across and I'm done. Finish up by making a complete backup before destroying all the old files that were filling up my hard drives and at last I can breathe!
But what about the corrupted files? I really need to know where they are so that I can ensure that for each corrupted file I either preserve an uncorrupted copy from one or other of the disks or I download a fresh copy while it's still available (and much of this stuff is a bit rare). I have been finding that bad files just didn't get copied across - with no dialogue box or anything to alert me to the fact that one of my files was faulty. If I delete the iTunes folders I won't know they haven't been copied across and will possibly destroy my only reference to the file - so I won't even know what it's called if I want to find a duplicate on-line (I'm now talking about long talk files - interviews and suchlike - rather than music).
Years ago we had Norton Utilities and it used to check every file on your HD and tell you to replace anything dodgy. However I have been searching in vain for a similar utility. I only want to LOCATE the files, not recover them, fix them or delete them. I certainly don't want a whole list of every music file on each disk (including empty space) as that will tell me nothing about which ones are faulty! I don't mind moving them into a new folder (that would be good!) but I want to deal with them my own way and I need them separated from all the thousands of good files. Is there ANYTHING that will do this for me?