iPod Import songs from music folder that are not in Library?

[Tuff]

Is there any way to (re-) import music files that are already in the designated music folder, but that the libary does not know of?

The reason I want to do this is that my library file was accidentally overwritten, and the backup I have is three weeks old. So all files that I added to iTunes after that backup date are 'invisible' to iTunes with my backup library.

I tried moving the iTunes Music folder to a new volume, which consolidated the library, but did not re-add the new files.

Doug's Applescripts for iTunes has a script "List Music Folder Files Not Added", but that would only give me a list of the files in question, and not relink them to the library. On my Panther system, it has also crashed twice after running the whole night; I don't have Tiger to use the new, Spotlight version of the script.

I have searched the web but wasn't able to come across a solution - somewhat astonishingly, since I imagine I'm not the only one who has ever experienced this.

Any help for solving this problem is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Tuff

 

[mad jew]

Hmm... Try this: do a search on your hard drive for music files (MP3s or whatever you encode at) that have been added since the day of your last back up (because they're the only ones that needed to be added, right?). Now drag them into iTunes. If iTunes is set to automatically look after the file names and folder structure (likely, it's done by default), then they shouldn't copy themselves and everything should be fine.

However, I'm not certain about whether they will re-add themselves (which would mean you'd have xxMB of files just sitting in your music folder redundantly. To get around this, you could make a folder outside of your music folder (say, on the desktop) and drag from the Finder window that you used to do the search into this folder and then drag this folder into iTunes. Then delete the folder on your desktop, do a quick search for duplicates, and you're set.

 

[Tuff]

I'm actually able to answer my own question. I simply did an "Add to Library...", selecting the main iTunes Music folder itself to be added. This rescanned the whole Music folder, adding the files that had not been indexed in the old backup Library. Physical files were not duplicated.

(I had been afraid of such duplication and therefore worked on a copy of my Music folder on another volume, but am happy to say that it seems to have worked fine).

 

[mad jew]

Coolness. Thanks for the tip.