iTunes copies music collection....

[etchells]

Hi there.

I'm going to try and sum this problem up as short as i can. I have a fairly large music collection (around 40GB) and is working wonders for me. But i noticed the other day that my music folder is taking up 80GB of space on my hard drive. This is obviously my music folder and the iTunes music folder...

I have a couple of questions.....

1. Why on earth does iTunes keep a copy of all your music
2. How can i get rid of this duplicate folder without losing all of my iTunes information

I know that within iTunes preferences there is a box to un-tick that doesn't copy files to the iTunes media folder when adding to the library, but because i have over 7000 songs already duplicated, un-ticking this wont do anything.

My initial thought on how to resolve this was to back up my music collection and remove the both music folders and re-import my folder back into iTunes whilst un-ticking the box for copying to the iTunes media file.

I was wondering if anyone has any better suggestions?

Thanks

Jonathan

 

[bli625]

Hi there.

I'm going to try and sum this problem up as short as i can. I have a fairly large music collection (around 40GB) and is working wonders for me. But i noticed the other day that my music folder is taking up 80GB of space on my hard drive. This is obviously my music folder and the iTunes music folder...

I have a couple of questions.....

1. Why on earth does iTunes keep a copy of all your music
2. How can i get rid of this duplicate folder without losing all of my iTunes information

I know that within iTunes preferences there is a box to un-tick that doesn't copy files to the iTunes media folder when adding to the library, but because i have over 7000 songs already duplicated, un-ticking this wont do anything.

My initial thought on how to resolve this was to back up my music collection and remove the both music folders and re-import my folder back into iTunes whilst un-ticking the box for copying to the iTunes media file.

I was wondering if anyone has any better suggestions?

Thanks

Jonathan

Your proposed solution will work. Just leave some time aside for the operation to complete. I personally just let iTunes import and sort everything into its own folder before deleting the original files. It's much easier for me since I just use the iTunes GUI to play music anyways.