Managing iTunes library

[WannabeSQ]

One day i opened iTunes, and it couldn't find my music, and I have been meaning to get it all better organized. So, I cleared out every MP3 and playlist from within iTunes, and attempted to re-import my library. My library was for the most part made on another computer, and has a different orginization structure than iTunes does. I selected the option in iTunes to copy all music imported into its own folder. When I did this, I was short a few GB, so not all of them successfully copied over, so im like, so what's a few songs to manually copy over right? Wrong. The orginization is so different, I cannot tell if the new folders created by iTunes have all the songs that i originally had or not.

Whew, now that that is over, my main question is, it would seem to me, that the easiest way to do this would be to import the whole darn thing again once i've made more room on the drive to do so, but once I do, how do I either stop it from making duplicates, or remove the duplicates once I transfer them? I tried to Dl some iTunes scripts, but they are for iTunes 2 and incompatible with 3 for the most part. Help me!!!

 

[howard]

step one:

go into itunes preferences and then advance and unclick keep itunes music folder organized and unclick copy fiiles to itunes music folder when adding...

step two:

take all your mp3's and put them into the folders you want them in wherever you want on your hardrive.

step three: drag the folders with all your mp3's into itunes and they won't get copied now and also once the file is in the itunes library you can move it wherever you like and it will still be able to play it.

my itunes music folder is in a hd:data:music i rip my cds to that folder and itunes puts them into the right albumn/artist.

 

[WannabeSQ]

that's the way I used to do it, but for simplicity's sake, I wanted to put them in a way iTunes would put them. I see your point.

All I need is a way for it to not copy duplicate files, or a way to get rid of duplicate files easily.

 

[mnkeybsness]

a pretty easy way to do this is just bring a directory with all the music into your finder in the desired location for you music library...

next, go into itunes preferences under the advanced section and select that directory...

make sure that the "organize itunes music library" box is checked and then...

go back to the finder and drag the directory that holds all the music into the itunes library window...

*note this may take a bit of time*

i just had to do this with my 32 gigs of music cause i switched hard drives so i would have more space for music