iPod What is the best way to do this?

[r1400sch]

So I finally organized my itunes library, but sometimes, when I was deleting dupes or other tracks i didn't want, i only removed the tracks from the library but didn't actually move the files to the trash by accident.
Thus, there are still tracks that i have no use for sitting around in my home's Music folder while they are not in my iTunes library. And they're wastin my space!

How can I eliminate tracks that are in the music folder but not in the library?

 

[studentmac]

If you know what tracks you didnt delete then you could spotlight them and delete manually...otherwise im not sure.

 

[tammy418]

Another option is to go to iTunes, re-add your whole iTunes library (don't worry it will only add the ones that aren't in iTunes, which in this instance are the ones you want to remove), then choose view duplicates in the view menu and delete the dupes AND when it asks you if you also want to move those files to the trash select yes.

FYI this will take awhile if you have a lo of music/dupes

 

[r1400sch]

hmm my library is fairly big...30 GB...
Do you think I could create a folder, drag and drop all of the tracks in my library to that new folder, delete the entire old itunes music folder and clear the library, then re-import everything from the new folder? Would that take a super long time on one of the new MacBook pros (and is this the method you were referring to in your post)? I'm a little hesitant cause i dont wanna be waiting like a day for the computer to do it...

 

[tammy418]

Well i'm not sure what you mean by moving the music to a new folder. Do you mean that you want to go through your iTunes folder to find and delete the duplicates?

The method I was talking about should take about 10 to 15 minutes. I just did it to my library which is about 16GB and it took less than 10 minutes.