Why does iTunes make a copy of all my music and movies into a new folder?

[hazedragon45]

When i transfered all my Music and Movies from my PC, i put them into the specified Music and Movie folders, but when i used itunes to open all of them, iTunes makes a copy of all of them and put then into it's own folder. Why???
doesn't this take up 2x the space then?

 

[miles01110]

You can turn it off;

iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced

Uncheck the "Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder..." option.

 

[hazedragon45]

thanks,
I think it's stupid how default settings copies to the itunes folder. if it was going to do that, it might as well transfer it over, not copy.

 

[jman240]

Yeah thats a dumb feature.

There's a 'consolidate library' function but, alas, all it does is copy the files over, not remove the original....

 

[r.j.s]

thanks,
I think it's stupid how default settings copies to the itunes folder. if it was going to do that, it might as well transfer it over, not copy.

I like that it does that, I don't want to worry about where my media files are - I leave that to iTunes.

 

[ChrisA]

thanks,
I think it's stupid how default settings copies to the itunes folder. if it was going to do that, it might as well transfer it over, not copy.

EVERY person who comes to this forum and complains about corrupted iTune libraries has changed the default. People who leave it alone almost never have problems.

Why does it take 2X the space? Simply delete the files after they are copied into iTune's library.

 

[Pundle]

thanks,
I think it's stupid how default settings copies to the itunes folder. if it was going to do that, it might as well transfer it over, not copy.

The first time you ran iTunes, it asked you a series of questions to get started. One of those questions was whether or not you wanted iTunes to keep your media organised. You probably clicked through these screens without reading them. If you don't like using default settings I suggest you read screens like these in the future.

I know in the old days before I used iTunes when my media library wasn't being automatically managed, and files were always getting lost as things were accidentally moved or deleted. So I much prefer letting iTunes manage things for me. If you prefer looking after this sort of thing yourself, you are perfectly welcome, but I really don't see how having it managed is "stupid".

 

[jon08]

So what exactly is the benefit really of copying your music to the iTunes folder? I'm also one of those people who have this option disabled because I find it unreasonable to have my music on two different locations taking up twice as much space.

 

[aristobrat]

EVERY person who comes to this forum and complains about corrupted iTune libraries has changed the default. People who leave it alone almost never have problems.

Why does it take 2X the space? Simply delete the files after they are copied into iTune's library.

I agree completely, especially after spending an hour this weekend helping a friend move his iTunes from an old PC to a new PC.

He had his iTunes preference set so that iTunes did *not* copy media into the iTunes folder. So when he got a new PC and moved over his 'iTunes Music' folder over to it, nothing played (since the actual music files were stored in like 20 different other folders on his old PC, and he hadn't moved any of them).

Ended up having to 'consolidate library' on his old PC and then recopy the 'iTunes Music' folder back over.

 

[razorboy1969]

So what exactly is the benefit really of copying your music to the iTunes folder? I'm also one of those people who have this option disabled because I find it unreasonable to have my music on two different locations taking up twice as much space.

The purpose is to organize your files neatly into artist/album folders. I used to manually manage my music files, but i found out that iTunes does a better job at it.

 

[jon08]

The purpose is to organize your files neatly into artist/album folders. I used to manually manage my music files, but i found out that iTunes does a better job at it.

Hm, I already have everything in its separate folder named the way I want on my Macintosh HD, so I guess I wouldn't really benefit from this feature?

 

[velocityg4]

My music library would be a complete mess if I did not let iTunes manage the folder. Keeping over 12,000 songs organized manually would be a monumental task. Though I only let iTunes sort the Music library not copy music. Rather I will just create a new folder in my music folder with the date. Then have iTunes add the folder to the library. At which point it will move the songs into the appropriate folders.

I also keep my music folder on a separate volume. Once all the hardware comes in, it will be offloaded to a dedicated server with all my DVD's so that all computers use the same music library. Too bad they can't all use the same library database, each time a Mac or Windows computer opened it one would have to wait quite a while for it to rebuild the database file.

I really wish Apple would make an iTunes Server edition though. So that any additions or removals from the Library are reflected on all client computers yet each user can have there own playlists. The iTunes Home Sharing is worthless as it actually copies the song over thus making duplicates all over your network.