Mac - Cleaning Up and External Hard Drive

Discuss LairWare's app for fixing problems in your iTunes library.
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Michaelc
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Mac - Cleaning Up and External Hard Drive

Post by Michaelc » Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:30 pm

I have an hard drive hooked up to my Mac with my old iTunes library on it

The MAC iTunes library has some new stuff on it

The EXTERNAL iTunes library has some duplicates and some other new stuff on it

Can I clean up the External drive without bringing the material over onto the Mac before combining it with the stuff on the Mac drive?

If so, How?

Thanks in advance

Michael
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beastie
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Removing duplicates between two different libraries

Post by beastie » Wed Oct 05, 2011 1:44 am

If you mean that you want to independently clean up the iTunes library on the external drive before combining them, no problem. Hold down the alt/option key when launching iTunes and it will ask you to choose the location of the library you want to use. After choosing the iTunes folder on your external drive, wait for everything to become available and then quit iTunes. When you launch Song Sergeant, it will relaunch iTunes and work entirely with the external library.

Use this method again to re-choose your normal library when you're done.

The most important part is quitting out of iTunes after choosing the new library, so that it will store its new settings. Otherwise, 3rd party software like Song Sergeant may get confused about where your currently chosen library is.
Last edited by beastie on Wed Oct 05, 2011 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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beastie
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Also

Post by beastie » Wed Oct 05, 2011 1:58 am

Also, when you are ready to merge the two libraries, you may find this to be helpful:
Michaelc
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Unable to read External HD

Post by Michaelc » Wed Oct 05, 2011 4:15 pm

I have replicated the iTunes file structure on the External HD

When I open iTunes in the manner described above I get the following error message:

"An iTunes library file could not be found in the folder 'iTunes Media'. Please choose another folder"

Any clues as to why?

Tx

M
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beastie
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iTunes folder structure

Post by beastie » Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:50 pm

The iTunes folder hierarchy should look like this (irrelevant items omitted):

iTunes
____iTunes Library
____iTunes Library.xml
____iTunes Media (or iTunes Music)
________Music
____________An Artist Name
____________Another Artist Name

It sounds like perhaps you have chosen the iTunes Media folder within the iTunes folder, instead of the iTunes folder itself?
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