iTunes info needed please

[mahking51]

Hi all,
I have most of my music (3k+ tracks) sitting in a single folder (with LOTS of subfolders) on my Buffalo network drive.
The main problem is that most of this is inherited music and is very disorganised indeed.
I am slowly sorting it all out; deleting tracks I do not want, removing duplicates and moving tracks to more logical folders. etc etc.

Whenever I fire up iTunes v10 it obviously cannot find all the tracks as they have been moved.
My problem is that iTunes seems to have its own destination folder on my local HD and I keep having to tell it to look on the Network drive.
I then get loads of duplicate tracks and all sorts of other problems and rapidly lose the will to live :lol:

Is there a way that I can tell iTunes to:

A) Store all new additional tracks etc only in my folder on the network drive
B) Only look there always for my music.

I presume that there must be a preferences file or somesuch that I can trash to achieve this but am a bit wary of screwing things up even more.
Any help will be most welcome.
Cheers,
Martin

 

[squib]

I can't help but i am really looking forward to any replies as i want to move all my music over and was having the same probs so have held off.

 

[Michael7]

Solve your problems and don't use iTunes.

If you have a supported iPod (or various other players) install Rockbox so it has "folder support" and still have dual boot so you can still use iTunes if you want to.

http://www.rockbox.org/

Michael

 

[RogerS]

On the Mac, it is under Advanced from the preference menu option. Don't know what the PC version does.

Also I do believe that on the mac there are some add-ons out there that let you select which library you want to use at any one time.

 

[Walter Hall]

Same for PC, Edit/Preferences/Advanced

You can also select/create new libraries by holding down the shift key when you open i-tunes.

 

[goldeneyedmonkey]

like above: don't use iTunes. Apple have to have everything their way or the highway. I couldn't stand it, it's so limiting. I use Winamp to organise my music and sort all my ipod playlists through, I'm sure there are other media players that let you do this. Plus you can use your ipod as a storage device as well as just an mp3 player. Tré handy! Just have a look about, I've not tried Rockbox.

HTH, Cheers_Dan.

 

[mahking51]

Thanks guys, I have found the prefs to load my new stuff to the Music folder on the Buffalo Network drive from now on.
Can I just copy over the stuff from the old folder on the local HD that I wish to keep?
When this is done is it possible to tell Itunes to start a completely new library file and delte the old one? If so how please?
Cheers
Martin

 

[Walter Hall]

Martin

You can do those things and you may might find this link useful. The article answers your questions much more effectively than I could.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

Walter

 

[mahking51]

Hi walter,
That looks like what I need, just made a pdf of it and will look through it tomorrow, many thanks indeed!
Martin