Folder Organization

[boltman519]

I am looking for some advice/tips.

About a year ago I bought a Mac Mini, my first Mac. As I was moving from a Win system I had an external on which I have all my photo's, music, and other files that I wanted to keep.

Upon switching I have imported all my photo's to iPhoto, and pointed my iTunes to music folder on the external that is now hooked up to my Mac. I have a separate smaller external that hooked up to only saves backups of my system run from the native backup program.

While I understand, or at least I think I understand, the iPhoto process, in which all photo's are saved on the Mac itself, regardless of the fact that my original photos came from a outside HD there really is no reason to have my old photo still saved, is that correct? I know no new photos are saved there as I import them into iPhoto.

With iTunes it does still save to the external, which I expected as it is working similar as it did on a WIN system.

Ultimately I would like to free up a little space on my desk and get ride of one external. My Mac HD is 500gb and my music + photos are well under that. Can I simple copy my music back to the default file system on the Mac and point all new items to go there and after which, along with the old photo folder remove them from my external? I can then copy all my other files into folder on my desktop/docs and save them there.

I would then use my bigger external as a home for backups.


Does this sound right? Any suggestions, thoughts, tips, tricks? Just trying to get more consolidated.

Thanks!

 

[chickenwingfly]

Hello,

Well I don't use iPhoto as I think it sucks (I use Lightroom, but also Aperture from Apple seems to be a decent product), but I thin you're right, in that it "copies" whatever you throw it at, to its internal library, so you can delete the original item afterwards (external).

As for iTunes it can be a bit tricky. If you already have ratings and whatnot, then I'd suggest you to read up on manually editing the iTunes Library (XML) file, and I'm not sure if you can just delete the music (or simple eject the external) so that when iTunes sees it's not there it will pop up a dialog asking to find the music on the new location (which would be easier and better than manually editing the XML). I could be crazy and making things up but I believe for some reason I'm coming up with this logic (I've fought over the years with messy iTunes Libraries and harddrive failures and whatnot).

If you DON'T, care at all, about ratings and play counts, just delete the music and copy it back. I believe you don't even have to manually copy it, as you can simply put an option somewhere that, whenever you add files, it will copy them automatically to the Library location (likely $HOME/Music/iTunes or $HOME/iTunes).

And after that yeah, just format that drive and use Time Machine/CCC/SuperDuper for your backup and cloning needs.

 

[mattluke]

Should be able to just copy your entire external music folder to the music folder in your home directory. When you open up itunes next hold down the alt/option key at the same time and itunes should ask you which library to open, just point it at the music folder you've just copied. Don't forget to check your advanced preference settings and confirm where you want future files stored/organised when you buy/rip/import them.