Help Organising iTunes Library

[Leydeno]

Hello,

I'm trying to save as much memory as possible on my iMac, and I've recently noticed that when I click on Macintosh HD, my iTunes songs are kept within my named file (on the left hand side - the one underneath Applications) in Music/iTunes/iTunes Music. A duplicate copy is also kept within the same named file in Music/Music [again!]/iTunes/iTunes Music. Also on the left hand side, underneath my named file is another file called Music, and the iTunes songs also appear twice exactly as it appears within my named file.

So, it looks like 4 copies of my iTunes library is kept within my Macintosh HD hard drive.

If this makes sense to anyone, I'd be very grateful if someone could explain to me why this is so, and whether I can delete any of these files to clean up the hard drive a little bit!?

Thanks for any help!

 

[mad jew]

In the Advanced section of iTunes Preferences, there'll be an iTunes Music Folder location. Assuming you have Keep iTunes Music Folder Organised and also Copy Files To iTunes Folder When Adding To Library both checked, then you can delete any music files/libraries outside the location listed.

 

[adriantoll]

In the Advanced section of iTunes Preferences, there'll be an iTunes Music Folder location. Assuming you have Keep iTunes Music Folder Organised and also Copy Files To iTunes Folder When Adding To Library both checked, then you can delete any music files/libraries outside the location listed.

To make sure that you have copies of all your files in the location specified in the Advanced preferences before deleting anything, click the "Advanced" menu (not the Advanced section in preferences) and "Consolidate Library".

This makes sure that you have one copy of each file in that location before you delete anything - it sounds like this setting may have been changed at some point, so you're not guaranteed to have a copy of everything in that location unless you use "Consolidate"...

Then make sure the advanced preferences are as mad jew says, and all your music should stay organised...

 

[Leydeno]

Thanks for that. Out of interest, do you know whether there is a function on the iMac G5 that will organise and/or clean up my hard drive automatically, so that any other duplicate files for example get removed?

Cheers.

 

[mad jew]

To make sure that you have copies of all your files in the location specified in the Advanced preferences before deleting anything, click the "Advanced" menu (not the Advanced section in preferences) and "Consolidate Library".

Good point. This should happen automatically if you change the location or if you check the Keep Files Organised box, but don't trust that and click Consolidate all the same.

As for an app to find duplicate files on your hard drive, I don't know of any and wouldn't really want to use one anyway. There'd be a tonne of files with the same name that are part of the system.

If you want to find where space is being used up, then try an app like OmniDiskSweeper.

 

[Greenjeens]

I'll put it another way.
I needed some help to delete the duplicate itunes files from the main hard drive. It was a mess to deal with.

When using an external hardrive, to avoid duplicate song files, simply making sure the option, "copy files to itunes music folder when adding to library" in the advanced menu settings was unchecked, fixed the problem.

-
Dave