MetaChat - Help me with my scattered music collection?

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25 June 2008

Help me with my scattered music collection? →[More:]What I have:

-tons of music on a portable hard drive that contains a disk image of my now-dead powerbook

-medium amount of music that I've downloaded to my work computer (some duplicates of above songs)(mac mini)

-small amount of music on my newish macbook pro that includes some new music, some music from the portable drive that imported when I wanted to play it, and some duplicates that I've downloaded twice from different sources.

What I want:
-All of my music on the portable hard drive
-the ability to play music from the drive without it copying to my itunes on my new mac
-clean new mac with no music on it

Is this possible? Can you hope me? I don't know how to do it other than get everything on the new macbook pro, manually delete duplicates, and then save to the portable and clean the macbook.
But then what happens when I want to listen?

post by: rmless2 at: 13:29 | 5 comments

Oh, I should mention that none of the tracks were downloaded from iTunes

posted by rmless2 25 June | 13:30

Bueller?

posted by rmless2 25 June | 17:22

Disclaimer: I do not have a Mac, and haven't touched one in over 10 years. But I do have iTunes.

Can't you just copy everything onto your external drive and delete duplicates from there? Then when you load up iTunes, point it to your external drive. If you like, make sure "organize my music library" is unchecked; that way iTunes won't try to fiddle with the files.

posted by rhapsodie 25 June | 18:04

Thanks! I will definitely try that.
So when I point my iTunes to the external drive, it won't copy those files onto the local drive?
(and how does one go about this pointing business?)

posted by rmless2 25 June | 22:27

it won't copy those files onto the local drive?

Not if you tell it to put them elsewhere.

(and how does one go about this pointing business?)

Edit > Preferences
Under the Advanced Tab, then the General Tab.
Right at the top is your iTunes folder location: if you change this to your external drive, any new song you add to iTunes will be automatically copied to your external drive.

The Keep iTunes Organized checkbox will rearrange all of your folders and filenames to how iTunes likes it. I don't mind this at all, I kind of like it actually, but some people like to keep their music organized in their own ways. If you're one of them, just uncheck this box.

posted by rhapsodie 25 June | 22:37

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