iTunes Madness

After a long bleak time, today I _finally_ got my main storage disk back from the shop. It has all my photos, music, documents...the real heart of my data.

Of course, iTunes is now completely haywire. I'd kept the iTunes library stuff on C:, which did NOT change...but apparently iTunes got opened while the data was gone and things are pretty much blanked out now.

The original MP3 files are in 2 different places...one folder of Limewire downloads, and another of rips from my own CDs.

So...how can I get my songs back into iTunes, without having to manually hunt down all these thousands of songs one at a #%$^$& time?

I think it's possible that it would help a lot if I could reassign the new drive back to its original label as F:; that name has now been taken by my first DVD drive and the data hard drive is now G:. How can I do a switcheroo on the drive names?

Hmph. Some help YOU lot are.

No, seriously, I figured out how to go in and restore my disk drive configuration back to the same as it was Before The Fall.
When I did so, all my iTunes songs snapped into position as if by magic.

Problem solved.
Damn, I'm God.

you are now officially a tech 'geek'

take a look at a fantastic and often forgotten feature of itunes "keep my music folder organized" under EDIT >PREFERENCES>ADVANCED

what this does is it copies the files into the itunes library and keep everything organized by artist>album. It's a life saver when changing computers, or trying to give songs to friends etc...

Yeah...I'd had that set, but the destination was on the drive that had to be replaced. Apparently when iTunes was opened while the F: drive was gone, stuff got seriously scrambled around. With the drive replaced, and reconfigured as F: again, it's all back just the way it was.

Boss,

Have you considered looking into an I-tunes alternative? There are a few out there that do everything that I-tunes does without a lot of the hassles. Some don't require reformatting of an I-pod, and they work like I-tunes but with more flexibility and user friendliness.

I have.

I'll be the first to tell you that iTunes has the WORST file management of any music player I've encountered yet. It's a major pain in the ass...much more so if you're trying to use it in a DJ setting.

What keeps me with it is the playback quality...IMHO iTunes has the best audio quality I've seen so far. I've taken MP3 files and played them, back-to-back on iTunes and other audio packages. To my ears at least, iTunes was consistently the clear winner. I'll pay the extra futzing about for the better sound.

The fact that I have also acquired an iPod (which also IMHO delivers clearly superior sound) pretty much keeps me married to iTunes, at least for some time to come.

I have.

I'll be the first to tell you that iTunes has the WORST file management of any music player I've encountered yet. It's a major pain in the ass...much more so if you're trying to use it in a DJ setting.

u gotta be kidding me!!!  iTunes has the best file management i've ever encountered anywhere...
it keeps everything nice and tidy when i can't do that... and most DJs love the shit out of it with playlist ability, fades, etc..

Yes, but those Apple fiends got to your brain a long time ago.

I actually found WinAmp a lot more flexible for on-the-fly playlisting etc., and I've been pretty underwhelmed by iTunes' effects...but iTunes just plain sounds better.

Yeah, I'm a Winamp guy. The versatility and user friendliness and the multitude of add ons and aps for it blows away I-Tunes. I don't find I-Tunes to sound better, though. I find it comparable to Winamp in that respect. Some tweaking of presets and a good sound system/sound card and you're good to go. If I knew where I'd be spending the next few years* I'd invest in a tube-based sound system for that wonderfully warm sound my system back home had.



*The transient nature of this line of work is a big negative.