Duplicate music files on hard drive

I have recently formatted my computer, and in the backup process of my music in iTunes (built up over many years), i realised that there are duplicates of most of my music files in my iTunes media folder, however they are not duplicated in iTunes. For example, a song might be called "Paint it Black" with a duplicate "Paint it Black 2"
The problem is, i don't know what file of each duplicate corresponds to the one in iTunes. I tried a few of the duplicates to delete either one or the other, and see if iTunes would still play the file, but i didn't get a consistent result.
For this reason I can't use a program like Similarity, or go through and delete them manually without possibly ruining my library in iTunes. The other problem with manually reselecting the files is that the total folder almost cracks 80GB in total.
So, my question is, is there any way to copy my iTunes library directly out of iTunes, put it back in and let iTunes reorganise it, or maybe restore my library from my iPod, while still maintaining things like playlists, play counts etc? Would be much appreciated, thanks

My DeDuper script is designed to help clean up. See this thread for background.
tt2

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ITunes 7.1.1 deletes music files on hard drive

After updating iTunes to 7.1.1, I discovered that my playlist for "alternative" music had dissappeared. OK, no problem, the music files must still be in "music/itunes". Searched through this folder, but ALL the "alternative" music files were gone from the hard drive - all the music burned from CDs, even those purchased from iTunes! Used "find" in various ways, no luck. They are truly deleted.
After hours and hours of reinstalling all the "alternative" music from backups, all was back as before. I shut my Mac down for the night. The next day I opened iTunes and the "alternative" playlist was gone again - and the music I had put back onto my hard drive had been erased again!
I've tried starting iTunes from an old library - the playlists come back, but the music is not, just shows question marks. I've even done a virus check of the whole HD.
As any ideas as to why this is happening, and what to do?
Now I'm worried that other playlists, and their actual music files will be unpredictably wiped.
Has this happened to anyone else's "Alternative" music files and/or playlists?
I can't believe my music files have been erased off my hard drive - twice!
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Thanks for the reply, it's appreciated.
I usually turn off the computer each night. After updating to 7.1.1, just the "alternative" playlist and music files were gone from my HD. I re-installed the music files from a backup HD.
To test things, I quit iTunes and then opened it again and looked in the music file on the HD, a number of times. The replaced music was still there.
The next morning, I turned on the computer [Of course, I know that an off computer can do nothing ]. When it came time to open iTunes, again the music files were gone. I didn't check to see if the files were there before I opened iTunes, unfortunately.
I did use Norton, but only AFTER I discovered the files were gone ...
At the mo' I'm trying to recreate the problem to see if I can further narrow it down. Putting just one song into the Alternatives playlist, shutting down, starting up, etc. See if it's there. Repairing permissions with Disk Utility, etc etc.
Again, thanks for trying to help!

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Remove Duplicate Music Files, But Keep iTunes Copy

How can you remove duplicate copies of music files on your hard drive but be sure to keep the one iTunes is using and keeping the iTunes Library intact?
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1) However I do not want to move my itunes Music onto the flash drive, only my Movies, and want to keep my music on my hard drive.
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Yes
2) Do the MacBook Air's not have a separate program other than itunes that can play movies? If so, is there a program I can get to solve this problem? I went onto the App Store to see if there was something I could download, but all the apps were for creating DVD's, not simply playing them.
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Problems transfering music from external hard drive to ipod.

When I plug both ipod and external hard driver (WD 1600B014) into my Gateway laptop, only 1 device will work at a time with the other saying "usb device not recognised". This means I am unable to copy selected itunes songs onto my ipod.
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How do I transfer music from old hard drive to Mavericks?

how do I transfer music from old hard drive to Mavericks?

You need only post once.
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I am trying to play my digital music off a hard drive onto my home stereo. I would like to know if the mac mini can just hook to my processor and play music through the processor(preamp) on my home stereo speakers?

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Duplicate music files on hard drive

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