How can I bypass Automatically Add to iTunes?

Question

I have a large CD collection (>3000) that I've ripped to iTunes in ALAC format; I only listen to CD or better quality music, so I don't have any mp3 or AAC files in my iTunes library. I keep my music on an external hard drive. I recently bought a larger external hard drive and moved all of my music to that drive. For some reason, iTunes chose to put all of my music in a folder called "Automatically Add to iTunes". This was fine, except that I could no longer see the contents of the hard drive; however, I did know that the files were there, becasue of the disc space that they consumed.
Today, I ripped two new CDs to the hard drive through iTunes and I noticed that iTunes placed the music folders for those CDs outside of the "Automatically Add to iTunes". I decded to drag the new folders into the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder. When I did so, all of the previous music disappeared and I cannot recover it. Fortunately, I have a copy of Sentuni, so I'll be able to put the music back on the hard drive from my iPods, but this process will require several hours. In addition, ripping my CD collection to iTunes required a lot of time, so I'm not pleased with the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder feature. Is there a way to disable this feature, so that I can simply put my music on my external drive and be able to see that the folders are there.
I've been a devoted Apple customer for almost a decade, so I won't get too upset over this issue, but I wish that your developers would have addressed this issue during the development stage. Thanks for your attention to this problem.
Best,
Heath

Answer 1

Heath Watts wrote:
If only this were the case. I tried to move several albums into the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder, which resulted in thousands of albums being erased from the folder. One should be able to drag a music folder into the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder without iTunes erasing the original contents of the folder.
It didn't erase anything.
It automatically added them to iTUnes and moved them to the correct folder (Movies, Music, etc.) in the location shown in iTunes prefs > Advanced - iTunes media folder location.
I would like to disable the "Automatically add to iTunes" feature in iTunes,
You "disable" it by not putting anything into it. If you don't want to use it, don't use it.
If you want to manually manage, do not put anything into this folder.
Go to iTunes prefs > Advanced and uncheck Copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library.
Then File > Add to library adn select what you want to add to iTunes. Do NOT put anything into the Automatically add to iTunes folder
and would like to be able to see the albums and artists on my external hard drive without having to do Spotlight searches
You wouldn't have to do Spotlight searches anyway.
The files are in /Music/Artist/Album folderin the location shown in iTunes prefs > Advanced - iTunes media folder location.
Also, in iTunes, you can select a song, right click - Show in Finder.