How Do I Get Rid Of Multiple Duplicates AND Relocate Numerous Files?

Question

Basically I'm fed up of iTunes.
A couple of months ago, i had a problem with my itunes library due to a message regarding the iCloud. This practically deleted my whole iTunes library and forced me to relocate every single track, which took a lot longer than it needed to.
I was already annoyed with iTunes by this point, until yesterday around 1/3 of my tracks were still unlocated, however I could cope with this because I had the majority of my songs, despite this not being ideal.
Yesterday I was informed I needed to update my iPod, naturally I did. Then...this is when I start to get mad, my iPod crashed, then restored itself COMPLETELY back to factory settings, removing my songs and all my apps. I reopen my iTunes library to see that, that has also restored and NONE of my music is there.
Now, after a bit of fiddling, I have an iTunes library full of songs which have been duplicated twice or even three times, to add to it, hardly any are actually located. It's not just as simple as redownloading from iTunes, because I expect half my library is music from CDs. So now not only am I faced with trying to get rid of all the duplicates, I also have to locate all the songs (I have checked the preferences and redirected it to My Music > iTunes - basically what it should be) and I have to get rid of all the songs that I didn't want in the first place such as old songs that should be long gone off my iPod/Library from now.
If anyone could help, that would be great, because I'm so tired this time-consuming mess my iTunes has become.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Broken Links
It depends a bit on why things aren't where iTunes expects to find them but if they are in sensible Artist & Album folders in some common location then my FindTracks script should be able to reconnect them to iTunes. FindTracks uses some fuzzy matching routines and searches for multiple potential locations within a media folder. For more details see this thread.
Duplicates
Apple's official advice is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls.
Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items to display duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created.  If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.
Use my DeDuper script if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.
(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed)
I intend at some point to improve DeDuper so that when there are multiple duplicates, where at least one is connected to a file while others are missing, it can throw away the entries to any missing files, however the current version needs all duplicates to have been repaired first.
tt2