ITunes creating duplicates in my Windows music folders?

I ran out of space on my local hard drive, so I moved iTunes and all my music folders to an external drive. I wish I had checked here first, and gotten the instructions to move my music, but I didn't. I just dragged everything to my external drive.
I guess I made a mess of this,because many songs were duplicated (and triplicated) in my music folders. I deleted everything and tried again. It seemed to work. This was a few weeks ago.
Tonight I noticed the space used on my external drive suddenly doubled from 30 GB to 60 GB. I started looking in album folders and I'm finding duplicates again. For example, it will list songs as "Honky Tonk Women", "Honky Tonk Women1", "Honky Tonk Women2", etc.
Can anyone tell me why this is happening, and how do I fix it? Manually deleting 8500 songs will take forever! If I sync my iPod, will I end up with duplicates in my iTunes library?

Ed, I did have "Copy files to..." checked when I added music the first time. Per your advice, I've unchecked that box.
Question: What is the EHD?
You say I can delete the music not in my iTunes music folder, but all the duplicates are in there.
I've been looking in my iTunes player, selecting songs, and getting info to check its path in my hard drive. Depending on if the song ends in 1, 2, or with no number, I then know which version I can delete from the iTunes music folder. I can't even imagine how long it will take me to do this about 8000 times! I'm tempted to delete everything and start over, but reloading all my CDs will take me weeks as well...

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ITunes creates duplicate tracks on its own

Hello everyone,
I noticed recently that iTunes is creating duplicate tracks on its own. The new “tracks” all reference to the same file. Sometimes there are up to 4 duplicates (see screenshot). As you can see on the far right of the image, it seems that every time I ran iTunes the tracks are added.
I did not change anything recently, but noticed that iTunes also updates my Cover Art, even though I explicitly unchecked the checkbox the settings…might be connected to my issue.
Any advice is much appreciated!
regards
modtastic

Is the media folder stored on an external drive? If you start iTunes with an external disconnected it will "notice" and mark all tracks as missing. If you then add media by scanning folders it won't notice that it is already connected to the files and will add them again. Next time you start iTunes you can have two tracks linked to the same physical file.
How do you normally add media to the library?
To check your library for duplicates use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. Keep holding down shift until you have clicked on the text Show Exact Duplicates or it may still use the loser definition. If you don't see a menu bar press Ctrl+B to reveal it or Alt to show it temporarily.
If you find that you have true duplicates you need to manually select all but one of each group to remove, or use my DeDuper script if you don't want to do it by hand. The script attempts to take account of different types of duplicates which need to be handled differently, merges playcounts and preserves playlist membership. Please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping. See this thread for background.
iTunes doesn't generally do much in the way of background media updates, but it may reveal those enacted by something else, such as Windows Media Player.
tt2

ITunes creates duplicates when Adding a Folder

Lately, whenever I add a folder to iTunes it creates a duplicate of each song. I have to go in and delete each occurance -- very irritating. I have the Sound Check volume adjuster in Preferences enabled. Maybe it has something to do with that. Any ideas?

No, I do it the normal way. I simply use the Add Folder function and locate the folder on my computer, which is always in a separate directory. I do not put the folder in the music library. Usually, I delete the original folder once the music files have been copied. Basically, iTunes is duplicating the files for no apparent reason -- it's certainly nothing I'm doing.
BTW, once iTunes has completed copying to the iTunes folder, it adds a "1" to the duplicated file. For example, in the iTunes folder "Joy Division\Substance," the duplicated files are represented this way:
Joy Division - Transmission (1979).mp3
Joy Division - Transmission (1979) 1.mp3
You can't have two files with the same name in Windows' folders.
Thanks for your suggestions, though!

ITunes creating duplicate files under a hidden folder named "Volumes".

It seems my iTunes program is secretly making a duplicate file in a hidden folder called "Volumes" on my laptop hard drive. It's now maxxed out my drive and I need to both remove the "Volumes" folder and make sure it doesn't get created and happen again.
Details:
Using a Powerbook G4 with an 80gb drive. Using iTunes 8. The iTunes library program is in the usual place on the lap top hard drive but the music library folder, where all the files get saved to, is on an external drive labeled "Media".
Clicking normally and searching around my laptop hard drive, I do not see or am able to access the folder named "Volumes". But I know it exists as I ran a scan program called jdiscreport and it clearly shows a huge folder, 45gb, named "Volumes". There are also a few old flacs in the "Volume folder also. The iTunes duplicate files are in identically named folders as the external drive: iTunes Music located within Media, located within Volumes.
When I rip a CD in iTunes (or the iTunes-LAME program I sometimes use), the files do go to the proper external folder as expected and as I've set in the iTunes preferences section. So why is iTunes also saving the same thing to this mystery "Volumes" folder on the lap top hard drive? How do I get rid of this folder without wiping my drive? How do I stop it from continuing?
Help, I have 2gb of free space left!
Thanks, James

Hi I am having a similar issue, It all started when I tried to restore from the Time Machine and it threw a error back stating that there is no disk available. I was wondering how come and went to find out what is happening and was shocked to find out that actually my entire Macintosh HD has a duplicate copy inside the /Volumes folder. I went to the XTERM to investigate and found that the / (root) has a Users folder where all my stuffs like pictures, music, movies, documents reside and the same data or content is duplicated in the /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users folder
I first thought that it was only a link, but I later found that it is not a link and it is indeed a physical copy of all my User folders inside the /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users folder and actually occupying my Hard disk space.
I am not sure how this happened or how it is duplicating itself. I am also afraid to delete the stuffs inside the /Volumes folder as it might crash my system (it is already hidden - I assume it is hidden for some purpose). Please suggest any options, how I can get rid of these duplicated data and how to avoid such duplication in the future.
Thanks
Regards
Chelvam.S.T

My itunes creates duplicates in my iphone

Fisrt I purchased Anamanaguchi through my iphones's itunes. Then I created a ringtone using a song from that album. Then the original song keeps playing ringtone part. In my macbook, it plays full song, but in my iphone, it plays only ringtone part, even though I deleted and repurchase, that problem still occurs. I connected with my itunes in macbook again and now it gives my iphone many duplicate songs. I tried deleting that ringtone and reboot my phone but it is still the same. I really tried of it. I will never connect my phone to macbook again

Ed, I did have "Copy files to..." checked when I added music the first time. Per your advice, I've unchecked that box.
Question: What is the EHD?
You say I can delete the music not in my iTunes music folder, but all the duplicates are in there.
I've been looking in my iTunes player, selecting songs, and getting info to check its path in my hard drive. Depending on if the song ends in 1, 2, or with no number, I then know which version I can delete from the iTunes music folder. I can't even imagine how long it will take me to do this about 8000 times! I'm tempted to delete everything and start over, but reloading all my CDs will take me weeks as well...

ITunes creating playlist automatically whrn importing music

Itunes 10.4 in two computers (OSX and Windows XP) creates playlists when importing folders into the library, and autoplays them. Never happened before. ¿Any solution?

I did find a workaround. Itunes Folder Watch.will add folders without playlists. I deleted all the items and unwanted playlists in my itunes library, closed itunes, deleted the shortcuts to itunes and replaced them with shortcuts to itunes Folder Watch. Then I started up itunesFolder Watch, which reopens itunes. I selected my media folder and then Folder Watch made a list of the items under "new tracks", I clicked "add tracks to itunes" and added all the items. It took a long time, but now it only takes a minute to check for new tracks. There is a bug where it keeps thinking that about a dozen John Haitt albums are new tracks even though though they have already been loaded. Other than that, it solves the problem.
When I hear that Steve Jobs was very demanding and had to make his programmers go back to the drawing board over and over again, I wonder if it was because his programmers did such a lousy job they deserved to be yelled at or if they actually did it right the first time but Steve Jobs had no idea what he was putting the users thru as he kept telling them to add brilliant ideas that didn't make any sense in the real world. Some how I don't think its the programmers fault. It isn't just itunes. I always find these weird problems whenever I get desparate enough to use apple products. For example, I haven't been able to figure out how to listen to podcasts on an mp3 player without using apple, and there is no way to get it to play a list of podcasts. It only plays them 1 at time. I spent hours on the phone with Apple and the only thing they could tell me was to make a movie of the podcasts everytime there is a new podcast, which is a royal pain in the ***. I am not going to do it. The very idea is absurd.
I'm absolutely sure there is no technical reason why these things can't be done, so it seems like there must be some reason why it makes more money for apple to do it completely the wrong way, users be damned, You know, like any Microsoft Product. So when I read in the media how Apple made gadgets easy to use, I don't understand how that could be true. Gadgets are generally NOT easy to use and there is no reason for it.They could easily be easy to use but the people in management have no imagination and the programmers got tired of explaining to them how their instructions don't make any sense and just gave up even trying to make itunes easy to use. I don't know a whole lot about Apple so I could easily be wrong about all that, but thats my guess.

Itunes creating duplicates

I added all my apple lossless files to an empty itunes library from their location on my Nas drive but when i did this its created double of a lot of the files in the original folders and in itunes but in AAC these were 100% not in the folders prior as if i go to get info the create date is today any ideas why its done this? Thanks

Look at your iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced. Is "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checked?

Itunes will not associate with my music folders on an external hard drive

I moved all of my music on both libraries for two separate Ipods onto an external hard drive. Now when I open Itunes neither one of the libraries comes up. I have tried holding down the shift and choosing a library but it does not open. I am beyond frustrated, please help.

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.
To create or open an alternate iTunes library click the icon to start iTunes and *immediately press and _hold down_ the shift key (option for Macs)* until asked to create or choose a library. Click Choose and browse to the .itl file you want to open.
The normal layout for an iTunes library is a folder called iTunes which has some library database files in it and a folder for media called *iTunes Media* or *iTunes Music* (if created pre iTunes-9).
If you move the main iTunes folder elsewhere so that the relative path from the library to the media is unchanged then open using the shift-start-iTunes method then usually the library will carry on working as if nothing has happended.
If you just move the iTunes Media/iTunes Music folder to a new path then immediately update the iTunes preference for the location of the iTunes Media folder then sometimes it will sort itself out, but often it won't. In this case move the media folder back where it came from, open, test & close the library, then go back and move the whole iTunes folder.
If the media folder has previously been moved from inside the iTunes folder by changing the location of the media folder and then consolidating to the new location it gets more complicated. In this case the library files can usually be moved to the parent folder of the media folder, leaving the absolute path to each file unchaged but re-esatablishing the normal arrangement of library folder enclosing media folder. Once done the whole parent folder can then be renamed or moved as desired.
tt2

ITunes creates duplicates in my iTouch...

I have a large number of Korean songs/artists in my iTunes library and I prefer to have the English first and then the Korean name/title. I've noticed that sometimes when I change the information for a song, I will have two of the same song on my iTouch but not in my iTunes library. (The song with the original information and another of the same song with the information that I changed) Does anyone else have this problem or know of a way to fix it? Thanks in advance.

Ed, I did have "Copy files to..." checked when I added music the first time. Per your advice, I've unchecked that box.
Question: What is the EHD?
You say I can delete the music not in my iTunes music folder, but all the duplicates are in there.
I've been looking in my iTunes player, selecting songs, and getting info to check its path in my hard drive. Depending on if the song ends in 1, 2, or with no number, I then know which version I can delete from the iTunes music folder. I can't even imagine how long it will take me to do this about 8000 times! I'm tempted to delete everything and start over, but reloading all my CDs will take me weeks as well...

ITunes creates duplicate entries

Hi.
I noticed that if I transfer a song to my iPhone, and later add lyrics or a cover (or even give a rate) to that song on my Mac, if I transfer the same song again to the iPhone, iTunes instead of updating the infos of the already existing song, creates a duplicate on the iPhone, that differs from the old one just for the detail I added later on the Mac.
Is that a known issue? Am I the only one experiencing this problem? How can I fix it?

I'm not really sure how unchecked tracks behave if they are synced to the device. I only uncheck things I really don't want to hear as a rule but don't actually want to throw away. E.g. interview tracks on an album. In the main library unchecked tracks will be skipped unless you specifically click on them to play them. Presumably it works the same way on the device, I've just never tested it.
tt2

ITunes creating a song from a music video...

is there a way to disable that?

Weird indeed, but I have seen this before.
Close and repopen iTunes. Close and reopen iMovie.
Still not there?
Reboot your Mac.

Iphone on Itunes won't let me select music

Got a new computer, all was going well. Now I find that when I plug in my Iphone Itunes won't let me select music folders to sync, it is all grayed out. It sees the Iphone , charges it and lets me change applications. Just not music or Photos. I removed Itunes then dowloaded it to see if that would help. It didn't.

The iPhone does not support disk mode, and in regards to iTunes content, an iPhone can be synced with an iTunes library on a single computer only, and photos can be transferred to an iPhone from a single computer only. When syncing iTunes content and transferring photos from a different computer, all iTunes content and photos transferred from another computer will be erased from the iPhone first.
Did you transfer your iTunes library from your old computer to your new computer along with photos and all other important data?

How do I stop iTunes from creating duplicate entries and sub-folders?????

I am SOOO SICK AND TIRED of iTunes deciding to create sub-folders all the time. I just want to have one big folder and throw all my music into it. I have now spent several weeks trying to re-create my music library after my hard drive crashed, and iTunes keeps messing everything up.
If I let iTunes do what it wants, I end up with two or three copies of each song. If I try to consolidate my files by deleting extra copies of songs, suddenly iTunes can't "find" anything.
When I go looking for the "missing" songs, iTunes creates endless fractal layers of folders within folders.
I AM SICK OF THIS!
I AM ABOUT TO ABANDON ITUNES AND GO BACK TO WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER.

CodeVII wrote:
Why when you have a large number of files it is better to have them in sub-folders???
Unchecking both those options still doesn't stop Itunes from putting files in Artist and Album folders..
The problem I see with putting music files in folders is if you want to move them or change the file properties with just the Operating System they take longer to access. So quicktime seems like something I'd try but....
I'd like to have the option to have my files in one Folder/Directory.
iTunes really wants you to use iTunes to manage the iTunes library. If you use the operating system or third party tools to modify tags, iTunes won't detect the change until it has some reason to access the tag, e.g. during playback. In contrast WMP will sniff out changes in your tags and update itself automatically.
Once you've got your media in iTunes why do you need to access it again at the folder level? As it happens I'm quite obsesive over the structure of my files both logical and physical (see grouping & scripts) but I strongly recommend others to avoid the temptation to waste too much time over the physical layout and leave iTunes to get on with it...
Many other programs have offered choices for folder structure, invalid character replacement etc. over many years without iTunes joining in. I suspect that the developers of iTunes have long since decided that extra choice in this area isn't necessary since "it just works", though by all means drop a line to iTunes Feedback.
tt2

I recently deleted many duplicate files. In the midst of it my Itunes songs are not in Itunes. They are in two different folders. One under 'Music' in my ID. And two under a MyMusic file in Documents. How do I know which one to import?

I recently deleted many duplicate files. In the midst of it my Itunes songs are not in Itunes. They are in two different folders. One under 'Music' in my ID. And two under a MyMusic file in Documents. How do I know which one to import?

Thanks, this is not an ideal answer but probably the most sensible one in my case.
I will try it unless someone has a better suggestion, but I'll wait a bit as it will take me a few days anyway (I had actually tried to create a new smaller playlist or download by album, but at this stage the music app is not letting me queue a list of songs for download - I think I will have to disable and re-enable iTunes match which will probably delete all the songs).
I have to say I am not very impressed with Apple here - having an online backup of all your data and beeing able to restore it to a new device easily was a strong selling point of iCloud. For music, they are Definitly not delivering at the stage.

In Windows 7, how to make music folders open with iTunes??

Ok, here’s my little problem:
In Windows 7, I have iTunes installed with WMP disabled. In the registry, I have added a Windows Explorer right-click shortcut for folders so that I can choose to open/play that folder’s content in iTunes (see image link below).
http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u297/akita11/Explorer.jpg
All well and good, but I’m the lazy type. So what I would like, is when I left-click on a music folder that has audio files (like mp3’s) in it, instead of Windows Explorer opening the folder, for Windows to open/play such a folder in iTunes automatically. But, and that’s the thing I guess, this should only apply to music folders with audio files (like mp3’s) in it, and not to any other folder containing non-audio files.
I know I can go to the Folder Options control panel applet | File types, and edit the advanced settings for “Folder” from ‘Explore’ to ‘Play with iTunes’ as the default. But then this will be applied so that all and any folders open in iTunes, which isn’t exactly what I’m after.
I guess this can be handled via an advanced registry change, just like I added the Windows Explorer right-click shortcut via a simple registry setting. But for the **** of me I can’t figure out how to do it. I did google around a bit, but without any success.
All help and advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers

You need to place a shortcut to open Firefox in the Start > Programs > Startup folder.<br />
That is basically the same in all Windows versions.

ITunes creating duplicates in my Windows music folders?

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