Putting ALL my music into one single drive, from multiple drives & machines

It serves me right, but I have created a wild mess of various instances of iTunes on various machines, with some music purchased and some from ripped CDs. I also haven't used the ipod much, until only recently, so most of my collections have been bound to my MBP and G5. My backup procedure is a worst practice method of just cooying stuff from one drive to another and occasionally buying new hard drives. Now that I have plenty of drive space, the only problem will be logistics. I'm using Tidy Up to locate duplicate files but that only gets me part of the way there.
Ideal scenario is locate all the "music" folders from various users in my household and various hard drives and eliminate the duplicate files. Then I just create one massive music folder, and point iTunes to that folder and all the music will magically be in iTunes. Something tells me it's not that simple, especially when you have music by artist > album > song in iTunes. I also have this crazy idea that I'll have that one big drive of music hooked up to my Airport Extreme and I cam listen to it on various machines throughout the house. (Didn't Apple say I could do this one day??)
So to summarize:
Can I just let iTunes do the work of organizing all the music? Will it also delete duplicates? (I'm assuming Tidy Up will be the thing for that.)
Can I hang the drive off my Airport router and access that in that special AirTunes way?
Hope that makes sense....please go easy. I'm just an idiot with a lotta hard drives....
Lee

I guess I can reply to my own post. I wanted to add that, although I see a lot of similar posts about organizing with iTunes, I don't see one as complex as my scenario. Unless I'm missing something.
Thanks in advance, O Great Apple Discussion Board People.....

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Get all my music into one place for iTunes to 'see'

I have moved from PC to iMac and have 2TB of music on a Western Digital (WD) external drive. Most of them are in folders named by Artist etc. When I started using iTunes on my PC, it created a 'Music' folder on the WD drive. Some of my music is now there and some is still outside the 'Music' folder. I understand I cannot 'drag and drop' files to where I want them. Now, for some reason iTunes only references some of the music - even if it is inside the 'Music' folder. I am getting a bit fed up of wanting to play, say, Stevie Wonder and finding that I have to manually 'Add Stevie to Library' to get him into iTunes; whereas my girlfriend's a-Ha albums are already smugly sitting in the iTunes library (unplayed, I might add)
So I have music in the WD drive; I also have a sub-folder within the WD drive called 'Music', originallly created by iTunes on PC (this contains most of my music). However, iTunes is only 'seeing' the tracks that it feels like. I have the 'Keep iTunes media folder organized' box ticked; as is the box for 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library'. I think I could probably hit the 'Add to Libary' button and re-add the entire collection but I think that is time consuming to process and will result in lots of duplicates which I'll then have to delete.
Is there a (relatively) straightforward way I can re-initiate iTunes into find ALL of the music on my WD drive and get it to stick it where it wants to stick it (if you'll pardon the terminology)
Many thanks!

Hi Atticus,
The problem is not that iTunes doesn't "see" the music; the problem is that iTunes doesn't "look" for music until manually prompted to do so.
The best approach would be exactly what you suggest, which is to use the Add Folder to Library function, or the simpler (but perfectly equivalent) approach of dragging the folder into the open iTunes Music window.
iTunes has certain built-in safeguards to reduce the creation of duplicates, which are not perfect but will certainly help. Start with a few folders and you will see how it behaves, and then you can do all the rest.
whereas my girlfriend's a-Ha albums are already smugly sitting in the iTunes library
That must be quite eye-opening for people who think they only did one song. ;-)

Can I put ALL my applications into one RAC database

Dear all,
Is it possible to share all of my workloads between a single RAC database or would it be better to run more than one RAC database on the the same cluster if they have very different characteristics (e.g. OLTP vs DSS or sensitive vs non-sensitive data). Oracle seem to imply that they have cut down their number of physical databases drastically but have they been able to do that because the workload is very homongenous, i.e all ERP stuff? Should it be possible to accommodate all workloads by having different instance parameters or does that defeat the object of being able to fail over a service from one instance to another?
Views/experiences please.

Hi, generally it is possible to put everything into one RAC database, especially if they share the same data. So you do not have to transport data from one database into the other.
Furthermore the resource allocation can perfectly be addressed with the resource manager of the database together with services. The workload has not to be homogenous.
However it might make sense to connect the DSS users to different nodes in the cluster than the OLTP users (via. services).
On the other hand there might be non technical issues which would make seperate databases more attractive. Like Patching could mean downtime of all applications. Like certifications of software, which would not allow you to upgrade your database, like ERP needs 10.2.0.2 while DSS would be better off with 11g) and so on.
There is really no right or wrong.
Still to get the most of the benefits out of a cluster the fewer databases you have.

HT2518 After using Migrate Assistant, I made several accounts for every attempt to migrate files from PC to Mac. How can I put all accounts together into one? How can I transfer the files from the other accounts to my primary account?

Okay, so I did the entire Migrate Assistant process to transfer all my files and what not to my MacBook. Problem is that I did it on seperate occasions and now I have several accounts.
How can I transfer my files from the other accounts to my primary account and delete the other accounts?

Problem is that I did it on seperate occasions and now I have several accounts.
If you had read carefully, Migration Assistant asks what you want to do in this event. That would have precluded the redundancy.
Part of the fundamental design of OS X is to separate user accounts so that one user can't interfere with another. It's not possible to directly merge an account with another, but you can copy whatever you need to the Shared folder - it is in your Users folder.
Log in to one account, prefereably a smaller one, and drag the files and folders into Shared. Log out, log into the account you want to be "primary" and drag the files from Shared into their appropriate locations. When you have copied everything you need delete the redundant account.
Do this for each of them.
Or, you can just run Migration Assistant again and follow the prompts that address the situation you described. It involves creating a secondary, temporary account from which you can administer the transfer. When it is complete you delete the temporary account(s).

How do i put all my music on my new computer from my old computer

Hello people
I really cant figure out how to transfer my music. Theres got a better solution than burning it on to cds and then transfering that way! Could someone please help me i am a complete idiot when it come to technology.
thank you
maryd

Well your mac will have firewire but your dell may not have. Firewire isnt standard on all pcs.
If your pc has wireless lan then you could just try to share your music folder on your PC by right-clicking, going to sharing tab and turing it on for that folder. Next just see if you can wirelessly connect to your pc from your mac by clicking on the Go Menu in finder then Connect to Server and click browse.
Depending on how you have your pc setup your may see it on your mac right away then again you might need to change some network settings.
If you dont have wireless in your pc but do have a wired network port then you could buy a cross over network cable and connect the two machines with that and repeat the Connect to Server routine. If this doesnt work you could try installing Bonjour from the apple support area onto your pc as this is supposed to aid connectivity between mac and pc. I think its mainly for networking printers etc but may help. I have it on my pc and connected instantly to it at the first attemp with my macbook.
Of course, you could just burn a load of cds with your music on as im guessing that will sound a lot easier after reading all of the above! :P

How can I combine all of my music into one folder for itunes

I have a PC running windows XP I have just bought a IPad 3 and I am trying to consolidate all my music into one folder on one drive so that the sync does not have a problem finding many tracks every time I connect my IPad please can anyone help.
Kind Regards
Derek

Hi Derek. Do you know where your active iTunes library is? If not download & run the script iTunesInfo which should output something like this:
I'm interested in the values of the first four lines. If needed you can hide your username with <User> if it's in there. Also worth checking that media folder location given by the script agrees with Edit > Preferences > Advanced. If not, let me know.
Which of your drives has the most free space? Ideally you should move your current library to that drive as X:\iTunes (when X: is the drive letter) and then consolidate all your existing content that wasn't inside the current iTunes Media folder. I can descibe what to do on a generic basis but with the details I can produce a step-by-step guide that will be easier to follow.
tt2

How do i get all my music in one library file?

My entire iTunes library is on an external hard drive "A". Due to my Powermac G5 dying, I had to set up iTunes on my Macbook Pro. I used Senuti to transfer all my music and content from my iPod to a different external drive I will call "B". Once that was set up, I erased and synced my iPod again. Everything is fine with the iPod and my Apple TV. In the iTunes preferences, I clicked Advanced and changed where I wanted my library to reside. I selected the new location which is drive "B".
My question now is that when I click on my iTunes Music folder, I am only showing 269 items which is a mixture of music and video content. I have well over 1,300 songs not to mention 87 music videos and 60 podcast videos. So when I did a search to see where a lot of my songs were located, I was surprised that it was showing the songs were being housed on external drive "A" even though I set it up that I want drive "B" to be where my library file should be. So as a test, I disconnected drive "A" then opened iTunes and tried to play a certain song and it said it couldn't play the song because the original file could not be found. When I reconnected the drive, it played just fine.
So what do I need to do to get all my music on one hard drive, for me that would be drive "B"? Do I need to follow the steps in the article below to make that happen? I have no problem with having a back up of my library, I just want all my music in one place in the location I have specified and keep the back up on the other drive so I won't have to keep it connected to the computer.
Thanks
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449?viewlocale=en_US

Nevermind...I did what it said to do in the article and it worked!

Database files into a single disk or multiple disk ?

Hi All,
I want to install oracle database 11gR2 in to database server. This database server has three internal disk so I plan to put DBF,redo and ctl file in to different disk..
but this is the optimal configuration by putting all the Database files (DBF,redo and ctl) into a differnt differnt disk or put all the files into a single disk with differnt partition? I want to minimize the disk I/O.
Thanks in advance.

Hi;
It depends what you expect from your system. You can put into a differnt differnt disk or put all the files into a single disk with differnt partition. If you put all in one partition its more managable, but It also bad for HA.
You need to check your priorty and you need to decide what you have to do
Regard
Helios

SQL*Loader - How to combine Flat File 3 columns and put into one single column

Receive a flat file delimited by comma. Want to combine Flat File last 3 columns and put into one single column(Table).
e.g.
Flat File
100,239,30,20,30
While inserting into table want to combine last 3 columns and insert into invoice number column.
302030

It is not possible to combine the last 3 columns as those columns are seperated by commas and in the SQL Loader control file you must ve specified COMMA as an delimiter. So u better have all the columns in the table plus add one more column which holds the concatenation of the 3 columns.
Vijay

I recently sync one song to my friends iphone 4 and it erased all the music and only put that one song. I tried backing it up but it didnt help. How do I put all previous music back on the iphone?

I recently sync one song to my friends iphone 4 and it erased all the music and only put that one song. I tried backing it up but it didnt help. How do I put all previous music back on the iphone?

Re- sync the phone with the computer it was originally synced with.

I want to put all my music onto an external hard drive. But I can't get it to put music on my itunes. The music list is completely empty and so is my IPOD.

I want to put all my music onto an external hard drive. But I can't get it to put music on my itunes. The music list is completely empty and so is my IPOD. How do I do this? I have a PC with Windows.

You say the music is not on the external HD, the music list (iTunes?) is empty, and it is not on the iPOd. Then where is the music you want to move to the external HD?
You can redownlaod iTunes purchases by:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store

HT1349 i just got my second ipad, i want to put all the music from my 1st one straight to my second, how do i do that?

i just got my second ipad, i want to put all the music from my 1st one straight to my second, how do i do that?

Set you 2nd iPad from your 1st iPad. If you have your music in your iTunes library, it's easier as you can set it up as a new device and then go to music>sync all music.
Once you set up you 2nd iPad from your 1st one, if you want do not want the other setting to be synced, turn it off. For example, in apps, uncheck everything and you can get rid of them.

Is there any way to put all the music FROM my iPod back onto my computer? My school tech person not only wiped out my iTunes, the wiped out my back-up hard drive.

Is there any way to put all the music FROM my iPod back onto my computer? My school tech person not only wiped out my iTunes, the wiped out my back-up hard drive.

Hello cgbuehling
You can, but only the purchases that were made from the iTunes Store. Other content that was imported from a CD or other sources will not transfer over.
iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iOS device or iPod to a computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1848
Regards,
-Norm G.

Reformatting a partitioned drive back into a single drive....need help!

Hi all,
I'm wanting to reformat the 60 gig hard drive on my Power book (10.3.9)
back into a single drive. A friend installed and partitioned this 60 gig a few years ago and the first portion is only six gigs and contains the OS.Apps and other guts. I constantly run into problems of running out of space on that drive. What I would like to do is listed below. I'm hoping someone can point me to a tutorial or other concise written directions for how to accomplish this. I'm looking for some fairly concise steps as doing this type of work is not my strength and I don't want to mess it up.
1) Back up data from all three partitioned drives on to a single external drive of some sort.
2) Reformat the 60 gig back onto a single drive.
3) Successfully reinstall all data back on to the 60 gig and have it function as
exactly as before.
Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Vance

Hi, wvd. If the data on your three partitions now totals about 50 GB as your post indicates, then after it has all been copied back onto the repartitioned, single-volume hard drive (whose formatted capacity is about 56.8 GB) there will be about 6-7 GB of free space available on that drive. That is only 1-2 GB more than the bare minimum amount of free space that should be maintained on the drive at all times. So if you anticipate a continuing accumulation of additional data in the future, you will very soon run out of space that can prudently be used, and not long after that you will begin to risk unreliable operation of your computer and the possible corruption or loss of data due to insufficient and dwindling free space on the drive.
Therefore, it would probably be a better idea to replace the present drive with a larger one than to repartition and reuse the present drive, unless there is a significant amount of data on it now that you could conveniently store somewhere else instead. In fact if you replace the current drive with a larger one and put the old one into an external FireWire enclosure, that drive can become a secondary data storage location for data that doesn't need to be kept on your new primary drive, or it can be used to back up some or all of the data on the primary drive.

Just purchased a ipod and trying to import my music collection. When I have imported some artist have duets with others and those are going in seperate folders not the same as the artist. How can I put all the music in the same folder

have alot of music to import and some of the artist are not in the same folder. like elton john who has duets with others. is there anyway to put all the music in same folder and not have several folders for same artist

If you right click on a son in iTunes and click Get Info. Under the Sorting tab iyo can change how the songs is sorted in iTunes
Tips for using song and CD info to organize your music
You can edit information in the Info window to make it easier to find and sort items in your library. For example, you can:
Group individual movements on a classical CD into one work by indicating the name of the work (for example, “Piano concerto in A Minor, Op. 54”) in the Grouping field.
Group songs that are part of a compilation together in your library by clicking Details and selecting the checkbox next to “Album is a compilation of songs by various artists”.
Identify the individual artists on a tribute album in the Artist field, and type “various” in the Album Artist field.
Create your own genre category by clicking Details and typing the category in the Genre field.
Change the order in which tracks on a CD play by changing the numbers in the Track fields.
Create a Smart Playlist that includes only songs that are just the right speed for your workout by typing the number of beats per minute in the BPM field. For instructions, see Create a Smart Playlist.
Identify a movie as a music video (click the Options button, and choose Music Video from the Media Kind pop-up menu).
Identify an item that you imported from a CD as an audiobook, so it appears under Audiobooks instead of Music (click the Options button and choose Audiobook from the Media Kind pop-up menu). If you do this, iTunes also remembers your place in the audiobook.
Enter custom sorting criteria for an item. Select the item, choose File > Get Info, click Sorting, and enter the custom text.
Does the non-syncing songs play in iTunes on the computer?
is there anything different about the songs that do sync and those that do not? Like where they cam from? The format (Get Info>under the File tab).

Putting ALL my music into one single drive, from multiple drives & machines

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