SOS consolidating library

Question

i recently moved my itunes library, manually from the itunes folder onto a new hd, just for backup. then, i decided to make the backup my new library to free up space on my other drive, so i consolidated my library to that new location. the previous location shows the librarys size at 150gb, when copied manually to the new location, that folder showed 150gb, the itunes interface(still referencing original location of itunes library) showed the library contained 150gb. following consolidation to the backup location, the new itunes folder (backup location) size is now 300gb, ironically almost exactly double of the librarys previous content. i immediately thought that consolidating had a doubling of file effect, so i started to manually compare the old itunes folder contents with new, they appear to be pretty consistent with just a skim. so, since itunes was now referencing the new itunes folder that contained 300gb, i thought the interface would reflect that., not the case., itunes, referencing the 300gb itunes folder shows 150gb of media. i went back to the original location of the itunes folder thinking i could wipe the backup and rather than manually copy again, i would only make a new folder and consolidate to that and that would probably reduce the space occupied back to the 150gb of space, but since consolidation the itunes library data has changed and when i try to use the old location it tells me that there is no library data associated with that folder..... so, im kind of stuck. the consolidated library works fine, kept all my playlists ratings etc., but now its just eating up double the space., any and all ideas are welcome. sorry so wordy.

Answer 1

what i did is consolidated my library, which moves all music files regardless of location to a new location and creates the necessary files for itunes to move file locations and still keep your playlists, settings etc but to refernece the music in the new location, the library file etc. so what i had to do to get my stuff right again was this
open itunes, hold option> choose library
-navigate to the itunes folder in your home folder rather than the new location you created, when i did this i was able to get back my original itunes library, complete with my playlists, settings etc. hope fully this will work for you as well., if it does this is what i would do next.
get rid of the new library, make a folder of where you will keep all your new itunes files wherever you want, the location obviously has to have the space to handle all of your audio files.
click advanced>consolidate library, navigate to your newly created folder
-this process will copy all music files from different locations to your new location, and update itunes on the change of location but still keeping all of your playlists etc., once this is done make sure that everything is linking to your new location correctly, once this is confirmed you can delete all of the original files to free up that hd space.
to isolate duplicate files, make sure where you want to look is correctly highlighted (music, movies, podcasts etc.)
click view> show duplicates
-delete what you want, make sure to remove files from the hard drive not just from itunes when prompted. use this sparingly and with caution for obvious reasons.