Help! Screwed up big time

[rom661]

I have been using a Western Data external drive and moving a number of things around. I bought a new Iomega because it is quieter for local placement. This morning I ran out of space on the Western Data Mybook at approximately 50% of its storage capacity. When I looked at the contents of the drive by going into each album, I found there was two of each song, which explains my problems. The Iomega had all of the music on it, without being doubled. I looked at the files on the Iomega to confirm they were there, but didn't play any (big mistake). I thought moved everything on the MyBook to the trash and deleted it. I made the Iomega my destination and tried to play something. Every song has an exclamation point beside it and it tells me that it can't find the file. I can manually go in and find it and the exclamation point goes away and it will play. I have over 5,000 songs in there. Kind of a problem since I have a job and all that. I would do this manually rather than re-rip them all because of the wear and tear on the drive. Anyone have a better solution? Please.?

 

I am apparently doing more than one thing wrong, in view of the doubling of files and losing the location. I did use the consolidate command but there was another question I hadn't seen before which asked something to the effect of wanting to name all the entries or something like that.

 

Thanks

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey Rick - Don't worry too much, iTunes is very forgiving and makes it easy to get out of jams. Have you made any progress or found any new problems? I just want to make sure I help in the most efficient way and don't type out a page of notes for a problem you've solved. I should be around here for a while, as usual. Let me know where you're at with this problem.

 

[rom661]

Hey Chris

 

I'm out of the house until this evening. I was thinking I could set up the MyBook again, empty now, tell iTunes it is my library drive, consolidate, and see if that correlates everything. Does that make sense?

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

If I understand the situation correctly that should work fine.

 

[Nels Ferre]

Hi,

 

This happened to me when I did a backup from one drive to another. Here is the fix, at least with iTunes for Windows. I don't "speak" Mac, at least not yet.

 

1. Point iTunes to the drive where your files are.

 

2. Close iTunes

 

3. If you have iTunes Library files on the external hard drive, copy them one at a time. Open the iTunes folder on your C drive and paste the file you have copied from your external drive. The new files should be smaller than the files they are replacing. I had two files I had to copy/paste.

 

4. Launch iTunes. All should work properly.

 

I hope this helps. It happened to me with 10,600 songs that suddenly became 21,200 songs, so I feel your pain.

 

Nels

 

 

 

[rom661]

Unfortunately it didn't work. Only a small # of the songs were copied to the MyBook drive and the Iomega still has about 75% of the songs that don't know where their files are. I can be done by hand but....

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

no need to do anything manually / by hand.

 

Can you give me a quick run down of the situation like where the music is and where you want it? real brief.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Rick ended up creating a new library file and using the add to library function to add the Iomega music folder to the library. I believe this worked for him.

 

[rom661]

Yes, it worked. Thanks again, Chris. I now have the Iomega with all of my music on it, connected to the Mac mini via Firewire. The MacBook drive is connected via USB and will be used for backup. Perhaps the info is listed somewhere here, but can you help with the correct procedure for backup?

 

Thanks again.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Surely, I'll probably email you something easy and then write a complete how to article with a few different methods.

 

[sgbaird]

I learned some time ago that the "Add to Library" command can cure a host of ills.

 

In fact, if you decide to have your music library accessible from more than one computer, just change your preference on the new/other computer to your external drive then click on "Add to Library" (or type command - o) and presto. BE SURE YOUR NEW COMPUTER'S LIBRARY HAS NOTHING IN IT unless you then choose Consolidate Library from the Advanced menu to bring those files into the "master." Also, if you consolidate, don't forget to move the duplicate files from the internal drive to the trash.

 

When I get around to it, I'll post some of the useful things I've learned into the thread that Chris set up for me. Soon I will be posting some preliminary thoughts on the KingRex USB DAC; for now, I'll say only that this is possibly the best $190 I've spent in the 42 years I've been fooling with audio.

 

[rom661]

Thanks for the tips. By the way, I think it was you who recommended the Iomega drive. It is what I was looking for. Much, much quieter than the Western Data My Book. I am going to convert it to a 1TB Raid 0 and connect it via USB strictly for backup. Reasonable price and almost completely quiet.

 

Rick

 

[Lord Chaos]

RAID 0, from what I've heard, isn't a good way to go for backup. RAID 0 means you're spanning data across two disks, to treat them as one. If one fails you lose everything because files are split between drives.

 

Note that I'm no RAID expert but I have researched this for my own music library. RAID 1, mirroring, is better for backups. The more complex RAID setups require more drives, but allow spanning with reliability. If you have only two drives, RAID 1 or JBOD ("just a bunch of disks") are better alternatives.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey Rick - I second LC's hesitation with RAID0. I wouldn't touch it even for a backup drive.

 

As we briefly discussed a few comments ago I said I would suggest a backup method for you. Well, I re-read my article on backups using automator and it should suit you well. Here is the link. Let me know if you have problems. I'll be happy to help.

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/47

 

[rom661]

My setup is now totally different. Before I was using one drive of the Western Data for my files and the other, mirroring it in RAID 1, for backup. Now I am using an Iomega 750Gb to store my music and reconfiguring the Western Data as a 1Gb backup - it is no longer backing itself up so I would have to lose both the Iomega and the Western Data to have an issue. I suppose I could keep it in RAID 1 and have double backup but that seems to be bordering on paranoia. Of course, as my mother says, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you...

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

This one comes down to personal choice I think. The chances are very low you would lose both copies of your data and the chances are high you have the physical CDs as backup. You could always pay a service to re-rip them if needed.