Duplicate songs!

[Randy Cornhole]

Can anyone help me? I run itunes on my laptop at home and keep all my songs on an external hard drive which I disconnect to take to a radio station to use for my show. For some strange reason I get loads of duplicate songs appearing in my music folders (in the external hard drive)and sometimes the occasional song will leap into another folder? Its driving me crazy because sometimes I cant find a song because the file path has changed!!!
Is it because I'm dragging and dropping songs? would I be better copying and pasting them? As I have some 5000 songs its getting a real headache.
Any ideas would be greatfuly recieved.

[buksida]

Yep, drag and drop will invariably cause those problems.

Best to copy what you want, space permitting.

[Guess]

Your strategy is crap. An easy way for non technical persons that kills two birds with one stone is:

Keep all you music on you hard drive on you PC which becomes the master. Put them all on your data drive under a specifically assigned directory name. My Music is naff because it appears all over the place and can lead to problems. Just call it MusicFiles and it should be directly off root.

You then create an identical file off the root of your external drive. Create a shortcut on your desktop that points to the external drive. The shortcut will always let you know if the drive is connected or not.

Then every time you feel the external file needs updating just click on you PC's MusicFiles directory and drag it to the shortcut for the external drive on your harddisk. You will be told that the file already exists do you wish to overwrite. Say yes to all and then go to bed. In the morning you will have an exact replica of you music directory.

In your case the only answer is to first tidy up your PC hard drive manually and ensure that everything you have is there. It is a long winded process but should only need to be done once. If you had done it properly in the first place it wouldn't need to be done at all.

So the two birds are portability and backup simply.

If you do not have enough space on your laptop drive for all your music you need to get hold of a second USB or Firewire external IDE disk. Not a bad idea and only about 3000 naht for 200GB nowadays and much cheaper in Malaysia or Singapore if you know anybody going there.

Anyway your question has given me an idea that I will speak to Matt about when I see him.

[Pagey]

I get that problem with PCDJ software that I use for dj'ing at clubs.

[Randy Cornhole]

Thank your eloquent reply mr guess, i'm so sorry i'm not a computer expert maby I should have taken a computer course before asking for help on an advice forum. Have you ever thought of working for the united nations? with your bedside manner you should do well.

[Terry]

Randy

Guess's address IS in a Rotweiler kennel after all.

Might be that causing the nice mannerism

[Randy Cornhole]

Think you'r right Terry. Don't know why he is being so agressive? I only asked a question. I'd rather not have his advice and avoid the sniping comments!

[Guess]

Think you'r right Terry. Don't know why he is being so agressive? I only asked a question. I'd rather not have his advice and avoid the sniping comments!

I spent about ten minutes writing that reply to you. OK I made the assumption that you were non technical. Nothing wrong with that and you later admiited that was the case. I have now re-read the post and apart the opening four words which could have been somewhat more tactful if I had realised you were totally devoid of humour and I had had more time to spare.

I certainly did not mean to insult anybody and gave you a sensible answer to a real question based on 24 years of experience with IT particularly Microsoft.

I will not make that mistake again.

I am from an upbringing and background that is used to saying thank you to someone who has given me free advice, not a load of abuse.

For someone who has posted that he will eat his own shit I find it strange that you should respond in such a wierd matter. Looks like the Hua Hin grapevine was right for once.

BTW after a third reading and consultation of three dictionaries I still cannot see where the aggressiveness comes from. I think you must be reading something else or under the influence of some kind of substance.

[JD]

The Hua Hin ‘Grapevine’ ain’t worth a wank. It’s only supported by them with something to gain, with misleading crap that the unintelligent will always rise too.

Suggest a days fishing with Terry to show you how the ‘Guppys’ will always rise to such (spam) shit.

[JD]

Hey Randy, I use iTunes for all my music storage, presentation and playback. (Mac not PC, so maybe not quite the same).

Under the Edit in iTunes you will see a section titled header ‘show duplicate songs’ this allows you to see what titles are duplicated, which versions by different bands or even the same bands, but live or studio. Just randomely go through the duplicates and delete the offending ones. If you do this after every drag and drop you’ll be OK. Will also only take a few minutes to do after every download session.

[JD]

Sorry Guess, I just re-read what I posted. Don’t mean to sound hard on you, but I thought you were one of the wise ones who never posted personal crap about an answer that might have wound you up.

I think you’re one of the funniest guys on this forum, you make me LOL many times whenever I log in. Keep the good sense of humour, please. You’re lateral humour is especially appreciated by this poster, but maybe not understood by some.

[Guess]

JD,

Thank you for the support and you detected correctly that I was a little wound up when I replied to the post. The reference to the grapevine was, (if you excuse the reference to fruit again), just sour grapes. I fully agree with that one as I think you know. I am glad that you do appreciate the lateral humour as I think most do although people who are unfamiliar with my writing may misunderastand and get offended. That has happend a couple of time and I always PM the person and appplogise and explain what I was really saying. In this case though there was no humour lateral or otherwise.

What I wrote was a response to a post which was in turn a response to an accurate and tried and tested answer to a straight forward question that described a problem that many people have encountered including myself. The answer was suitatable for anybody irrespective of their knowledge of the subject. I am in no way trying to belittle anybody because they are not IT experts. I was actually backing up what Buksi had already stated with a little more substance with the idea of getting this guy's problem solved. What I got back was:

Thank your eloquent reply mr guess, i'm so sorry i'm not a computer expert maby I should have taken a computer course before asking for help on an advice forum. Have you ever thought of working for the united nations? with your bedside manner you should do well.

Which I guess was an attempt at sarcasm but fell on stoney gropund with me and was dismissed, followed by some harmless banter from Terry and then followed by:

Think you'r right Terry. Don't know why he is being so agressive? I only asked a question. I'd rather not have his advice and avoid the sniping comments!

Having read the post again now for about the tenth time I still do not see anything that could possibly be taken as being agressive as I understand the meaning of the word.

Perhaps Randy would like to state exactly what he meant by sniping and "being agressive" comments when he sobers up.

This whole dialogue is surreal. It is like he is reading something completely different from what I have written or he has a babel fish virus installed on his PC. It is also not consistent with what I have seen him write before of a fairly long period which makes it even more surreal.

Maybe some flashback from the heady acid Zappa and Floyd days.

[Big Boy]

Guess,

For what its worth, I'll give you my 2 penneth. As you, apart from the first 4 words, which could have been better phrased, I believe you gave genuine assistance to somebody in need.

I for one would would have ignored the humour at the beginning (we all get the humour bit wrong from time to time) and would have been grateful for the offer of assistance.

[Terry]

The problem with forums is that very often the written word can be taken as offensive, when in fact it was meant in jest or banter.

You cannot replace the experience of talking face to face with the written word in cyberspace

[Guess]

Thanks guys,

I think someone might have taken the odd Purple Haze too many in the sixties.

Perhaps now we can all get back to the important things in life like football and fishing.

Isn't it funny that so many things we like begin with F.