My input, for what it's worth...
Requirements for this to even be an option:
- You have lots of extra room on a hard drive. Just in case.
- Media Center is reporting everything accurately. That is, no duplicate songs are being reported by MC9. Your media library is up-to-snuff, but your files themselves are in disarray.
- Your media library's data accurately reflects your music's data. That is, your artists, albums, names, and so on are accurate.
- Your computer is reasonably fast and you have the time, temperament, and/or courage to undertake what I'm going to suggest.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, I suggest
using MC to put all of your good media in a temporary location. Once everything that's important is safely out of the danger zone, start deleting things. Then, you can use MC to put everything where you want it. So, step by step, here's what I suggest:
- Step 1: Select your temp space -- For the purposes of this tirade, let's say that you have a LOT of empty space on your P: drive. So, you decide to make a folder in it called "musictemp". Great choice. Remember that folder for the later steps.
- Step 2: Select 'em all! -- Close everything. Open up MC9, expand your media library and click on the "Audio" node. Now, select everyting in the lower-right pane. The goal is to select every single song in your library at the same time. (I think the easiest way to do this is to select one song and then press CTRL-A)
- Step 3: Move 'em! -- Now, right-click in your selection, choose Library Tools > Rename Files From Properties.... When the box pops up, make it look like this. When you click OK, you will have ample time to go take a walk while MC processes all of these files.
- Step 4: Seek and destroy! -- After MC is done "renaming" your files, all of your good songs that you have entered into MC9 will be in P:\musictemp, safely out of the "line of fire" for what's to come next. Crack a grin, fire up Windows Explorer, and start deleting the files that have been left over, secure in the knowledge that MC9 doesn't even know they're there, and since MC9 doesn't know about them, and you only use MC9 for your music, they're safe to delete. Use your best judgement, of course.
Now that all that ugliness is over, you can repeat steps 2 and 3 to re-move all of your good songs to wherever you want. On my P4 1.8 machine at home, it took MC9 less than 2 minutes to move about 3000 songs in this fashion, it's great!
(I'm a pretty smart guy, but I'd wait until someone else backs this statement up to go do it. Hehe!)