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[Arcadian]

I've just changed the drive letter where all my music files are located. I went into Media Center Options > Library & Folders > Configure Auto Import... and changed the paths for the various auto-import folders to the new paths. 'Update for external changes' is enabled and 'Fix broken links' is set to Yes. Media Center has scanned the new location and added all the album tracks from the new location as duplicates. I've tried restarting media center and Windows but nothing seems to get the old tracks removed.

What's gone wrong here? Can anyone give me some tips on how to fix this without a full library rebuild? It would take me ages to setup all the views again.

[wer]

I'm sorry to have to tell you, but you've shot yourself in the foot.

Is the old drive letter (or unc path) still available? If not my guess is that you have fix broken links=yes (protect files on missing drives).

It's the protect part that left the old references in the database when you started doing what you did. You could turn that option to just yes, and the remove the old references, but that would just finish the job of shooting yourself that you started, by which you'll lose your playlists and a lot of other things.

A better option would be to abandon this course you're on, restore a library backup from before you started moving things around, and post asking for help how to move all your media files.

That question has been asked dozens of times before, so you could also google jriver moving files, and then you would learn about using the Rename, Move and Copy Files tool. (RMCF). You might be able to fix things with the update database option in RMCF, but it's hard to tell how much damage you've done already.

I hope you have a good library backup.

[Arcadian]

I have library backups. I'll restore and try again. I don't see why, given that the setting is 'Fix broken links: Yes' (protect files on missing drives is NOT enabled), media center can't just take a look at the new auto-import folder paths and dump the library references to files that have paths that don't match!? Why's that such an unreasonable expectation? 

[wer]

Well, I'm just a user, just like you, so I can't answer why questions in terms of developer motivations.

But I can tell it it doesn't work that way.  MC makes some attempts to correct for user actions like yours, but they're only effective up to a point.

I can also tell you that MC is a database.  If you understood more about databases, you would realize that using the OS to move around files that are referenced in a database, without going through the proper procedures to make the database software aware of those changes, will cause problems. It's like that in all databases, big or small, for several technical reasons. So yes, your expectation is unreasonable. But it's ok, a lot of people go through the same thing. There's a learning curve.

So instead of just "trying again" in terms of doing the same thing, I suggest you use the RMCF tool next time, as I mentioned.

You should base your procedure around the following:

1. Put the drive letter back the way it was.
2. Restore the library from before your actions.
3. Set Fix Broken Links=NO, Disable auto import, and make sure it is not configured to run in the background.
4. Make another library backup. Observe the all is as it should be in MC.
5. Now you have two options:
       a)either use RMFC to move the files (if you can have both drive letters active at once)
or  b) change the drive letter, do whatever else you want to do to move and rearrange your files, and then use RMCF with the "Update database to point to new location" option selected in the dropdown.

Again, read the wiki article you find by googling "jriver moving files" to learn how to use the tool.

After you're all done with your moves, you can re-enable and reconfigure auto-import if you want. Using Auto Import (especially allowing it to run in the background) should only be used if you know exactly what you are doing. I recommend Fix Broken Links always be set to NO.

Good luck.

[Arcadian]

Thanks for the detailed help. I'll give it a go.