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[hertz]

Look: MJ/MC is a soft designed for computer geeks who own 20 000 files or so. If you don't belong to any of these two categories, you'd rather use some trendy skinny softs like Realshit or WMP. MJ/MC beats them all so long as your do like music and want to have everything you need to truly appreciate it.

So MJ/MC deserves a proper library manager.

Now, I've been trying to restore my library after formatting my system disk and restoring WinXP. It was a total disaster.
True, I was able to recover nearly all the data but that's only because I took care of saving everything in unorthodox ways, like copying the cover art folder to another disk, or "editing" the library to a safe place.
Precisely, when I tried to get it back from this safe place (another disk which I hadn't formatted), I couldn't find any command allowing me to do so. I had to use the backup I had made when I decided to format the system disk (what if I had to format a non-operating system disk whithout any warning?), but the data in it was like four month old!
As for the cover arts, there is simply no way to save them. True, you can always to to the "program files" folder and copy the "cover art" folder to a safe place, but how do you restore it? Since I had upgraded from MJ to MC, the files' paths point to a "Media Jukebox\Data\Covert Art" folder, which no longer exist if you install MC directly. So I had to recreate a "Media Jukebox" folder.
I have to be frank: Media Jukebox/Center is a fantastic program and it changed my life (I mean it, it really did), but the library management part of it is a disgrace. What is urgently needed is some efficient and simple tools to keep your data safe, away from the system disk, and easy to restore in case of a serious crash, or even a well-planned system restoration, which was the case.

Please, do something!

[bspachman]

I personally don't think things are quite as bad as you do, but I do see problems with data storage/managment.

1) I generally hate having user-specific information stored in the Program Files hierarchy. I know lots of apps do it, but if I have to reinstall, I do the whole thing from scratch, so remembering which things to back up and restore in the PF hierarchy AFTER reinstalling the apps from source media is a pain.

2) So to circumvent #1, I try to move anything out of the PF hierarchy that I can. Thankfully MJ allows you to have libraries in other places & lets you store cover art whereever you want. However, finding all the places to change the various paths is definitely NOT intuitive.

Anyway, I think it would be best to both store the user's files in the userspace & group the storage path prefs into a single preferences location that encompasses the current library manager, the default cover art storage, & the temp files & ripping directories. It makes me sad to say, but Microsoft has a nice idea when you look at their directory preferences in Word.

Have a nice day,
Brad

[hertz]

Actually, I tried that too, but quite strangely, once I had moved the library data back into the Program Files\MC folder, the soft still displayed some old-fashioned data (not the right view schemes, etc.)
So that can work, but the program was not designed to be used that way, and you're always left with some small problems.
So finally was able to recover my data, but they really should improve data management.
As for the "library manager", there is a command to move data files ("edit", you still have to guess a little), but I didn't find one to tell the program, after reinstallation, to look to this place. That should be easy to implement.

As for Microsoft, that's true, except when it comes to Outlook: I usually have to open it once, then delete the .pst file it created while opening, then open it again. Then it asks for the .pst file and you can tell it wher your old .pst (with all your data) is. After that, there still are some shortcuts to correct inside the program!