Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mGee]

OK, I've been trying to find a way to move my large music collection to another drive and still retain all my playcounts, keywords and ratings.

Does anybody have a clue on how I can do this.

I know I can choose to move each album 1 by 1 within MC, but the way I'd like to handle this, since my collection contains 30,000 files:

1) Move all the files to the new drive, using explorer
2) Have MC find the files in the new location, retaining the information.

Thanks in advance to whoever has an answer.

[Monkeyboy]

This seems to be a common thing in the forum.
Simply move the files onto the other drive, then do a search and replace on "filename (path)"

e.g find "c:\my music"
replace "d:\my music"

Hope this helps
Rich

[mGee]

Thanks for the reply

There is a search and replace function in MC?

How would I do that?

I originally tried doing a search and replace by opening a copy of the MC database and then tried to switch to that copy in MC to see if that would work, but it crashed MC9.

[mGee]

ok I think I know now..... I use the library tool "find and replace" .... correct?

[Monkeyboy]

thats the one, just choose from the list what you want it to apply to, in your case, filename (path).
Rich

[mGee]

Rich...thanks for your help

This works beautifully.

[drb]

OF NOTE,
This is what I tried to tell MC admin. Just to have collection of all the commonly/frequently asked FAQ from FORUM in a separate place in an organized way. These kind of questions is not answered in HELP section and difficult to quickly get an answer to.

when i joined MC group, I too posted the same question and got answered.

Hope admin takes a note of this.

If not, I can offer my time to colllect info.

drb

[JimH]

There is Help in the program.  

The problems with both FAQ's and Help are:

a.  There are a lot of topics.
b.  Often people don't read them.

Another solution is for the user to take a quick look at every option in the program so they know what is available.  This would take some time initially but it would save time overall.

[mGee]

I checked the FAQ as well as the HELP file as well as searched the forum. Nothing turned up.

[JimH]

From the Help file:

Move, Copy or Delete Disk Files
This section contains information on how to move, copy or delete files from on your computer. It is always preferable to manage your disk files from within the program, so that the links between the actual files and the information about those files (playlists, statistics) remain intact.

[mGee]

That is not at all what I had to do to move a whole collection of files.

For one thing, the move/copy function only allows you to move to one folder...and you cannot create new folders within the move/copy window.

So no this HELP is not at all helpful for moving a whole collection. Rich's above tip did help me...and is the only way to handle this.

[paulr]

Do what I just did with my new drive...

"Rename Files from Properties", change the base path to the new drive, and walk away. Works perfectly.  Creates all the new directories for you and deletes empty ones.

The only things that don't get moved are non-library files that you saved in the directories - e.g. ripping logs.

I did need use KingSparta's Replace Master to change the paths on some cover art, but that was it.

[Alex B]

This seems to be a common thing in the forum.

There was a discussion about two weeks ago:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=20514

In some cases it is possible to change the drive letters. Then everything is preserved without making changes to the MC library.

[mGee]

Rich...thanks for your help..... everything went smoothly.

[Monkeyboy]

No problem mGee glad it worked out ok.

Rich

[modelmaker]

When I installed a fresh MC on my new computer, I aslo copied my 15000mp3 library to a new hard drive. I copied all the 'old' data files and folders to the new installation, then renamed the new library HD (data only) to the old name, restarted my computer and only lost 80 album cover links in the whole process. I'll admit I was praying quietly the whole time, but in the end  -no worries!

[park]

I still dont think that the current system for redirecting your library is very user friendly though.

I'd like to see a dialogue box (like in Adobe premiere) which appears when it cant find a file in the library. You then point it to where the file is (preseumably the new drive) and it looks in that folder (and subfolders) for all subsequent files. And of course you can tell it to skip (leaving the missing files with an x over them) if you dont want it to look.

This would be very user friendly and a great feature. I've lost files both times I've tried "find and replace" recently.

I'd also like to see an optional "synch" feature like itunes. I know not everyone wants this, but I would feel more secure knowing that MC was constantly keeping the tag info in the files up to date and named properly etc.