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Author Topic: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?  (Read 1697 times)

Wayne C

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I am attempting to organise my library onto a new 4tb Hard Disc,  which I transferred from itunes to J river a few days ago, and am finding this a very difficult task being new to the program. if I can explain what im trying to do please, and if someone could offer any help or a walk through with pictures that would make my day!.
my library is was organised by itunes in Artist order for example Abba - ZZ Top and everything in between, this library was on a server and was spread over four 1tb drives with for as follows

Artists A - G on 1tb drive
Artists H - N on another 1tb Drive
Artists O - V on the third 1tb Drive and finally
Artists W - Z on the forth Drive.

All is ok when it comes to actual full albums recorded by an artist as these albums are stored as one would expect in the folder dedicated to the artist in question, but when it comes to compilation or various artis albums i am seeing problems when I look at J Rivers interface for example -

if a compilation has artists included which span the alphabet the album would be split up across the four drives?.

I am attempting to copy all the material across to an independant foidth drive in artist / album folders and have all the compilations in a seperate folder.  but I am finding this a very difficult task as im having to actually copy each comipilation one at a time, as they are mostly spread across all four of the donor drives.

Could anyone please offer some help with this as i spent 10 hours yesterday doing this one by one and only managed to do 96 artists out of 2,000 plus!!!.
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Wayne C

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2013, 02:41:10 am »

i have taken a screen shot of one of the problem albums to assist in any help I may be offered thanks. As you can see in the final filename section the album tracks are spaced out over the four donor drives, sadly this is the same for around 600 of my compilation albums.


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InflatableMouse

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #2 on: October 26, 2013, 04:14:35 am »

In which field is the Artist Name?

They should be in [Artist] and [Album Artist] should be empty. This way, [Album Artist (auto)] is automatically set to (Multiple Artists). In the rename/move/copy dialog you can tick "Use (Multiple Artists) for [Artist] on multi-artist albums". Your folders will then include \(Multiple Artists)\[Album]\... and keep tracks for multi-artist albums together.
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InflatableMouse

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #3 on: October 26, 2013, 04:17:06 am »

I should add that if the files are currently NOT in the same folder, MC's detection of multi-artist albums doesn't work very well. In that case, you need to select these albums and type in "(Multiple Artists)" manually. After that, expressions work fine again.
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knuta

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #4 on: October 26, 2013, 05:01:40 am »

This shouldn't be too hard with the "Rename, Move,& Copy Files..." dialog.

It looks like you've got "Various Artist" tagged correctly under "Album Artist" judging from the screenshot.

What I want you to try is this:

1. Do a search for "[Album Artist]=[Various Artists]" without the quotation marks.
2. Select all the results and right click them and go to "Library Tools">"Rename, Move,& Copy Files..."
3. Select "Rename (moves files if directory changes)" in the drop down menu.
4. Activate the "Directories" check box. Leave "Filename" and "Find & Replace" unchecked.
5. Under "Base Path:" put the folder where you want all the compilation albums to end up.
6. Under "Rule:" put "[Album Artist]\[Album]" without the quotation marks.
7. Check the Preview window carefully to see if everything looks like you want it to end up!
8. Press the "OK" button and let it do its magic and hopefully you will end up with a folder structure you can use for your compilations.

:-)
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Wayne C

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #5 on: October 26, 2013, 07:25:12 am »

I should add that if the files are currently NOT in the same folder, MC's detection of multi-artist albums doesn't work very well. In that case, you need to select these albums and type in "(Multiple Artists)" manually. After that, expressions work fine again.

Most but not all of the compilation albums are in different folders , ie, the albums are split into the folders across all four drives unfortunately , I think this occurred when i originally imported the files into itunes i forgot to click the "part of a compilation" tag in Itunes Prefs thanks.
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Wayne C

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2013, 07:34:54 am »

This shouldn't be too hard with the "Rename, Move,& Copy Files..." dialog.

It looks like you've got "Various Artist" tagged correctly under "Album Artist" judging from the screenshot.

What I want you to try is this:

1. Do a search for "[Album Artist]=[Various Artists]" without the quotation marks.

:-)

I typed (Album Artist)=(Various Artists) in the search bar and unfortunately this came up with no results at all??? , thanks in the meantime for your help on this.
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knuta

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #7 on: October 26, 2013, 09:11:08 am »

I typed (Album Artist)=(Various Artists) in the search bar and unfortunately this came up with no results at all??? , thanks in the meantime for your help on this.

Copy what I wrote.

It has to be the [ ] characters, not ( ).

My instructions must be followed precisely for it to work.
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Wayne C

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Re: Library Migration from multiple drives to a 4tb Drive Question please?
« Reply #8 on: October 28, 2013, 12:30:14 pm »

Thanks in advance managed to figure it out in a way which a.though time consuming managed to sort it out in 48 hours of copying , basically i used the album/artist method and alternated that with artist on the copy area , did take a long time but managed to complete the task.

I would live to figure out why album art isnt being automatically attached in the files as a tag? Though, i clicked the checkbox to store it in the tag, butwhen i tried to import thesame file into itunes again as a trial the album artwork isnt there?, any advice please on how to automatically attach or embed artwork, as i say i have clicked the embed option in settings.

Thanks
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