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[ferrarabrainpan]

I'm a happy MC24 user running Windows 10. When I set up my computer I bought two big 4TB internal drives to put all my music files on, not realizing that I am never going to fill up even one of those drives, with all my lossless and hi-res files I now own and will conceivably acquire in the future. So I'm thinking what I will do is consolidate all the music files which are now stored on three different internal drives (small folder of lossy files on C drive, lossless 16/44.1 files on G drive and all hi-res music files on H drive) onto one of those two 4TB drives (leaving the other 4TB drive free to begin storing video files on).

I have MC24 auto-import set to import from the three folders (LOSSY, LOSSLESS, HI-RES) which are on the three different drives, and now those folders will be on one drive. I want to see what precautions I should take to make this transition as smooth as possible, so as not to end up with duplicate files and broken links, etc. It seems pretty straightforward but I don't want to screw something up and have to spend hours trying to sort it out. Please tell me any tips and how I should best go about this project.

The obvious approach would seem to be to go to library tools and configure auto-import, remove the listed folders to import and add the new ones. But what happens to all the files that are now in my library from the old folder location? Would it be best to manually delete them (easily done within a library view window for all the hi-res and lossy files) and then reimport them, or will MC24 automatically repair the links for those thousands of files which are now stored on a drive with a different letter? There has got to be a foolproof way to do this and that's why I am asking here. What I've done at this stage is simply copy the folders from the old locations onto the new location, but am not going to delete the folders from the old location until I am sure I've got the right settings in library tools auto-import. I am sure one of you savvy experts can tell me what I need to do and how. All my files have custom tags and keywords applied to facilitate the different library views and sorting and I wouldn't want to lose any of those tags when the files got moved, not to mention any other unexpected consequences. I may be overthinking this but better safe than sorry is how I look at it.

Also, this might be a good time to upgrade to MC25 but I've been hesitant about doing that because I've got everything fine-tuned so carefully in MC24 and am happy with the views and zone settings and skin and all of it, and I haven't felt that there are any critical fixes or features new to 25 that made it seem compelling for me to spend the money and make the switch. How seamless and simple would it be to do that?

[wer]

Copying the files manually in explorer was an unnecessary step, but as long as you've already done it, you can build on it.

First, read the following article:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Rename,_Move,_and_Copy_Files

and pay attention to the bit about "Update database to point to new location (no file rename, move, or copy)".

You'll want to do the above, and just change the paths in the database to point to your new file locations.  MC could have done the move/copy for you in one step, but you did it manually.

Once that is done and you're satisfied everything is ok and the files play from the new location and MC shows no broken links, then you can update your autoimport settings to point to the new directories.

Lastly, you can delete the files from the old locations.

After you read the article, you'll see MC has facilities to make this sort of operation easy.

[ferrarabrainpan]

Thanks for that link, I think that should explain everything and I will do what is instructed. Just one other thing, there are image files of album covers stored in each album folder... those will be updated to the new location in the process I assume.

EDIT: Never mind, I will first try by updating database to new location for some image files as a test. If that works properly then I do the procedure for selected audio files. This looks easy. I will report back if I run into any difficulties. Thanks again.

[JimH]

Here's more about moving files.

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Moving_Files

[JimH]

Also, this might be a good time to upgrade to MC25 but I've been hesitant about doing that because I've got everything fine-tuned so carefully in MC24 and am happy with the views and zone settings and skin and all of it, and I haven't felt that there are any critical fixes or features new to 25 that made it seem compelling for me to spend the money and make the switch. How seamless and simple would it be to do that?

It's easy to try.  Just follow the Upgrade Help instructions on this board.  Leave MC24 installed until you're happy with MC25.

[ferrarabrainpan]

Project accomplished. Worked like a charm. I just had to modify the rules for file display in the various library views where the rules referenced the old file path. Thank you, citizens, I could not have done this so easily without your advice.

I will look into switching to MC25 some other time. As I said, I'm happy with 24 for the time being...