I screwed up my iTunes, YAY.

[The_Hawk]

I used to have all the files stored on a server, iTunes would just point to where they were, so no duplicates.

NOW, I have iTunes set to auto copy everything it opens into "a special iTunes folder" so it's all stored in one place (on a laptop that isn't always connected to the network). I also manually store it on the network sorted/names etc like I want. (although I haven't needed to go back to any of those files yet).

As for iTunes slitting albums for no reason, it's usually a small anomaly in the ID3 tag, normally something around the artist or album artist fields. If you select all the songs in an album and hit "get info", then in the options you set "is part of a compilation" to yes.

[maca]

FML. It turns out that depsite restoring all the songs I soft deleted from my recycle bin, some of them have been completely wiped from my hard drive! So cut right now...

I'm thinking of buying an external HD, transferring my photos and whatever's left of my songs and reformatting my computer. That way at least I'll have the performance to compensate losing my music

[G-rig]

FML. It turns out that depsite restoring all the songs I soft deleted from my recycle bin, some of them have been completely wiped from my hard drive! So cut right now...

I'm thinking of buying an external HD, transferring my photos and whatever's left of my songs and reformatting my computer. That way at least I'll have the performance to compensate losing my music

That's why i don't like iTunes, can stuff your whole library with a click of a button.

External hard drives are great as a backup, I have a few and have a master copy of my lossless albums, dont bother backing up the converted ones as i can do that again with dBpowerAMP music converter. Perhaps have a look at the Vantec Nextstar3 external caddys, nice quality and pretty straight forward.

[maca]

That's why i don't like iTunes, can stuff your whole library with a click of a button.

External hard drives are great as a backup, I have a few and have a master copy of my lossless albums, dont bother backing up the converted ones as i can do that again with dBpowerAMP music converter. Perhaps have a look at the Vantec Nextstar3 external caddys, nice quality and pretty straight forward.

Ok thanks mate, I'll check it out.

Will defs be doing things differently once I've formatted the HDD.