[ZLS]

  I have transferred my Itunes library to an outboard HD, and in my zeal to back up my files it seems that I have duplicated the music.  This is a theoretical problem for now, but I would like to eliminate the duplicates (200 GB) Short of going into each CD and highlighting the duplicates to go into the trash is there a shorter way?  Please!  I full well understand the importance of backing up your data, however I cannot help but think that having two copies on the same HD is some how missing the point. 

    I would also appreciate learning how to create and eliminate tabs so I can have my favorite CD sources available with one click.


                                                        Thank You

[Crimson]

Z,

I've described how to quickly remove duplicates here.

I'm not clear on your tabs questions. Please elaborate.

[nathanm]

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*Girl From Ipanema*

So am I understanding this correctly?  You have duplicate songs showing up in iTunes linked to different folders? One set linked to your local HD and one to the external?    I'm curious how that happened.  How did you do the backup?

The first thing I always do is to to UNcheck that evil setting "Copy files to iTunes library when adding…"  I could see that if you dragged and dropped your external HD iTunes library folder into iTunes and that was checked you could get duplicates.  Hmmm…

[JeffB]

I am not a MAC user, but I possibly have an easy fix using the UNIX command line.

Do the duplicate files have some kind of common prefix or postfix naming tag.  In other words how are you able to identify the duplicate file.

For example, on Windows if you copy a file with Explorer the following will be generated.
File1
Copy of File1

How are duplicates interwoven with the originals?  From your description, it sounds like the following to me:
CD1
   Track1
   Track2
   Copy of Track1
   Copy of Track2
CD2
   Track1
   Copy of Track1
   Track2
   Copy of Track2

If so you can  use
find . -name "Copy of*" -exec rm {} \;

This will delete all files that are found using the "find" command.
If you would like to see the list of files before deleting them use
find . -name "Copy of*" -print

The first parameter is the "."  This represents the current directory.
So either change to the root of your files that you wish to delete or specify the path instead of the ".".

[JeffB]

Arg!!  After reading the second post, I see that ITunes maintains an index of files.
My method will not update this index.

[low.pfile]

Arg!!  After reading the second post, I see that ITunes maintains an index of files.
My method will not update this index.

Right you are. Crimson's post (referenced) has the fix though.

good luck

[ZLS]

    Gentlemen,

    Thanks to your posts I realize that I consolidated my library twice.  The duplicate files are not showing up on my Mac HD, they are showing up twice on my outboard HD, with Itunes only seeing one copy.  The bad news is that the duplicates are showing up on each album file as 1 then 1; 2 then 2 ad nauseum.  Adding to the hysteria is that I did not create a music file to rip the CD's into they go straight to the outboard's HD.  In as much as I will only be using this HD for my music and have an additional HD for back up I do not know if this presents a problem. 
    The amount of music on the outboard HD (due to the duplication exceeds the capacity of my Mac HD. 
    I now know what I did wrong, does the same fix apply under these circumstances? 

                                                     Thank You

[Crimson]

    Gentlemen,

    Thanks to your posts I realize that I consolidated my library twice.  The duplicate files are not showing up on my Mac HD, they are showing up twice on my outboard HD, with Itunes only seeing one copy.  The bad news is that the duplicates are showing up on each album file as 1 then 1; 2 then 2 ad nauseum.  Adding to the hysteria is that I did not create a music file to rip the CD's into they go straight to the outboard's HD.  In as much as I will only be using this HD for my music and have an additional HD for back up I do not know if this presents a problem. 
    The amount of music on the outboard HD (due to the duplication exceeds the capacity of my Mac HD. 
    I now know what I did wrong, does the same fix apply under these circumstances? 

                                                     Thank You

Z,

Disregard my post above. You have a different situation. The easiest solution I can think of is to wipe your external and consolidate again, but ONLY if you still have all your tunes on your internal drive. If you don't, you may be limited to manually removing the duplicates.