[pardales]

Helping a friend. He has one external hard drive with 3 or 4 different files full of music on it connected to his laptop. There are no music files on his laptop currently. We have added each file fro his hard-drive to the iTunes library. We want to get a copy of all his music files on his laptop's internal hard-drive.

If we "Consolidate" would we be moving copies of everything to the iTunes music folder on the internal hard drive of the his laptop.   

[Crimson]

Helping a friend. He has one external hard drive with 3 or 4 different files full of music on it connected to his laptop. There are no music files on his laptop currently. We have added each file fro his hard-drive to the iTunes library. We want to get a copy of all his music files on his laptop's internal hard-drive.

If we "Consolidate" would we be moving copies of everything to the iTunes music folder on the internal hard drive of the his laptop.   

As long as the '3 or 4 different files full of music' are already part of his iTunes library, and you switch the library path to his internal drive and check the option to 'Copy files to iTunes Music Folder......', then yes, everything will be copied (not moved) to his internal hard drive when you consolidate.

[pardales]

Thanks, Crimson. As always, a wealth of solid info. Will this move get rid of duplicates?

[Crimson]

I'm pretty sure it'll copy everything over, i.e. it will not get rid of duplicates. Once the consolidate process is complete, click View -> Show Duplicates and assess duplicate files from there (but be careful as iTunes considers files with the same artist and track name as duplicates even if album and track times are different e.g. iTunes considers a studio and live version of a particular song as a duplicate).

[pardales]

Makes perfect sense, thank you. Any tips for speeding up the searching out and removal of duplicates?

[Crimson]

Makes perfect sense, thank you. Any tips for speeding up the searching out and removal of duplicates?

Unfortunately, no. Per DougScripts.com:

Case #2: The "Original" and "Duplicate" Myth

I wish I had a penny for every email I receive which queries: "How can I remove all my duplicate tracks and keep the originals?" I would be the Wealthiest Fellow such that this site's Amazon, Kagi, and PayPal payboxes would be completely unnecessary.

This question suggests that the poser has a grand misconception about tracks and files. In fact, I am hard-pressed to even comprehend the question. iTunes barely has a clue as to what the "original" track is. iTunes has even less of a clue as to what the "duplicate" track/s is/are.

Audio files are not like text files. You can't examine them to see if two are the same. (OK, you can compare tags and kind and size information, but even this can produce mixed results, as users of the iTunes "Show Duplicate Songs" command generally atest.) Tracks represent sound files. So, you have to listen to them. This seems odd to computer users because we are used to applications that can sniff out the similarities of files very quickly. But when you get right down to it, despite the text-based nature of audio file ID3 tags, only a device with ears can be the final arbiter of what a duplicate sounds like compared to the original. You have ears, I think. Right?

Some have suggested that an AppleScript could be written to "eliminate" the duplicates based on such things as last played date, play count, date added, and such. In my view, this still borders on the arbitrary. However, I have written various scripts which attempt to locate duplicates based on various data; these are about as accurate, more or less, as the iTunes "Show Duplicate Songs" command. Ultimately, you still have to listen to tracks to determine which can stay or go (emphasis added).

Also, I have written an application called Dupin (again, emphasis added) that will locate groups of duplicate tracks based on criteria you select, and then determine the "keeper" among each group according to a set of filter options. You can then purge the "non-keepers" from iTunes. Note, however, that this still requires your participation; Dupin does not automatically delete anything. Even so, no piece of software really knows what you think a sound file duplicate is.

You can read more here.

[pardales]

Thanks. One helpful thing I discovered is that sorting by date helped clarify some things as far as when things were added.

[Crimson]

When searching for duplicates I compare Artist, Album, Name, Time, Size, Bit- and Sample-rates (the latter two differentiating between standard and hi-rez recordings). If all seven fields are identical, it's a duplicate.

[pardales]

You know how you can sort music files by song, artist, kind, etc......well is it possible to sort by multiple categories at the same time?