Help us. Christopher sends this query:
Hey, those of you who use iTunes and so on. I’m putting (most of) our cd collection onto iTunes because presumably we’ll someday have some kind of mp3 players. Also so we can sell a bunch of ’em. Also so we can clear up room for another bookcase.
Anyway, I only have a 30gb hard drive on this computer, so I know I want to move a lot this stuff to my external hard drive, which has about 70gb free right now. My trouble is that my digital files are even more of a mess than my paper files, and I want to keep the stuff organized in some fashion. If I just hit the export library button (or whatever it’s called), what’s the result going to look like on the other end? Can I use iTunes to open multiple libraries, one on my computer and one on my external hard drive? Is there a "managing your music files for dummies" website?
Advice? Mockery? Offers for free iPods?
Mac or microsoft slave? *ahem* it does make a difference as to where to look for menus…
if you check “keep my library organized”, it’ll put all the music files in the same place — and if you tell it that the right place is the external harddrive, then it’ll automatically put everything there.
if you want to use different hard drives, you can — but you can’t make it keep your library organized as simply, though it still works just fine.
Macintosh, natch. Thanks, that helps a bunch.
Burn to 4 Gig DVDs? That’s why I do for all the excess audio (and there’s quite a LOT of it with the Segundo shit) on my HD.
Selecting AAC as the file format (instead of mp3) will save you some disk space, but is less compatible with non-iPod players.
Just pleeeeeez back up your music files to another drive or cdr/dvd if you plan on ditching the physical discs. We went through and did the same thing a couple of years back, ripped our whole collection to an external drive, sold off all the discs…about 6 weeks later the drive failed and we lost all of it. Big, big tears and gnashing of teeth.
Now if we get a new cd, we rip it to the Mac, archive the disc in a 3-ring binder with cd sleeves, and recycle the jewel box and inserts.
ibid on mike, goood reminder!
either keep the cds in a binder, or back up on 4 gig dvds, and keep them in black books. it’ll save you some room, and a whole lot of heartache.
Thanks, folks. I was already using the AAC format (I can’t envision us buying any MP3 players besides iPods). I moved 11 gb over to an external hard drive last night. I don’t have the hardware to burn DVDs unfortunately, but if both my computer hard drive and my external hard drive fail then losing music files will be _waaay_ down the list of things I’m worried about.