Where to put iTunes Music

I have done a clean instal of Windows 7 to replace my old XP on my Sony Vaio VGN-S5M.

In the process I wiped my iTunes music and films, some 44Gb of it.

First I laboriously reloaded individual DVD's into the My Music library. I then ran Windows Media Player, which integrated the files into it's database, but I found the inability to search for duplicates disappointing. Anyway, I realized that iTunes was a better application and would (supposedly) integrate with my existing music database on my Macbook.

I then tried bringing the music into iTunes, but it started to make a copy of it and rapidly filled my 80GB hard disk. I tried moving files but the Windows 7 library seems to need forever to update it's index system. I ended up deleting the whole lot (and even this was problematic as the recycle bin has a 5Gb size limitation. You need to change it's properties to bypass the recycle bin.

I can't yet get the Vaio to share normally with the Mac on my home network (another problem), but using FILEZILLA
and setting the Mac sharing to accept FTP allowed me to transfer the whole database yet again. It took all night.

I thought that replacing the current iTunes library folder on the Vaio would bring in the music and it's associated index system, but I still needed to go into the application and go to <file><add folder to library> to see the music.

I have a horrible feeling that when I try to <consolidate> the library it will try to make another copy and fill the hard disk again.

I see on the iTunes menu that there are actually two folders called "My Music", one in the Windows 7 library and one in my user account folder list. Which should I have copied the music to?

Should iTunes now be a separate library item rather than inside the "My Music" folder?

I'm sorry I don't really understand what these library folders are. Where is the actual data and where does one copy stuff to now?

Why does the indexing take so long and is this really an improvement on the old way?


Thanks for any help in my understanding of these issues.

Just play around with the files. I don't really understand what you're saying, I mean, you're very clear, just complicated. I happen to be listening to a punk rock song right now, which doesn't help at all. >_>

I think you should be able to copy the files to any location on your drive (for example, the My Music folder) and then just drag and drop these into itunes once it is open. Make sure you select the "let iTunes organise my music files" in the options, as it will rename/move files to the correct folders if required. This does take a very long time if you have several GB of music, I've not found a way to speed up this process either.

Ian, Thank you for your reply.

Things have worked out quite well. Putting the complete (with indexes etc) iTunes folder into My Music and then, in iTunes itself, adding the folder to the library, went ok. After that I consolidated the library but I suppose the files are in the correct place because no duplicate copying occurred.

Now in iTunes, my home videos (.mov) play in iTunes but some films I copied over (also .mov) have neither sound nor vision.

They play fine using vLan, so it seems that an open source application is better than Quicktime, which should worry Apple but probably doesn't

I know from experience on my Macbook, that even paying for the pro version of Quicktime did not give the required codec and one must download Perian and Flip4Mac before films can be played. I wonder if there is an equivalent package for Quicktime and Windows...