How to Combine two Libraries.

[Jeremy Birney]

I have a desktop with about 40GB of music, and a laptop with about 30GB.

The laptop started with about 20GB from the desktop (main) library.

Now both have grown to incorporate other music, but there is still a large part of each that is the same.

I would like to combine the two Libraries.

What is the best way to merge the two without creating 3000 duplicates, or going through each file and folder individually (unfortunately organized by iTunes)?


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[Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]]

On Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:18:17 -0800, Jeremy Birney wrote:

>I have a desktop with about 40GB of music, and a laptop with about 30GB.
>
>The laptop started with about 20GB from the desktop (main) library.
>
>Now both have grown to incorporate other music, but there is still a large part of each that is the same.
>
>I would like to combine the two Libraries.
>
>What is the best way to merge the two without creating 3000 duplicates, or going through each file and folder individually (unfortunately organized by iTunes)?

Synctoy is a useful program to merge identical files (it checks the
file contents rather than just filename and date/time, to verify
they're the same content in each)

You can sync one set of folders to the other PC, or keep both sides in
sync with very little effort.

See the most recent download (synctoy 2.1)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en
and http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/synctoybeta.aspx

Note SyncToy only deals with the files, it won't keep the metadata
(items like playcount and last played) in sync between two media
player libraries, but if you're using iTunes this sounds like a good
way to go.

The media containing folders will need to be 'shared' on each PC (so
you can see them in windows explorer) for SyncToy to be able to match
them up.


HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2010
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs