Can Tunespan change locations if the files were already manually copied?

Brian shared this question 11 years ago
Answered

So I have two external harddrives, both of which have a copy of all my iTunes TV shows. iTunes already has the location of most these files manually set as being on hard drive A, but a few it has on hard drive B (my iTunes library main directory is not on either of these, but on my internal drive). Is there a way for me to use TuneSpan to standardize iTunes's location? Basically tell it to go through and change any references to hard drive B to point to A? Or a way to manually do this through the interface? I don't think I want to actually span things, because they don't need to be copied, the file already exists on the other drive. Or will it detect that and not do the copy again? The interface is a little confusing.

Replies (3)

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Thanks for getting in touch. I think I understand what you're looking for, and TuneSpan may be able to help you, but only under specific circumstances.


If you make a selection of tracks, choose a span location, and click span, before copying any files to that location, TuneSpan will check the new path that it's about to copy the file to. If TuneSpan finds a duplicate file there, TuneSpan will use that file instead of copying the original one, if it's an exact match.


BUT, this only works if the file is at the EXACT path that TuneSpan is going to span to. If you have organized stuff manually, the way that TuneSpan makes a path may not be exactly the same. TuneSpan has some level of customization in the folder structure, but not complete control. You can look at the custom folder organization in the Advanced TuneSpan Preferences by click the advanced gear button next to the Organize Spanned Media option.


If the file is not at the exact path, TuneSpan will copy the file as normal, which would create a duplicate in your particular case.


In the current version of TuneSpan, duplicate file detection will be handled automatically. But, that is one area that has been greatly improved in a new version I'm working on. Whenever TuneSpan detects a duplicate file, you will be prompted about the situation and be offered various option along with the ability to remember the setting for tracks in that album, or for the rest of the span, and others. If you are interested in helping to test this unreleased version, as well as benefit from it's improvements, let me know. If you email me directly at "pico {at} randomapplications.com" I can send you my latest build when I get to a good stopping point, but I don't want to post any pre-release versions on here.


I hope that information helps, it may not be ideal for your exact situation, but it's the best I can offer. TuneSpan doesn't go out of its way to hunt down files at any location in any folder organization.

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Thanks. So it seems like what I want to do is get TuneSpan to take over organization and naming of my external iTunes media (or set up a custom naming scheme that matches how I already have things set up) so that everything is named and located how it expects, and then I can just span everything to that external drives and it will figure out that the target already exists and not do an unnecessary copy.

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Yep. So this brings us back over to this question: https://getsatisfaction.com/randomapp...


I'm about to get back to you on that one.

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