mpb2000 said:
My wife updates her ipod much less frequently than I do, so let's say she hasn't updated it for a month and now wants to see what new music I have. If I organize my own music, she can sort the files in Windows Explorer by date and then drag and drop into her iTunes library. This way we only have one copy of each file, regardless of how many different libraries we have. If I let iTunes control my organization, she could obviously sort the files in my library by date added, but then what? Would she have to drag them to a new folder on the HD, creating a whole new set of files, then close iTunes and reopen with her library with the shift key, and drag the new files in? This would then either link directly to these new files in some random location, or would copy them to her library folder. Either way, there would then be multiple copies of exactly the same file. How do you get around this with multiple libraries? Can you have two instances of iTunes open and drag and drop between them without creating new files? Basically, how do you have multiple iTunes libraries with only one hard copy library on the HD and control everything easily?
When you indicated two libraries I was assuming you meant on two different computers...
Using multiple iTunes libraries against
the same content on a single computer is not something that iTunes was designed to do very well. As Essin suggests, you can share a common library database (even on two different user accounts) using playlists as a subset, which is the more appropriate way to do this, but it does carry with it the problem of the ratings and play counts being shared.
There are a couple of ways you could handle two separate library databases with the same content depending upon your specific needs, and the simplest would be to put your tracks in a common location and then point
both iTunes libraries to that common music folder. Any new tracks would still have to be manually added to the new library, but if you add a track to your iTunes library that's already
in the iTunes Music Folder, iTunes won't create a duplicate -- it will merely import the copy that's already there as a reference, just as it would if you have the
"Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" turned OFF.
The key in this case would be your wife
finding the tracks she wants to add. If you simply wanted to keep the two libraries in sync, you could just do a File->Add To Library every few weeks, and point at the common iTunes Music Folder. Again, iTunes would skip all those files that are
already in your iTunes library, adding only those additional ones that are "missing"
You can of course find the underlying file locations by right-clicking a track and choosing "Show in Windows Explorer" but since you're working on the same computer, that likely wouldn't be a very useful option in this case.
If you're trying to share a common folder with only selective tracks, however, this is definitely one area in which a manual organizational structure might be more efficient, at least in terms of
finding the files.
Also, as for your statement about migrating music to a new hard drive, no matter whether you take control or you let iTunes organize your music, the only way you're going to save your playlist, rating, etc data is to save the iTunes library database files. I can't remember exactly what they are off the top of my head, but I know I have them backed up weekly on my external HD just in case. There are only one or two files, but that's where all that information is saved.
Of course I understand that, and I wasn't talking about saving the database -- that's necessary regardless. However, the problem is that if you're not letting iTunes manage your library for you, then your iTunes database gets rendered useless if you move your content files to a new location. iTunes stores the full path to your files, whether it manages them or not.... This means that if you move your library to a different location manually, iTunes is going to "lose track" of all of these file locations, resulting in broken links to pretty much your entire music collection.
The "Consolidate Library" option in iTunes solves this by moving all of the tracks into your iTunes Music Folder path (as set in your preferences) and updating the paths accordingly, but of course it's also going to reorganize your music in the process.
So if you were to move your music files to a completely new location or even the same location on a new drive letter, you're either going to have to let iTunes reorganize it all for you in the new location by using the "Consolidate" function, or create a brand new iTunes library database and re-import all of your tracks. The only other option would be to go through hundreds of tracks individually to repair the broken links (ie, select each individual track entry in iTunes and then browse to it on your hard drive, one by one). Even for a few hundred files that's a tedious task -- for a few thousand it's next to impossible.
The only way you'll avoid this headache is to ensure that if you're going to move your iTunes library to a new location, that it's in the same path and organization as your existing iTunes library. From one external hard drive to another that won't be too painful, since you can just reassign the drive letter, but you'll definitely have challenges trying to move your library from your C: drive to an external hard drive, since reassigning the letter is not an option in that case.