MediaMonkey forum

I have read about 25 posts I found by searching for "consolidating" or "moving files" and "removing dupes" and am at square one. I have about 56,000 music files spread across three hard drives and one external drive and want to put them all onto one blank 500GB drive I have mounted in the same computer.

My problem is when I start reading the posts it is already over my head. I have used Media Monkey for several years and own a lifetime license, BUT I alway just use it to play music and have never used it to effectively manage music, OBVIOUSLY.

I don't understand computer language like <Artist>, <Title> and so forth. Cannot grasp it for some reason.

Is there a basic tutorial that will walk me through just moving the files and then tackling the dupes without a lot of tech talk?

Thanks so much!

Duplicates: http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... icleid=113

Moving files: http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/f ... enames.htm

When I first started out, organizing music I kept getting errors, because I had two CD's of The Beatles each with the track "I Want to Hold You Hand" So when I got an error message, I realized that I had to rename one of them, How about "I Want to Hold Your Hand2?"

OK that worked for a while, and one of the guys here, told me about a "Mask" which is a protocol, or a method of naming your music so you don't have to put "2" or "3" after the song title, and the tracks can be stored, or can be nested, within a file folder of the Album name. And because each track is numbered (like track 2 or 3) as well as the song title, the Mask tells me a lot of information, such as the Artist, the Album the Track No. and the Song Title. Because it is impossible to have the same track title occupy the same track number, every file name is unique.

Some Masks, or naming protocols, can get very complicated but mine is this:

C:/Documents and Settings/My Music/Beatles/Meet the Beatles/ with each file being named like this Beatles - 01 I Want to Hold Your Hand.flac

So the "Mask" or naming method I use is this: My Music--Where I Store the Files. <Artist> This is a variable file name depending on the artist, in this case "The Beatles" or I just call them "Beatles" to avoid the "The." <Album> This means another variable file depending on the Album Name, in this case, Meet the Beatles. Then the File Name which is <Artist> - 01 I Want to Hold Your Hand.flac. After artist there is space dash space then <Track No.> then space <Song Title>. Hope this explains it.