Why not use drive letter instead of media ID ?

[surfer]

I ask myself whats the better reason of using a "media ID" in MM instead of a drive letter.

I think using a drive letter is more helpful when changing the drives or computers and pointing to another location.

[Steegy]

Media ID should stay the same for one hard disk (or cd, or ...), so MediaMonkey should always be able to identify it, even if the drive letter changes for some reason. (can happen a lot if you use different external hard drives and so)

Drive letters change, so MediaMonkey wouldn't recognise it anymore and you would have to reassign it *manually*.

>> Media ID is definately the right way to go.

If you want more info, just look around the forum. These days a thread is going about some possible improvements (or fixes) in this area, so it shouldn't be hard to find it.

Cheers
Steegy

[pah68]

Every MP3 CD you insert would have the same drive letter. That's gonna cause some obvious problems.

[surfer]

Well, i have probably put it in a way not clear enough but i meant the following...

Why should it not be possible to show MM a different location "deliberately" when i know that the different location is the wright one because the same files are on a different disc as well, i.e. on the disc of my laptop?

Even if a feature like "locate missing/moved files" is there, there nothing missing or to be located again because the same files are there in the same structure..... only on a different disc.
By the way.....does this feature work reliably, does MM really locate all the files if put to a different disc?

[Steegy]

@pah68: every cd has another volume id (serial number), no? So what would be the problem? (MediaMonkey already works this way, and it recognises the cd's thanks to that.)

@surfer:
I think this can be implemented by a script (similar to an old one I've made) that can change the "Media" entry of your first hard drive to the one of your second hard drive, but I'm afraid that this could give some problems: If not all tracks are on the second hard drive, maybe then the unaccessible entries in the library would be deleted automaticly (unless you disabled this behaviour in MM's options). However, I'm not sure about this but when I get the possibility (2 usb sticks to test with) I'll try to test this.

Anyway, how would you like it to be implemented?
Would you like to get a dialog to select the hard drive you want to change (the one that's now inaccessible because you already changed the hard drive/computer, or that is still accessible if you just added the other hard drive) to the new hard drive?
(dialog could contain some information like "drive letter", "volume label", "drive type", "file system" to be able to recognise the drives better)
Just to understand 100%.


Cheers
Steegy

[Lowlander]

This just had been discussed in another thread on the forum. Jiri said that he was considering to add a way to change drive when a drive was replaced.

[Ron Koci]

How about if instead of using the drive serial numbers (which are obviously causing problems) for identification, you put a little file containing a unique ID on the media drive. That way it would be a quick and reliable check by MM to determine which disk is which (as in nothing would generally change the ID file), the ID would go with the data if the drive were cloned out, and it wouldn't make any difference how or when it was attached.

For CD's the serial number could still be used, as you won't be writing to finalized or precut CD's.

Ron

[Lowlander]

That would be a bad solution I think as it's not unlikely that users might delete this file.

[Teknojnky]

I personally would prefer a unique id in the file metadata/idtags.

[Ron Koci]

Well, whether it be an Alternate Data Stream, hidden system file or meta-data (attached to which file, BTW? - you wouldn't want it built into your MP3's, or it would follow every one you copied elsewhere), it would be something MM could control more than serial number reporting, which is inconsistent.

[Teknojnky]

Well, whether it be an Alternate Data Stream, hidden system file or meta-data (attached to which file, BTW? - you wouldn't want it built into your MP3's, or it would follow every one you copied elsewhere), it would be something MM could control more than serial number reporting, which is inconsistent.

I *want* it to follow every where, hence why I want the unique ID embedded in the file. Ideally it would only need to be generated once, then MM would be able to indentify a file regardless if it was renamed/retagged outside of MM.

[Steegy]

Adding extra ID file to the root folder and stuff like that...


Why ?
Every volume has it's own (unique) identifyable ID automaticly... Why would this cause problems??

Alternate data streams... yeah, if you want MM bloated and be considered as spyware, this would be ideal.

[Lowlander]

@Steegy
The problem is that not all ID's are unique. Still the current implementation is the best.

[Ron Koci]

1. If each song contained the metadata, moving one song could convince MM that the wrong drive was your media drive.

2. If serial numbers worked across my SAMBA connection, I wouldn't be complaining about using them.

3. If putting one file or equivalent on a drive is the equivalent of Spyware, you'd better wipe your hard drive now...

Ron

[Steegy]

Maybe I was exagerating a bit

3) My computer *is* clean, thank you. One reason for that is that my computer stays up to date, but my own knowledge also.
Alternate data streams are sometimes used to hide data transports. They are very useful and are primarily used by more professional utilities (anti-virii etc.), ... and things like trojans (and spyware etc.).
Just a little demo: search "alternate data streams" on google. What's the first page returned? "Hidden Threat: Alternate Data Streams", ... hackers... hiding root kits... (www.windowsecurity.com)
But if that would be the best solution for the current problem, then this would be the thing to use of course.