iTunes deorganised my library

I had organized my media directory to consist out of several directories which either contained all tracks from one artist (each in a matching subdirectory for the CD title), or if it was a compilation a directory with all tracks of that compilation.
This has proven useful for me. I assume others have other methods of sorting their stuff.
Now I decided (the idiot I am ) to let iTunes manage the whole library (some thousand files), it seemed I screwed up setting up iTunes the right way as I noticed a checkbox which I thought I had deactivated as it started copying all files back and forth into iTunes created directories...awwwggghhh..and ruined my preciously setup library.

Does anybody have an idea how to "undo" this?

I should have tried this with a handful of directories first instead of letting it run through the whole thing right from the begining.

You may try The God Father
I haven't tried it myself, but a buddy of mine told me it works great.

iTunes doesn't touch your original files, it can either read them in place or make copies to it's own library.

Inside it's own library it organizes the music by band/author and then by album name.

Did you do something exciting like tell it to use your original folder as it's music library folder? Thats the only way I can think of that it would get things moved around on you. And since it's moving things around in the directory structure of the disk I dont think there is any way to undo it unless explorer has an undo feature or something.

You do mean that your actual files are messed up and not just that iTunes doesn't display them in the directories that you created?

If it's messed up already on disk then just let iTunes finish copying the files into it's own placement and just use it's browsing and sorting tools to view them I haven't actually looked at a music file or cared what folder it was in since installing iTunes myself!

one of the most user unfriendly app's around..

pyro said:

You may try The God Father
I haven't tried it myself, but a buddy of mine told me it works great.

Click to expand...

Well, that seemed to be the mistake. I pointed iTunes to my media directory as I sorted the stuff there before. What I seemed to have missed is that iTunes did move them to its own directory and partly renamed them depending on what the ID tag said. What a mess.

James, yes - iTunes is comfortable for my taste. There might be people who have better suggestions and I am sure there are better programs around (aren't there always? ). I do not own an Apple mp3 player and iTunes doesn't support other brands, thus it was convenient to move stuff onto the mp3 player from the file manager.

pyro, I have downloaded the program and am looking into it when I feel like messing around with that messy pile. Thanks.

K-T said:

Does anybody have an idea how to "undo" this?

Click to expand...

Yeah, use Anapod or Media Monkey. iTunes sucks. Headaches like this made me switch...I prefer Anapod, myself.

JM-99

James S said:

iTunes doesn't touch your original files, it can either read them in place or make copies to it's own library.

Click to expand...

I wish this was true. When I first installed iTunes I let it manage a huge amount of mp3 files. It renamed them and changed the tagging. I really dislike iTunes.

Winamp seems to work well, with the added feature of being able to send and receive songs from your friend's Ipod, too.