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Upon reformat of High Sierra, iTunes duplicates many of my tracks.

I have my iTunes folder on another hard drive. When I reformat, I'll open iTunes and change the path to the folder on the other hard drive. I'll then close iTunes and then hold the "option" key. A window asking me to specify the path appears and once I specify, all of the artists load automatically.


Unfortunately, many tracks will duplicate themselves once I log in to iTunes Match. Last install, I went through and deleted all the duplicates and I thought all would be well. Strangely, it seems the same tracks duplicate each time. There are over 500 and each time, they are with specific albums.


I also set "Devices" to prevent from syncing automatically. I put a tick into the box that says "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library".


I'm at a loss on how to stop this from happening again. Quite frustrating. It is probably something I'm doing to myself but I'd like to know how to permanently fix this.


Thanks.

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Dec 17, 2022 3:33 PM

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Posted on Dec 17, 2022 4:42 PM

In the advanced iTunes preference, do not allow iTunes to manage your library. It is the management that is creating duplicate shortcuts every time it imports anything that the original library XML file is not familiar with. Corollary, make sure the Finder reference is an actual file, and not a shortcut to each song as it belongs in an album, in its own folder. If it is not, you may have cross referenced songs in different parts of the Finder's storage that are in multiple places. Make a one-one relationship of album to folder.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 17, 2022 4:42 PM in response to Arak911

In the advanced iTunes preference, do not allow iTunes to manage your library. It is the management that is creating duplicate shortcuts every time it imports anything that the original library XML file is not familiar with. Corollary, make sure the Finder reference is an actual file, and not a shortcut to each song as it belongs in an album, in its own folder. If it is not, you may have cross referenced songs in different parts of the Finder's storage that are in multiple places. Make a one-one relationship of album to folder.

Upon reformat of High Sierra, iTunes duplicates many of my tracks.

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