iPod and iTunes: balancing the books

May 27, 2006 10:12 AM

I have 90GB of mp3s on a hard drive and 27GB of mp3s on my 5th generation iPod. How do I determine which songs on my iPod are already present in my 90GB library, and which ones aren't, using a smart playlist?

I read this thread: http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/34763 but really didn't find what I was looking for. Many of the songs on my iPod were there before I got my mbp and before I put all of my music into one library using iTunes.

I would like to find out which songs are only on my iPod so I can back them up to a hard drive and then use smart playlists and sync to safely manage the contents of the iPod.

posted by vkxmai to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: Senuti wii show you this. I don't think there's a way to do it with a playlist.
posted by doctor_negative at 11:04 AM on May 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

If you have the space, you could suck the contents off the iPod and add all of the files to your iTunes library, and then delete duplicates.
posted by mzurer at 11:15 AM on May 27, 2006

Response by poster: Thank you very much, it worked perfectly. I'm sorry that such an obvious answer escaped me at first.
posted by vkxmai at 11:26 AM on May 27, 2006

There is a way to do it with playlists only, actually, I did this myself once (and I hadn't heard of Senuti either) - I was about to type this before I checked preview for other answers :)

So, you don't need this anymore now, but here's how it works:

Open iTunes, go to the full library view, select all tracks, and then File > New Playlist From Selection, and name it something like 'hdmusic'.

Then, connect the iPod, and do the same - select the iPod in the list on the left, select all the tracks on it, select File > New Playlist From Selection, and name it something like 'ipodmusic'.

(You need to do this because the main Library won't show up as a playlist in the Smart Playlist rules unless you make it a playlist on its own. Same for the iPod contents.)

Then, make a new Smart Playlist, with rule 'Playlist IS ipodmusic' and rule 'Playlist IS NOT hdmusic', select 'Match ALL rules', and you will get a playlist with all the songs on the iPod that are not on the hard drive.

(this of course assumes all the songs on your hard drive are already in the iTunes library, otherwise you're going to have to compare folders)
posted by funambulist at 11:56 AM on May 27, 2006 [2 favorites]

Is there a PC version of Senuti?
posted by CunningLinguist at 1:24 PM on May 27, 2006

Response by poster: Well I checked the option to "skip" duplicates in Senuti but it still created about 25GB of duplicate songs. So I have to go through about 3500 songs and delete the dupes. I think the best way to do this is using iTunes "Show duplicates" option and add each artist one at a time.
posted by vkxmai at 5:09 PM on May 27, 2006