Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

[al-zoir]

Have a great time playing back in random mode my music collection of 60.500 tracks of several kinds of music all in the same HD of 500 GB capacity. Now that the empty space of the disk is 70 GB, came the time to try to add a new HD to the system. Then discovered that it is impossible, since all the tracks are considered to be set on one file, on one HD. I think I'll have to make a new music collection for the new HD, and that it would be impossible to extend the random playback on the two (maybe more, later) discs. Or is it?

I would like you also to guide me what improvements should I make (maybe update, paying some sum) to have my little system running more smoothly, since I really love your program and maybe I have been close to the limits (laptop with 512 MB/Mo memory, mp3s in an external 500 GB disk, other two 250 and 500 GB (the future second music archive), external USB sound card).

Thank you with gratitude for your program that made my listening pleasure possible and waiting for instructions.

[xoas]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Are you sure that you can't add tracks from a different drive in your system to dB Audio Player (dAP)?

My own experience running dB Audio Player (dAP) is that it can play tracks that are stored on more than 1 hard drive on a system. You can add tracks to dAP that are stored on a different hard hard drive as long as it is all on your system. My Music Collection only stores the addresses and other pertinent information about the tracks that are added to it, the tracks do not need to be physically located on the same hard drive.

There may be limitations in using the Arrange Tracks feature because I don't know that it can handle trying to organize tracks onto more than a single hard drive. But if you place tracks onto your new drive, I would think that you should be able to add those tracks to your My Music Collection.

I will add that I am using the r3 beta 6 version of dAP (from the Beta section of this forum), not the r2 "standard" version from the Products page. I would urge you to upgrade to the r3 beta version. It is more stable and powerful than the r2 version.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bill

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Thank you very much for answering my thread. When I add tracks in my collection, my final move is to arrange the files in my root folder, right? I cannot add a new root folder there, and if I change it to the new one, I read there 'Warning, if you use this function, moves all music files listed in My Music Collection', so I'm afraid that if I do it, all my music files will move to the new folder.. Would you please tell me what you do in you in your case with the root folder, so you manage to have a playback from two? Am I missing something?

As for the r3 beta version, I think that when I used it once, I had some trouble, I don't remember exactly the kind of, and that it was extremely difficult to go back to r2 version again. I promise I will try it again, though. (I am not sure what I did, maybe I used a converter beta version)

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

I already did the transaction to the r3 beta 6 version (dates from 2004, and I did not know it?), I am satisfied from the result, but can you give me back the black colour of my music collection (don't seem to find how to change it)?

It is obvious I have a lot of studying to do, so much material in this forum!!!

[xoas]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

To get back the black screen on the My Music Collection screen, see:
http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showpost...34&postcount=3 and

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=9767&highlight=black

I will address the other question later in detail but I think that if you add some tracks to a different drive and right-click, Add to dAP you will find that that is one easy way to add tracks from a different drive to dAP.

Best wishes,
Bill

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Thanks again, m8. Have to tell you that again during the install of the new version, I kinda 'lost' nearly 22.000 songs and had to download them again from the disk. Have two backups, the one in the same disk didn't work to bring out all the data of the songs' id tags. Fortunately, the other one I had kept in the laptop's disk did work and everything is OK now again. Does that mean that I have to do the collection's backup in the laptop's disk?

Waiting also your further answer, because I am afraid and surely can't afford any songs' loss. As for the skins, I've gone there but I could not download a thing and I don't know why my prudentials are not enough(cannot log in). Probably there's a lot to read again..Otherwise I am not in the proper level to deal with different colours and so on..

[LtData]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Put the following in your colors.txt file in the Editor folder:

0
0
0
255
255
255
128
128
128
0
0
255
255
255
255
0
0
0
0
0
0
255
255
255
255
255
0
128
128
128
245
245
245
194
194
194

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Sorry, but it's obvious that if I knew where to find color.txt and the editor folder, I wouldn't ask you. Can you please consider me dum and tell me?

In the meantime, I discovered (!!!) the skin site and downloaded some. Some are marvelous but in the most them the greek letters are not readable (in the default and 1-2 skins that is possible). Is there a way to make it work?

[LtData]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Go into the dAP install directory, then Skins\Default\Editor and then you will find the color.txt. This example is for the default skin, change "default" to the skin name.

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Thank you my friend for the precious help to the obviously blind. Could you please, or someone answer me also how do I make readable the greek song-titles on the dap? (I did what I should so far, but with no result, in the read text section)

I also would appreciate an answer to my primary question, on how can we add songs from a second hard disk to my collection, since when we arrange the songs there is only one root folder on the arrange files window.

[LtData]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

By Greek you mean the files have greek tags and filenames? If yes, unfortunately dAP hasn't yet been updated to support Unicode filenames.

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

But it does!!! Told you that in the default and the magnum skin it has no problem to read the greek titles, written in greek in MMC of course. That does not happen with the other skins and I am asking for the little 'unicode' secret which I could put in so that the other skins would do the same.

[xoas]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Sorry I was unable to get back to this yesterday.

With respect to backing up your files I would refer you to the Help files for dAP which talk about this thusly:

It stands to reason, if you have spent time creating your collection and rating tracks, it should be backed up once in a while. Load MMC and look at the top on the title bar dBpowerAMP - Music Collection 'xxxxx' - will tell you the name of your collection files. Next look in the folder dAP was installed to (normally C:\Program Files\illustrate\dBpowerAmp). Your collection files will be a bunch of files all starting with the name of the active collection.

I've been able to uninstall/reinstall dAP (either for an upgrade or to address some problem) and usually have not had problems with having to back up the collection, but I had one bad experience where I had to rebuild MMC from scratch, so I would advise anyone to backup their collection before upgrading or reinstalling dAP.

With respect to general assistance with how dAP and My Music Collection works, I would refer you to your Help file for dAP. You should be able to locate it by going Start> All Programs> dBpowerAMP> Help> dAP. The folder listed here as "dBpowerAMP" might possibly have a slightly different name, but you will know the right when you see dBpoerAMP Audio Player as one of the options below Help. I think you will find a lot of useful information there.

Now with respect to your original question, I would like to state that if you have a system with dAP and lots of Music files on Drive C and you have another drive (Drive G) on your system, dAP can access files on Drive G as well. You could do this by right-clicking those tracks on Drive G that you want to add to dAP and selecting the option Add to dAP. Alternately you can open up your My Music Collection and clicking on the arrow to right of the menu item Add Music in the upper left corner of the MMC (My Music Collection) window. You will find options to add tracks or folders or to automatically search for and add any music tracks from a designated source (this is the New Track Lookout option).

You may be used to using the Arrange Music feature of MMC to organize your tracks onto a disk. dAP cannot (to the best of my knowledge) do this as a simple operation if your music collection spans over 2 or more disks. But dAP allows you to have more than 1 MMC (the must have different titles). You could create separate MMCs for each drive on your system that has music folders and use the Arrange Music feature within the MMC for each disk and then add them to your Master MMC that would have all your tracks on all the drives from your system.

There is one important warning I would have for you with respect to tracks that are on MMC. This is: ONCE YOU ADD TRACKS TO MMC, DO NOT MOVE THEM (except through the Arrange Music feature) UNLESS YOU FIRST REMOVE THEM FROM MMC AND ADD THEM BACK LATER. If you do so, MMC will not be able to locate them and they will be useless to MMC. If you have more than one MMC, I strongly believe that if you use the Arrange Music feature for tracks in one MMC that any of those tracks that are also on the other MMC will become inaccessable to the second MMC.

A similar issue is that changes you make to the tag or file name after a track is added to MMC will not be recognized by MMC.

I suspect that some but not all skins for dAP support Unicode tags, but offhand I cannot tell you which ones. I do not think that there is an easy way to turn on Unicode tag support for the skins that do not support Unicode tagging. I will ask one of the skin designers to weigh in on this topic.

I hope this has helped. If you are still having problems with managing your music collection on multiple drives, please provide a little more detail about how you are adding and organizing tracks on your drive, how you are adding these tracks to dAP, and what problems you are having in accessing these tracks.

Best wishes,
Bill

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Wrongly put, the right one follows

[al-zoir]

Re: Adding a new disk to the same music collection possible?

Now with respect to your original question, I would like to state that if you have a system with dAP and lots of Music files on Drive C and you have another drive (Drive G) on your system, dAP can access files on Drive G as well. You could do this by right-clicking those tracks on Drive G that you want to add to dAP and selecting the option Add to dAP. Alternately you can open up your My Music Collection and clicking on the arrow to right of the menu item Add Music in the upper left corner of the MMC (My Music Collection) window. You will find options to add tracks or folders or to automatically search for and add any music tracks from a designated source (this is the New Track Lookout option).

You may be used to using the Arrange Music feature of MMC to organize your tracks onto a disk. dAP cannot (to the best of my knowledge) do this as a simple operation if your music collection spans over 2 or more disks. But dAP allows you to have more than 1 MMC (the must have different titles). You could create separate MMCs for each drive on your system that has music folders and use the Arrange Music feature within the MMC for each disk and then add them to your Master MMC that would have all your tracks on all the drives from your system.

I'm really greatful for your long detailed answer, with which I think you covered all my questions (remains the unicode in the skins that don't have it). So it's my turn to tell you how I use the MMC. I add songs the second way you described ('Add music'), so I think it is essential to arrange them too, because this is the way not to include songs you already have in the collection, and even compare the two (or more) versions and keep the best (better sound or complete version instead of a part only of the song).

I know of course that you can add songs from another drive, without arranging them, but this way you cannot compare anything, or if you do, it is much more difficult. Never thought though to make two or more MMCs and arrange them in the, so called, 'main MMC', but ,really, have you tested it, or is it just an idea?

As for backing up, I cannot use for everything disc C of the laptop, because it's full. All the programs go always there, resulting in only 4.35 GB empty space. When I bought this laptop they advised me to make 2 paritions in the 80 GB disc, so I have C 36,8 (with 4,35 empty) and D 30,6 (with 12,5 empty). And I make my backing in D, also in G (465 with 68,5 empty). And I told you that only the backing in D was good enough to not loose the details ( genre, year of distribution, etc).

So, now that I want to add a new I 465 GB disc, you are saying that all I have to do is make a new MMC2 with the contents of the new disc, having already a MMC1 whose all the contents are kept in the first disc, and then make another MainMMC (on which of the two discs?), where I could add the two MMCs. But when you arrange the collections don't you move all the songs to the disc where the collection has its mp3s? (which is exactly what iI am afraid of?)

As for the preventions you gave me, I have had bad experiences too. But I do not want to learn by damaging something again. The only possible thing I think I'm stuck in is to make a new MMC with all my jazz selections, since they're sort of different music and I could listen to them seperately, but again how you transfer one-by-one 'bout 30.000 selections to another drive. Or is there a way to move all selections of the same genre at once, and I don't know it?

Sorry, one question leads to another, but the principal is if I followed you or if I understood something wrong. Thank you again for your interest.