Moving Files From Network Drive To Local Drive

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Rob_S
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Re: Moving Files From Network Drive To Local Drive

Post by Rob_S »

Koodos, Barry, eloquently spoken (written) indeed. :)

It might be added that well-written software should actually not require much documentation.

When you ask it to do something, it asks you the relevant questions, and then proceeds to do the job.

Performing sync might be another one of those where it should ask for the required settings, as opposed to us having to search out where to enter them first.

Admittedly moving your tracks might be one of the less frequent things one might need to do.
Using 5.1 LATEST alpha or beta build on Windows 10, HP laptop, managing 13k tracks
Lowlander
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Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Moving Files From Network Drive To Local Drive

Post by Lowlander »

Folder Monitoring should only be used if you're going to move the files. Then you'd have it enabled on source and destination folder. As you already moved the files you shouldn't use Folder Monitoring nor Scanning.

You need to use Locate Moved/Missing Files.
Barry4679
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Re: Moving Files From Network Drive To Local Drive

Post by Barry4679 »

Rob_S wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 11:29 am Koodos, Barry, eloquently spoken (written) indeed. :)
Thanks. But our combined best efforts, with regard to the documentation, have harvested exactly zero.

The response on this topic is the same as it always is ... It is unwritten, but I read it as "", wrapped in an envelope of burnt out complacency. ... That's how you see it?

Keep up the good work Rob ... for my part I am totally tone deaf to the above message and its lack of responsiveness and apparent lack of give-a-crap.

I do however want to correct something that I wrote last time
Barry4679 wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 3:29 am
The Online Help for this topic, in your index is here, and as you can see it is just a dead end.

My eyesight is not 100%, so I didn't detect that this was not actually a dead-end ... ie. the page contains a tiny link to this

Have you read that document? IMO, while it is not (yet) perfect, it is several things that the MM5 online manual is not:
  • it is task based, ie. it consolidates and connects information that otherwise requires reading the whole online manual to stumble across, and even then you have to join the dots and fill in the missing pieces yourself
  • it actually explains things ... rather than just pointing at them, leaving the reader not much wiser, and often with more questions than answers
  • it is the result of collaboration and review (see its View History tab), whereas the current Online Manual is in a silo, and any incoming opinion seems to go directly to trash
As far as I can see:
  • it has been updated for MM5, but is not part of the manual. .. ?
  • and the manual doesn't seem to contain any link to it ... ?
One final thing. The current MM5 Online Manual, is clearly the result of a lot of work.
  • it appears to be the work of just one person -- LowLander, so kudos to him
  • he seems ho have been working with MM for 20 years, and a lot of what he has written reflects, and expects, that level of assumed MM background information and knowledge
  • good documentation can only come from collaboration and beta testing (IMO)
  • and since none of this has occurred, the current MM5 online help is not good documentation
  • and BTW none of this is an ambush against LowLander .. I have made these comments directly and privately to him on a couple of occasions, but always with the same result.
Rob_S wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 11:29 am It might be added that well-written software should actually not require much documentation.
When you ask it to do something, it asks you the relevant questions, and then proceeds to do the job.

Performing sync might be another one of those where it should ask for the required settings, as opposed to us having to search out where to enter them first.

Admittedly moving your tracks might be one of the less frequent things one might need to do.
Yes, a Wizard function would be good addition.

But I think that a power user should have a good document to explain how to achieve normal, but potentially disruptive things like moving your collection, or moving to a different computer. .. I think that MM5 already acts too much as a AI, with limited visibility when things go wrong

A good example is Syncing, which you mentioned. I was going to sync .mp3 versions of my whole Collection to Dropbox, but it is not fit for use IMO ... not enough visibility, not enough control ... and when it breaks you just have start again, which is a show stopper when you have big collection.
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
sunspot
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Re: Moving Files From Network Drive To Local Drive

Post by sunspot »

Just FYI, I finally got the Locate Missing / Moved Files functionality to (mostly) work. MM kept trying to sign into the network share, and I kept cancelling, but I think so long as it saw the device out on the network it refused to acknowledge the files as actually "Missing".

I solved that by yanking the network cord out of the back of the new PC. Then MM was finally able to determine the files were in fact "missing" from the network location, and it could repoint most of them to the new local drive that I had MM look for the files in.

Oddly, while it had no trouble getting to all but about a dozen of my music files, it didn't work for the video files for some unknown reason. However, I don't use MM to manage my video library - I mostly just use MM as a DLNA server for video files, I don't let MM auto-organize them or anything - so I just deleted all of the "missing" video files from the MM library on the new PC and, at some point, I'll get around to re-scanning them.
Barry4679
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Re: Moving Files From Network Drive To Local Drive

Post by Barry4679 »

sunspot wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 3:59 pm Just FYI, I finally got the Locate Missing / Moved Files functionality to (mostly) work. MM kept trying to sign into the network share, and I kept cancelling, but I think so long as it saw the device out on the network it refused to acknowledge the files as actually "Missing".

I solved that by yanking the network cord out of the back of the new PC. Then MM was finally able to determine the files were in fact "missing" from the network location, and it could repoint most of them to the new local drive that I had MM look for the files in.
Hi sunspot,
is good that you found a workaround, and that you didn't have to re-scan, which would have lost your playcounts, and yanked those tracks out of any playlists. Thanks for reporting.

It is still not clear (to me) what the best approach to your moving task would have been.

I tend towards moving using File Explorer as you did, because it seems a bit hair raising to trust MM5 Auto-Organise, which is a black box process. Although you could test it with just a couple of track first I suppose, and check whether it handled the network -> local drive issue OK.

But there would still be some small concern, if it was a large collection, because it would hard to be 100% sure whether the process was robust enough to being interrupted somehow, without leaving you stranded in some way. ... ie. whether it handled each track move atomically, such that the track or folder which was being moved at the point of interruption, was safe and the database knew where the track was located.
Want a dark skin for MM5? This is the one that works best for me .. elegant, compact & clear.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: Moving Files From Network Drive To Local Drive

Post by Lowlander »

Auto-Organize is a black box, but Auto-Organize Files isn't and is what I would use in this scenario. It shows what changes will be made prior to applying. Both will move a file, once moved, update the database with the new location, then move on to the next file. You can re-run Auto-Organize and it will only organize files not yet organized, if you stopped the process at any point

Note that Auto-Organize only is triggered on changes, so simply setting an Auto-Organize rule won't run it on your existing Library.

This is preferred over using Locate Moved/Missing Files as that relies on MediaMonkey finding matches of the files in the new location. This requires much more user oversight in verifying the matches, which can be tedious on a large move.
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