filtering folder contents - suggestions please

[D4\/!d]

Folks, I have cleared out a lot of mp3 files from album folders using my player software.

This has left me with many folders containing no audio files (good) - but with the odd image (LP cover) or txt file. Grrhh.

It left some folders empty and I have managed to use software to find and delete those. Thank goodness.

I want to delete these remaining folders that have no audio files, just jpgs or txt leftovers.

How can I find these folders. There are far too many to do a manual/eyeball search - and some are deep in sub-folders.

Is there a neat bit of freebie software that will filter my drive so that I can display those folders without music files.

Any ideas please.

Thanks,

[Irene]

In your Player software, could you perhaps use the filter 'genre'.

I'm not sure if that would achieve the results you need, but in WMP mine shows how many are in each.

Alternatively, through explorer search for items (in the music folders) with image extentions?

[D4\/!d]

Thanks for your ideas Irene, but sadly no.

Needless to say you and I think the same and I have tried all manner of combinations including your kind suggestions to no avail.

Using Explorer to search for images will result in all folders with images.

I want the ones without music files (mp3s and flac. MS Explorer is hopeless. Grrhh.

I need software that can filter - or whatever the word is - and show me folders that contain just image files.

[Irene]

Back to WMP = when you have it sorted by 'Artist', in the 'Organise' menu, do you have an option 'Apply Media Information Changes'?

If so, after it has updated I believe you should be able to see if there is any music listed.

(BTW: I am using WMP 12)

[D4\/!d]

Yeah Thanks nice idea.

That relies on my eyeballing 80000 rows for the odd folder that is not empty coz it still contains an image.

If explorer was any good you could filter it to say; show me just the folders that contain only images. Grrhh.

I need a Flat File Tree structure - coz the (nearly) empty albums are subfolders - showing columns of file type, and no of files of that type.

Years ago I had such a bit of software. (Hard Drive Analysis?) But with progress it's no more. Grrhh

btw I am using MediaMonkey

[AlanHo]

I assume all the folders are in the "My Music" directory.

Could you search for all the folders that contain a music file - move them to a separate drive - then delete all the folders that remain in the My Music directory since they are devoid of any music files.

Then move the music folders back again.

[D4\/!d]

Alan, Yeah Thanks nice idea. I like the way you are thinking.

However it would take an age to transfer back n' forth - we are talking mega-Gigs here.

[its a T2 ext hard drive]

[AlanHo]

I had cause to copy a large folder totalling 50Gb/6378 files from an internal hard drive to a second 1 TB internal hard drive. It took 12.7 minutes giving a transfer rate of 66 MB/sec. At that speed it would take roughly 8.5 hours to transfer 2 TB of files.

Being curious and just as an experiment I copied the same folder to an identical external hard drive via an eSATA connection. This took 13.2 minutes giving a transfer rate of 63 MB/sec. At which speed transferring 2 TB of files would take roughly 9 hours.

Still curious - I then changed my external hard drive enclosure to its USB2 connection and repeated the exercise. This time it took 29.8 minutes giving a transfer rate of 28 MB/sec. Using this connection the transfer of 2 TB of files would take approx 19 hours.

All the drives are Samsung spinpoint F3 SATA.

If you adopted my suggestion you could set the computer transferring files and leave it running overnight. With a direct internal SATA or eSATA connection you would be done and dusted over two nights.

[Irene]

I wonder if WINDIRSTAT would be any help. I have used it on my old PC.

It gives an extremely graphic picture of all of the files on your computer, showing file extensions. Might be worth a look. :) Scroll down the page for screen shots.

[catgate]

Speaking from my usual abysmal depth of ignorance, I would have expected there to be a means of doing it by use of a DOS batch file, but I have got it into my head (from somewhere) that the later M$ operating systems do not contain any Dos capability.

[D4\/!d]

I wonder if WINDIRSTAT would be any help. I have used it on my old PC.

It gives an extremely graphic picture of all of the files on your computer, showing file extensions. Might be worth a look. :) Scroll down the page for screen shots.

Thanks. That's a pretty little app.

I couldn't see a way to make it show one folder of one drive of the pc rather than summarise the whole machine.

Thanks for trying.

[D4\/!d]

Speaking from my usual abysmal depth of ignorance, I would have expected there to be a means of doing it by use of a DOS batch file, but I have got it into my head (from somewhere) that the later M$ operating systems do not contain any Dos capability.

I would have expected one of the explorer alternatives to offer the functionality; but no.

[D4\/!d]

If you adopted my suggestion you could set the computer transferring files and leave it running overnight. With a direct internal SATA or eSATA connection you would be done and dusted over two nights.

Alan, you are making this sound very tempting B)

[AlanHo]

This is the nearest I got via Google. Not sure it will work but perhaps worth investigating.

Have a look at this

[AlanHo]

I have had second thoughts.

I suspect that my idea about copying all folders containing music files to another drive may not be what you want - if those folders also contain jpg or text files you want to keep. There is a possibility that the music files will copy OK - but the files with other extensions will get left behind.

If saving just your music files is your aim - and you can ignore all jpg. txt, doc or whatever files - then the easiest way I know of doing this is by using the commercial back-up programme "Second Copy".

You can set up a profile to either move - or back up - specific files (identified by their extensions) to another drive and it will reproduce an exact copy of the folder tree and all the selected file types.

Assuming your music files are stored on say a D: drive, you would tell it to search for all files in your D:/Music folder ...of the following types....

*.mp3

*.wma etc

It is a very flexible program and there are other options you can set up.

It may be possible to use Acronis in a similar way but I haven't checked on the detail for that.

[D4\/!d]

I have had second thoughts.

You're giving this a lot of thought. Thanks Alan.

Yeah my setup is a main folder with subfolders of Artist name.

Under the Artist name folder there are the Album names folders.

The Album name folder contains the music files (mp3, flac, or whatever) and the Album Art (jpg LP cover).

In cases where I have got a album of flac files I zapped the equivalent mp3s using the MM player software - thereby maintaining the very important MM Music Library.

This means that while the Album name folder no longer contains the old mp3s it is left with a residue of image/info files such as jpg and txt files.

It is those now redundant Album name folders I wish to Delete (together with its contents).

[i have managed to find software to delete the folders that had no Album Art and were therefore empty]

Good 'ere innit :lol: :P :lol:

[AlanHo]

You might get more help from the bright sparks on other forums - such as..

Click here

Or here

[Seshomaru Samma]

boot from a Linux CD

run this command:

find /folder/containing/other/folders -name '*.jpg" -exec rm {} \;

this will get rid of all jpgs

next run this:

find /folder/containing/other/folders -name '*.txt" -exec rm {} \;

this will get rid of all txts

problem solved

note that you have to replace /folder/containing/other/folders with the directory where your folders are located.

[AlanHo]

boot from a Linux CD

run this command:

find /folder/containing/other/folders -name '*.jpg" -exec rm {} \;

this will get rid of all jpgs

next run this:

find /folder/containing/other/folders -name '*.txt" -exec rm {} \;

this will get rid of all txts

problem solved

note that you have to replace /folder/containing/other/folders with the directory where your folders are located.

My understanding was that David wanted to delete the jpg and txt files from folders that did not include any music files - then delete all empty folders.

ie: he wanted to retain folders containing music files and retain their associated jpg and/or text files.

I am not very good at scripts - but won't your suggestion delete all jpg and text files from all the folders in the music directory, regardless whether they are associated with music files he wants to keep.

If so - problem not solved.

[D4\/!d]

D4\/!d...wanted to retain folders containing music files and retain their associated jpg and/or text files.

I am not very good at scripts - but won't your suggestion delete all jpg and text files from all the folders in the music directory, regardless whether they are associated with music files he wants to keep.

If so - problem not solved.

Correct.

[Seshomaru Samma]

My understanding was that David wanted to delete the jpg and txt files from folders that did not include any music files - then delete all empty folders.

ie: he wanted to retain folders containing music files and retain their associated jpg and/or text files.

oh, i didn't read carefully. i always get rid of those txt files and jpegs inside music folders and assumed the OP wanted to do the same. anyway this can be achieved with the rsync command, but since i have never used it in that way i will need to do some testing first, i think that if you post the same question in advance linux forum like the debian or arch forum they will have the solution in no time.

[D4\/!d]

Alan you might be interested to know I have found a solution - well, someone else has pointed me towards Remove Empty Directories "a freeware tool to batch delete empty folders".

Not only does it zap empty folders but you can set what you deem to be empty, or not as the case maybe.

Very handy little app :)

Thanks again for all your suggestions

[Boris]

Remove Empty Directories

Please note that according to the author of the program ..... it is stated on this page :-
/>http://www.jonasjohn.de/lab/red.htm

that currently this tool works successfully on Windows XP only ?

See screenshot below :-

[D4\/!d]

Thanks Boris.

My referrer mentioned that too.

However for me using Win 7, the app displayed the offending folders so I went off and looked at those folders myself and then when satisfied, deleted them manually, just in case there was a problem in relying on the app to work correctly with Win 7.

Thanks for bothering to highlight that - I might have missed it