Emotional Paradox

I’ve been having some problems with iTunes for the last 2-3 weeks.  When I browse files, play files (music & video), etc., iTunes locks up, and all I see is the colorwheel for nearly twenty seconds.  This repeats every 30 seconds or so.

At first I thought iTunes was experiencing a conflict with a plugin or my last.fm scrobbler.  After uninstalling/reinstalling a few things and (unsuccessfully) searching the iTunes support docs, I started repairing permissions and verifying disks.  No hard drive problems.

This morning I looked at my iTunes files on my external hard drive and noticed that half of my library was in iTunes’ music library folder and half was in the drive’s root directory.  I tried to get iTunes to move the files itself, but no luck there.  And I don’t have enough free space on my external hard drive (84/120GB used) to consolidate the library.

So, this is what I’m going to try: I’m moving my entire library to my backup external hard drive, deleting all content from my iTunes drive, then moving the music back and updating iTunes’ settings.

I hope this works.

Update: After rearranging the files, I see less of the pinwheel, but it still pops up.  I’ve decided to schedule an appointment with the genius bar and get some answers.