Files both in virtual folders and real folders

[parade]

I think I first should tell you, what I intend to do. Perhaps you can tell me, whether my intended solution for that what I want is the best way to do it.

I have MP3s in real folders named by the artists. Additionally I want to add virtual folders for albums and put those files in there, that belong to this special album. So it would not be necessary to keep them physically in 2 real folders and they don't cover so much disk space.

Is this the best and most practical way to do what I want?
Is there any limit in number for virtual folders and files in it?

[Giant Eagle]

yes, thats the best way to solve that problem. Its a virtual file system after all, you can bend it as much as you want.

[parade]

yes, thats the best way to solve that problem.

Experimeting with virtual album-folders there are showing some problems that I didn't think about before.

The real MP3s are names "Artist - Songtitle.mp3".
The virtual album-songs I would like to be named "Track-Number Songtitle.mp3".

As I noticed it is possible to rename the virtual files, but I think it would to be far too much work to rename each file manually.
Is there any way to rename them in an automatic way?

Before thinking about virtual album-folders I experimented with physically existing link-files in real folders with different file-names. HFS takes the links but doesn't take the name of the links. It takes the names of the linked files.

Last:
If I download a file out of the virtual album folder it is named by the virtual name. I would like to have it named by the real name. Is there any way to do this.

Greetings
parade

[MarkV]

Hello,

do you guys know about hardlinks, junctions and symbolic links? You can have the (physically) same file in many folders with different names. Unfortunately, Windows itself contains no easy way to do this yourself. What you need is the Hardlink Shell Extension.

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

You must make shure your filesystem is NTFS, though...

[Giant Eagle]

What you want is, afaik, not possible

it is possible, however, to create something like this: "Track number - songtitle"

"1 - artist - trackname"

you can do it by using this as the file's name:

Code: [Select]

%sequential% - %item name%

Assuming the template you use does not already make use of the %sequential% symbol.

[rejetto]

it is possible, however, to create something like this: "Track number - songtitle"
"1 - artist - trackname"
you can do it by using this as the file's name:

Code: [Select]

%sequential% - %item name%


i guess he wants the track number of the album, not just a sequential number like this.

[rejetto]

As I noticed it is possible to rename the virtual files, but I think it would to be far too much work to rename each file manually.
Is there any way to rename them in an automatic way?

i guess you want to use the track number of the ID3 tag.
Sorry i don't know an easy way for this job.
Maybe i may introduce a feature to make HFS add files specifying their virtual name. This way it would be possible. I like this thing, and i will add it to the to-do-list.

Before thinking about virtual album-folders I experimented with physically existing link-files in real folders with different file-names. HFS takes the links but doesn't take the name of the links. It takes the names of the linked files.

i guess it would make more sense to use the link name as virtual name.
if no one sees anything bad in this, i will change it this way.

If I download a file out of the virtual album folder it is named by the virtual name. I would like to have it named by the real name. Is there any way to do this.

no.
but though i can imagine a good use for such thing, i don't think it would be good in your case.

[parade]

do you guys know about hardlinks, junctions and symbolic links? You can have the (physically) same file in many folders with different names.

I have experimented al little with thits NTFS-feature and I think it is a good solution for what I want.

Greetings
parade

[MarkV]

If the features are supported, why don't use them? Sadly M$ decided not to have an easy way to accomplish this, thus you need the 3rd party extension. If M$ would deliver cars, they'd come with locked doors and no keys, lol. The same with sparse files, oh well...

[bacter]

MARK V
As a registred M$ user you would be in the happy situation that the next servicepack includes the special-transparency keys to open doors. You only have to purchase new doors that support this keys and upgrade battery to have enough power, as standard closed doors are no longer supported.

[MarkV]

And you're still lucky with NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista, because Windo$ws 9x had no doors at all.

That said, there is a way, fsutil.exe. It is a commandline app, useable for me, maybe for you, too, but definitely not for Joe Average.