reorganizing library?

[gerdfromgermany]

Hi.
Currently, I have about 30000 songs in my library, divided into sub-folders for every artist in one huge folder.
but I would like to reorganize the library with one folder for each letter, e.g. A, B, C, and then putting the corresponding artists within those folders.
But I have several huge playlists, and I fear that winamp wont find the songs afterwards.
is that right? and how can I avoid that?
Many thanks,
Gerd

[Koopa]

If the playlists have relative paths, you won't get trouble, if the playlists have absolute paths, they won't work anymore, because Winamp won't find any file because of the obsolete path location.

If number 2 is the case, the only thing you can do is correcting the paths manually with a text editor. If your editor has a nice 'find and replace' feature, you can save some time/work, but nevertheless, this means a lot of work, though.

[gerdfromgermany]

Originally Posted by Koopa

If the playlists have relative paths, you won't get trouble, if the playlists have absolute paths, they won't work anymore, because Winamp won't find any file because of the obsolete path location.

If number 2 is the case, the only thing you can do is correcting the paths manually with a text editor. If your editor has a nice 'find and replace' feature, you can save some time/work, but nevertheless, this means a lot of work, though.

hi.
thanks for the answer.
unfortunately, I'm not sure what a "relative" path is?

[Koopa]

Absolute paths contain an absolute path, for example:

C:\Music\A\test1.mp3

while relative paths only contain a part of the path, for example:

A\test1.mp3 or test1.mp3

relative paths are more flexible, you can move files to other drives and the infos are still valid.
If you moved files and the infos in the playlist contain absolute paths, all infos will be wrong, because the player cannot find the files in the target dir anymore.

Take a look here:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfadname

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_%28computing%29