Is it possible to create 'traveling' shortcuts?
I have a LOT of music on external hard drives, sorted by artist. I would like to create a folder on the external for each music genre with shortcuts to all the artists that fall into that category. For instance, a shortcut to Johnny Cash would be in the 'Country' folder as well as 'Rockabilly', 'Folk' and several others.
Here's my question:
Is there a way to keep those shortcuts functional when the drive is moved to another computer? Or a simple way to update all of them with the altered path? (All the directory structure after the drive letter would remain the same) Keep in mind that there is a lot of music so altering them individualy without some sort of batch file would take a long long time. I also thought about changing the drive letter after it's plugged in to a different comp to match what it was while on my current one, but I'm not sure that would work. Also may have a drive letter conflict on the other comps I plug it into. I'm using Vista but would like any solution to also work in XP too.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Adrian
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Solution
Using shortcuts in your case wouldn't be the best way to do it. You don't actually need shortcuts. Shortcuts are directing to only one folder or file at a time, so you would probably need about 3 shortcuts for just a simple walk down the line. The best way to go is to create playlists.
If you are using Windows Media player just create a playlist (you will see the "Drag items here to create a playlist" in the right side of the desktop/screen). After all songs, of your liking, have been dragged to the playlist, click the You can see the Untitled playlist button (above all songs in the right side and the red x button). Press the untitled playlist and you will see the "Save playlist as". Save it as *wpl and *m3u. In case one of them is not working properly in another program you will have the other one. Currently I have tested the playlists created with Windows Media and they are working with Winamp so there shouldn't be such problems(Windows Vista -> Windows Xp -> Other OSes). The only thing you need to worry about is making changes. If you physically delete a song(s) from the external hard drive then you should also delete that song from your playlist. To do this you should open the playlist that has problems, delete the songs that aren't functional (no longer exists) and save it again.
So with playlists you can include all Johny Cash collection or only the songs played with June even if they are placed in multiple folders of your external hard drive.
Important. When you create a playlist for traveling do not include songs that aren't on the external hard drive.
For more reference about Windows Media Player:
http://www.vista4beginners.com/Windows-Media-Player-11
Lorin, thanks for the playlist idea...
Didn't know that they were as universal as that!
Adrian
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