File copying quirk

OK, I'm having a problem copying my music collection (mostly mp3s) to a new
device.

I recently bought a 320 GB external, Networked storage device that has a
built in media server; Maxtor Shared Storage II. It seems to work well
except for one bug. I have my music on the c: drive, alphabetically in
folders, by artist, then by album. As a test, I opened up a couple copies
of Windows Explorer. Then I opened 1 to C:/music(old drive) and the other to
Z;/music(new drive) and selected the first dozen or so artists and Dragged
them to the new drive to copy them. Everything copied and I could access
them - with one problem. The song files are typically named 01 - First
Song, 02 - Second Song, etc. But when I try to access them with any of my
streaming music devices, most folders show up in some random order, not 01,
02, 03, etc.

Now, I've found that I can manually create an individual album folder on the
new drive and go to the corresponding folder on c: and then sort them by
filename which puts the songs in numerical order. Then I can then drag these
songs to the folder on the new drive, they show up in the correct order when
I play the tunes.

Thus it seems like they have to be copied in the correct order to show up
correctly. So, how can I copy several hundred nested folders of
artists/music and get each folder moved in alphanumeric order??

Win XP Pro

BT wrote:
> OK, I'm having a problem copying my music collection (mostly mp3s) to
> a new device.
>
> I recently bought a 320 GB external, Networked storage device that
> has a built in media server; Maxtor Shared Storage II. It seems to
> work well except for one bug. I have my music on the c: drive,
> alphabetically in folders, by artist, then by album. As a test, I
> opened up a couple copies of Windows Explorer. Then I opened 1 to
> C:/music(old drive) and the other to Z;/music(new drive) and selected
> the first dozen or so artists and Dragged them to the new drive to
> copy them. Everything copied and I could access them - with one
> problem. The song files are typically named 01 - First Song, 02 -
> Second Song, etc. But when I try to access them with any of my
> streaming music devices, most folders show up in some random order,
> not 01, 02, 03, etc.
> Now, I've found that I can manually create an individual album folder
> on the new drive and go to the corresponding folder on c: and then
> sort them by filename which puts the songs in numerical order. Then I
> can then drag these songs to the folder on the new drive, they show
> up in the correct order when I play the tunes.
>
> Thus it seems like they have to be copied in the correct order to
> show up correctly. So, how can I copy several hundred nested folders
> of artists/music and get each folder moved in alphanumeric order??
>
> Win XP Pro

After the copy, click on the Filename header. It'll sort them ascending or
descending; up to you.