I haven't been ignoring you, peter. I've been trying to wrap my mind around this concept for the past week, and there must be something fundamental that I don't understand.

Wouldn't that just add another layer of complexity to the directory stucture? Instead of looking at a directory, I would be looking at a pointer that points to the directory... not too sure what the advantage is, other than reducing the amount of physical file movement, which isn't all that great to begin with. Average of a gigabyte per week, which amounts to six one-hundredths of one percent of the data on the drive.

Would I have to go through and directory by directory create the shortcuts? That's over 4600 of them. Or is there some automated process that would do them for me?

Then there is the question of loading the files into the iPod. I use Copy Trans Manager (no iTunes on MY computer!, thank you Tony Fabris) and I don't think it would work to try and drag-and-drop shortcuts instead of directories/files into my iPod. So I'd still have to track down the actual directories, one at a time, rather than just drag the whole iPod Pending directory into the Shuffle.

Finally, I think I might have a clue as to what happened to the disappeared directories/files. My backup drive is a 2-TB drive in an external e-SATA dock. Something is not quite right with that setup, and on at least four occasions the computer has locked up during backup, forcing me to do a reboot with the backup software nominally still running. The dock can also use USB-2, and when connected that way I have never had a problem, so I have disconnected the e-SATA and switched to USB. I know that a forced reboot during processing can cause Bad Things to happen...

I was able to streamline and to some extent automate the F:> audit process, and what took over six hours the first time can now be done in 22 minutes. There were, unsurprisingly, more than 100 small errors, differences between my Excel index file and the directory structure in the F:> drive, misspellings, missing middle initial in an author's name, that sort of thing. I have recovered all but nine of the missing books (I guess the Alaska State Library System is my ultimate fail-safe backup! )and I am scheduled to get those in the next few weeks.

If you want some entertainment, look at the attached file. It is my "roadmap" for auditing my F:\Library.

tanstaafl.