Nope... that award went out to Bill Gates' "oh so marvelous and intuitive, crash resistant, and security ladden" Operating Systems the world has come to admire and covet so overwhelmingly. ;-) Touche! |
on a PC the info window which appears following the change of music folders says, "would you like iTunes to move and rename the files in this new folder to keep it inline with your preferences of Keep itunes organized." . or words to that effect. Hmmm, well perhaps it is different then. Thanks for pointing that out. On a Mac it would put your entire library on your external drive, given those instructions, leaving a copy of whatever was anywhere else in place. Again, PC seems to make everything oh so much more difficult :-) |
Jacks2 On a PC I don't think the terminology actually means relocating ALL files following your outline for migrating the whole of the library to another folder especially if its in another pc. on a PC the info window which appears following the change of music folders says, "would you like iTunes to move and rename the files in this new folder to keep it inline with your preferences of Keep itunes organized." . or words to that effect. Meaning IMO ONLY the files in this new folder will be moved and renamed. Not those from other folders in previous itunes music libraries or folders. I just did this twice... moving my default music folder to another location, and then back again. No files were moved physically from either location to either location during this process. It must be different on a Mac somehow. if as well though, in your prefferences, and on the same page as the instructions you provided, the "Copy files to itunes music folder wehn adding files to library" selection is checked, perhaps then this method will work. Naturally the new pc itunes software must be able to see the music files on the older pc too. I know of one who checked this above named box, just following their installation of itunes after wiping and reinstalling a new OS onto their old PC.... She had all her music on a 80 GB USB drive. her desktops C drive was only 20 GB. the default location of the itunes music folder was never changed so it remained on her C:\ drive.... she doesn't turn her pc off either. She went to bed and the next morning awoke to find her pc sluggish and despondent. The 17GB of free space she had prior to the new itunes install was gone! itunes copied all it could of the 80 GB drive onto her C\ drive overnight. ... and that's another way to migrate files... if their location can be seen by the new pc's itunes application. Just check the second box down under the music folders location on the Preffs page under the ADVANCED TAB. Selecting also the "SHARE MY MUSIC LIBRARY" box will help with this too. The folder itunes is in might have to be placed in your shared folder during this networked relocating effort. Another poster pointed out the Backup to disc plan... you can use dVDs as well for that maneuver. Just remember, at less than 5GB per disc, IF you have 500 GB of music already on the hard drive, you'll need to sit there and feed it over 100 DVDs!! one after another, over and over again. over ... and over 700 CDs. That's why I said get a USB or firewire outboard drive for this exercise in the first place. Iomega's website store had some 500 gb for well under $100. i think they had a 650GB for $80 + ship a week or two ago. use explorer to copy and paste them files onto the new HDD and let itunes find them... all you lose are the playlists that way. One last caveat here... IF ALL THE FILES WERE RIPPED TO wav? THE FILES WILL COPY, SURE. BUT THE INFO ATTACHED TO THEM LIKE TRACK #, ALBUM NAME, ETC... WON'T. That info was placed into the database of the previous pc.... not onto the file itself. One great reason to choose files which have ID tag abilities.... Good luck, ever how you do it . And back them files up. |
OK, since noone has bothered to give you a simple step-by-step and I'm snowed in here in Seattle, I'll walk you through it. This is a safe method and will leave your original files in tact and on your laptop just in case something happens. Once you've confirmed they are on the external drive you can delete them from your laptop, but I would STRONGLY recommend having a second backup copy somewhere. Hard drives DO and WILL fail eventually. This is how I'd do it on my Mac. You may want to confirm the procedure is the same on PC, but I think it is. 1. Attach the external hard drive to you computer and format it if it has not already been formatted. 2. Open iTunes 3. Go to iTunes>Preferences 4. Click the "Advanced" tab at the top of the preferences window. 5. Now in the upper part of the window it will show your iTunes music folder location - Make sure "Keep iTunes Organized" is checked, then click the "Change" button to change the iTunes music folder location. 6. Navigate to your external hard drive and choose that as the new location for your iTunes folder. 7. Click "OK" I think iTunes will ask you if you want to move all your music to the new folder (I use a Mac so not sure) - if so click "yes" iTunes should then give you a progress bar that says "updating iTunes library" 8. That's it - iTunes will proceed to copy all the files on your laptop over to your external hard drive. It will leave all the files on your laptop as well in the same folder they were in (Music>iTunes>iTunes Music on my Mac). Again, once you've confirmed they've all been moved to the external you are safe to dump the original files, but, again, I would strongly recommend a backup copy. If you don't understand any of these instructions or are not comfortable doing them, don't. I've found that the folks at the Apple Genius Bar can be very helpful should you be located nearby an Apple Store. I don't know how much they can help if you are on a PC though, but they do know iTunes. Regarding the problem you had when you first tried moving files - You must move the files within the program so it can keep track of them. If you just move the files manually outside of the program you are setting yourself up for trouble and that would explain why the files did not show up in the play list. Hope that helps. |
Interesting - I've contacted Itune's supportabout syncing my library that was 1) linked to an 'original' computer that crapped out and 2)backed up on an external drive. I can sync the ipod to the new computer , however, the only songs that are'allowed' to come over are the ones purchased via the Itunes store, any that I burned via cd need to be re-burned |
The latest iTunes version has an export function. You can export your iTunes account to CD-Roms (it will tell you how many you need and automatically backup across them). Just install iTunes on the new machine and use the import function. iTunes will restore your account and you're back in business. |
Certainly. Are the computers networked together through a router? What operating system are you using (Windows XP, Windows Vista, other)? If they are not networked together, you can copy the files, or the entire iTunes folder, to an external medium (external hard drive, or usb key, or flash card, or cd-r, or dvd-r, etc.), then connect or insert that external medium into the other computer and copy the files or folder to its hard drive. If they are networked together, just set the security settings on the folder to allow it to be shared on your local network, and the other computer will then be able to see the shared folder. You can then copy it directly over the network. Exactly how to do that depends on what operating system you are using. Regards, -- Al |
new pc? Wiping and reinstalling the OS? gETTING A NEW ONE AND GIVING THE OLD AWAY? Not sure what you are asking exactly. The files themselves can be copied onto a portable hard drive, such as a USB or NAS network hard drive. Or you can simply network the two pc's together and copy them onto the new/second confuser. If you are asking can everthing be exactly the same on the new comfuser? Maybe, but it will take duplicating the files and their exact locations onto the new pc. and then copying the Itunes library data base onto the second/nre pc AS WELL, AS A REPLACEMENT... NOT IN ADDITION TOO. if everything you have ripped is on the C drive and in the default iTunes loccations, this event will be simpler. BTW there is software on the web which will clone your hard drive (s), exactly... and/or portions of it. acronis... Ghost... etc. onto the new pc. you may not want to do this especially if the new unit is a different operating system on it. Although I do believe there are applications which will only copy portions of the old disc as well, and not dupe it 100%. I assume you don't want to lose your playlists... your playlists are located in your library file (.itl) in your itunes folder. The only problem with copying it and pasting it onto the new pc is ALL the associated files must be in the exact same folders and partition (s) on the new unit. you'll get the 'not found would you like to look for it' message everytime you want to play any file. EX... location of Little Feat's Fatman in the bathtub on the old pc is in: C\my music\itunes\little feat\waiting for columbus\disc 1\Fatman in the bathtub ...then it'll have to be in the exact same location on the new pc, if the .itl data file is copied from the old pc and placed into the new one as the default datavbase file. All of them will have to be exactly in the same places as they were in the previous computer. Even if you use the export playlist feature in itunes. Or... you can just copy all the files into the new pc, install itunes, and then tell itunes to find them, and begin new playlists. This time around however put them all onto an outboard drive... or two (backed up), and keep them there so you won't have to go thru all this again. re-ripping several hundred Gigabits of info is definitely no fun... I've done it twice now. No one told me about the 'error free' aspect or 'lossless' ideas for ripping and playing back via hard disc drives used as a source. Remember, in case of fire... grab the hard drive!! Good luck. |
