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MacMost Now 372: Moving Your iTunes Library
Comments: 28 Responses to “MacMost Now 372: Moving Your iTunes Library”
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Your instructional videos are great. What I need to know is how do I move my itunes library from my HP desktop to my new MacPro laptop?
That's a tougher one. I've never tried to move a library from Windows to Mac. I would probably go with the complete rebuild option. Just drag and drop the media files in to iTunes on your Mac and let it add them to your new library. Then add any podcasts manually.
I have the same question as Dean, but I have a Dell. I need to move all my pictures, documents and music. I am wondering if I use a Firewire for this?
As for the hardware you need, the best way is just to copy them over the network if they are both sharing files on the same network. I've never seen a Mac and PC connect via firewire.
My next best option would be to simply use an external hard drive to transfer the files. Maybe a USB Flash drive -- even if you have to transfer in segments, it might still be faster than the network.
Prior to switching to Mac I used iTunes to manage my CD collection on my PC. I just copied my iTunes Media folder to an external HDD, initially as a backup first. Later, when I transitioned to a MAC I came across this site and this PodCast--perfect timing! I did what Gary said about unchecking the box in advanced for making copies to the iTUnes library and then told iTunes where to find the Library on my EXT HDD and it worked! I spared time and HD space on my iMac.
Hi Gary, I was recently in a position of having two back up drives completely full and backing up each other, and with just 300mb free on my Mac, at one point it was literally zero (and still able to open web pages). I've now bought two 500GB drives which will also backup each other so I don't need the files on my computer.
I decided I want all my music and some HD video podcasts on the two drives, but most podcasts subscriptions and the iTunes library on the computer itself because I listen to that a lot more, and I may not always have the hard drive available.
I decided the best way was to move all the music, except for the "Podcasts" folder, to the new hard drives, add the music folder so as to play it in iTunes from the hard drive. Unfortunately what I found was that this also deleted all my ratings, which messes up some of my smart folders. That is something that people really need to be aware of if, they have rated a lot of things and are moving their iTunes library.
Why when I did my time machine backup I did not see some of my music i imported myself in time machine?
See it where?
In my time machine on my external drive in music media folder. I do see some but not all. Also when you said to create a new libray from scratch do I delete the media folder from internal drive. I created a new itunes library on my external drive.
Not sure. Maybe you are looking in the wrong place. TM backups are not meant to be browsed like normal folders. It doesn't re-copy files that haven't been changed so you may be looking at the wrong "time." Hard to say what you are seeing.
What happens when you actually RUN Time Machine and browse it as you should be browsing TM?
You can delete the old iTunes library if you are sure you have all of your music files, etc., copied over.
I want to move Itunes from a PC to a Mac, can you help direct me to some instructions
You can try moving the entire library. Maybe put it on a USB drive and bring it over. But I'm not sure if it will work.
If you only have music, then why not just take your mp3/aac files and bring them over. Then drag and drop them into iTunes on your Mac. It will import them and essentially re-create your library.
We want to move our master IT library to our new Time Capsule. We also want to be able to access the library from multiple macbooks and have local copies on each macbook so that we can use IT when not at home. (is this advised?) I usually sync my iphone, ipad, itouch, ipod and shuffle from my one macbook. What is the best scenario to accomplish this? Can I sync these devices from either macbook? Thank you for your advice.
Followup: If we have local copies on both macbooks and turn TM on, will it duplicate the local libraries? How do we keep it from duplicating the locals? (We are new to time machine as of yesterday...)
If you have local copies on each, then there is no point having a central copy.
It sounds like what you really need is iCloud. I would wait for that to come out, instead of trying to come out with a pieced-together imperfect solution.
TM backs up everything, so you would have a copy of everything on the local drive, on that machine's TM drive. So you would have lots of duplicates, yes.
my entire library (except for one song) is empty! what happened? i tunes was downloading the last time i used it and there was a power outage. the next day, all my media files are gone and the library was automatically renamed coz apparently my library is damaged.
is there anyway to salvage them, i have quite a collection of podcasts and music?
Perhaps your old Library is still there, by iTunes is now using a new Library instead? Look in your Music folder and see.
Of course, if you have a Time Machine backup (you do don't you?) then you can just restore your Music folder from just before the problem happened.
Otherwise, if you can't make sense of what you see in the Music folder, I'd immediately take the Mac to the Genius Bar and get some first-hand help.
found my itunes media files - -not in another convenient library but in individual folders. had to go through several which were empty mostly.i just had to manually organize them back into itunes.am just so thankful they weren't lost.that time machine is next on my shopping list.
thanks, gary! knowing you are just a click away makes me breathe easier. i appreciate your quick, reliable response.
Hi Gary. Just want to make sure I understand some things so I don't damage my computer or iTunes collection: I have an iMac running Snow Leopard. I used Migration Assistant to bring over everything except apps from a PPC G4 running Tiger. Back when I was using the G4, I made a zip archive of my podcasts b/c I needed the space, and I stored it on an external hard drive. The problem is that now my podcast library is chaos. (I had thousands of podcasts.) I'd go to listen to something & get the message that the files weren't found. I finally created a Smart folder for "Podcasts after 1/1/11" just so I could FIND the podcasts that were actually on my iMac. 1) I don't want to do anything to lose the customizations in my MUSIC folder! Is there any way to clean up *just the podcast* section of my iTunes library & have access to my podcasts on the external HD? 2) Are you saying in your video that if an external HD is connected to my iMac, Time Machine will also back that up? 3) Does it matter that the external HD is a clone of a PPC Mac & my current iMac is Intel (obviously)? And a general question: Is there a subscribe feature on your site here that I'm missing to get notification of replies to a particular thread? Or do we just need to keep checking back periodically?
Podcasts aren't meant to exist outside of their "feeds." So if you have them as plain audio files, then it is up to you to manually arrange them. I don't have any tips. It is going to take a lot of work.
Time Machine should back up any external drives as well as your internal ones. Unless you specifically select to NOT back a drive up. Shouldn't matter where the drive originated, but I guess there could be quirks with very old drives.
A subscribe feature would require everyone to register and MacMost to maintain a huge secure database of users, etc. So please just keep checking back.
Gary, I remember watching this video a while back and transferring my iTunes libraries. I re-watched this today and noticed that in my user/itunes folder only the Album Artwork folder is present. Did I mess up by deleting the iTunes folder completely from my main HD? I wanted to just store the music file to the external but keep iTunes on the main HD like you suggested. How do I correct this, or can it be done? Thanks
You might want to watch this updated video:
http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-media-to-an-external-drive.html
As for your current situation, I'm not sure what is wrong. Does everything work OK? If so, then I'm not sure there is a problem. Just a left-over folder, perhaps.
Hi is there anyway to transfer only my movies to an external drive ?
Or is it a way to create an iTunes library on an external drive connect this drive to airport extreme and use it only with apple tv ?
You cancdo the first (See http://macmost.com/moving-your-itunes-media-to-an-external-drive.html). But you cannot do the second -- Apple TV can't just see files sitting on a drive, they have to be part of an iTunes library.
Hi Gary
I have loads of music on my external HD, but I want to have iTunes set up so that any song I place in one of my playlists is saved to my computers HD. At the moment I have lost track of which songs are saved on my ext. HD and which are on my computers HD. Some songs come up with the exclamation mark and some don't. Sometimes when I press play, I get a message that asks me if I want to locate files so I say yes and it finds that file, but then I have to do the same for each track.
I'm not sure if I have set the preferences correctly and which box to tick about keeping iTunes organised.
I watched one of your videos that said to open iTunes holding down the option key and you can then chose where your music comes from, but my iTunes doesn't ask me that when I hold down the option key when I open it. I have Snow Leopard and a Macbook Pro.
I am so confused!!
Starting iTunes with Option held down will let you choose a library, but not where the songs come from in the library.
It sounds like iTunes Match would be what you really want. Then you don't need to worry about where you music is.
Hi Gary, I have a new mac book pro and I want to move all my muscic and apps, wich method is the best one for this?
I also have music in my hard drive and other in my external drive, how I merge all in one folder? And some apps from my ipad and iphone are mixed in the external drive and the hard drive?
What is the best way to fix all these.
Thanks
For that, use migration assistant.