Big nervous iTunes operation!

steinooo · 8 Apr 2011 at 09:28

Hi all,

my Dad lives and breathes his massive (100k+ songs) iTunes collection which he stores on an external USB drive and accesses from a Windows XP laptop.

He has a new Win 7 laptop and I just want to confirm with knowledgable people that all I need to do is drag the folders containing the music files (which iTunes names strangely) into the big library pane?

thanks. Nervous. If I lose his tunes I think he'll cry!

Engram · 8 Apr 2011 at 09:29

Instead of moving the files, why not copy them? Then you still have the files on the external drive if it all goes horribly wrong.

moss · 8 Apr 2011 at 09:41

He should really have it backed up to another location already, another external would be under £100. Speaking from experience, losing that much data is a pain.

edscdk · 8 Apr 2011 at 09:44

tell him to copy and paste it to his my music folder,

once done, use the exteral drive as a backup...

anything other than making a copy to his new laptop is stupid.

100k tunes x ~15mb each = 150gb so it should fit on the laptop... (i think i did that right)

unless he has another backup?

steinooo · 8 Apr 2011 at 10:50

good points about the backups, I take a backup which I keep away from his house annually, but his new HDD in his laptop is 500GB so it makes a lot of sense to keep his main store on his laptop's hdd, then back that up to the external drive. It's easier to not have to deal with an external hdd all the time too.

With regards the method though, am I right in thinking it's just a "dragging into the iTunes main pane" job?

I don't have to mess around with copying any xml files anywhere do I?

SiriusB · 8 Apr 2011 at 11:42

If he doesn't use an iPod or iPhone, then you can just add the entire music folder to the new iTunes.

Dunno about drag and drop, but you can certainly do it via File > Add to Library or whatever.

steinooo · 8 Apr 2011 at 12:00

SiriusB said:
If he doesn't use an iPod or iPhone, then you can just add the entire music folder to the new iTunes.

Dunno about drag and drop, but you can certainly do it via File > Add to Library or whatever.

he does use an iPod. That was going to be my next question actually. Assuming he's never going to sync it with his old laptop again, what is the procedure for syncing with his new laptop? Is it a case of plugging it in, and iTunes on the laptop will overwrite what's on the iPod with what's in the iTunes library on it's hard drive?

cotton31 · 8 Apr 2011 at 13:58

The best way would be:

1) Open iTunes on new laptop so that it creates a new library and folder structure.

2) Copy the entire iTunes folder from the external HD and overwrite the folder created in step 1.

3) iTunes on the new laptop should then recognize the new library, and you also have a backup on the external HD.

His iPod will still work as it thinks its still the same library (which it is, albeit on a new computer).

SiriusB · 8 Apr 2011 at 15:33

cotton31 said:
His iPod will still work as it thinks its still the same library (which it is, albeit on a new computer).

Not necessarily. The XML crap may not be with the music on the external HDD. It really depends on how it is setup on the old laptop.

For example, all my music is on my server, but the actual XML for the library is somewhere in my home directories on my MBP. Simply copying the music elsewhere wouldn't copy the library.

If it is an old type of iPod [i.e. not an iPod Touch] it wouldn't really matter. New iTunes will spaz and want to delete the contents. No biggie. You still have all your music so just wack it back on.

steinooo · 8 Apr 2011 at 16:59

SiriusB said:
If it is an old type of iPod [i.e. not an iPod Touch] it wouldn't really matter. New iTunes will spaz and want to delete the contents. No biggie. You still have all your music so just wack it back on.

that's what I thought would happen. It's not a Touch its a 120GB classic.

linktoinsanity · 8 Apr 2011 at 17:43

I just keep both my library file and the library on a seperate media dedicated hard disk from my boot drive. It works pretty well. It's backed up onto my backup drive aswell...

steinooo · 8 Apr 2011 at 19:42

cheers for all your help, copied the library from external USB drive to the laptop's HDD (I overestimated it btw, it was 12k not 100k!) then clicked the "find files from my home folder" link in iTunes and it constructed a new library, then connected the iPod and it asked if whether to overwrite the files on the iPod, selected yes, took about 45 mins and jobs done! simple!

thanks again everyone