I need to move my music from my PC to iMac with a twist

Raymond Lin

Raymond Lin

Raymond Lin

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My music in my PC is store in an separate HD to where the HD the OS is stored. And the itunes folder is in My Documents, along with a few music videos and songs downloaded from itunes itself and also the games and where i backed up the stuff from my iphone.

Getting an iMac today, and i like to transfer everything, the music, the album art, and all the iPhone backups and stuff to the mac, what is the best way to do this?

I have an external 500G HD at my disposal, and the iMac should be wirelessly networked to the PC. I have no idea where do I start to move the music and backups
 
If you have an external drive then can't you just take the files from your PC, put them onto the external HD and then plug that into your iMac? If not then maybe this will be the solution to your problem. :)
 
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Plug the 500GB drive in and change your iTunes storage to that as well as ticking the box to let iTunes manage it, then consolidate your library. This will move all your songs onto the external drive. Then plug that drive into your iMac and tell itunes to look there for your library, which should get all your music playing in iTunes. Then set iTunes to a location on your Mac HDD and consolidate the library again.
 
Caged said:
Plug the 500GB drive in and change your iTunes storage to that as well as ticking the box to let iTunes manage it, then consolidate your library. This will move all your songs onto the external drive. Then plug that drive into your iMac and tell itunes to look there for your library, which should get all your music playing in iTunes. Then set iTunes to a location on your Mac HDD and consolidate the library again.
Click to expand...

Won't that mess up my filing structure in my HD ?

as for my phone...in the ideal world, I could just sync the iPhone to the imac and it download from my phone to the imac....but I guess its not that simple as it'll need all the video and music in the imac first to do that?
 
On the imac, everything itunes is in Music/itunes/itunes music (same as the PC). So really you'll need to copy everything there. You could network the two together, give yourself privileges on the PC to copy the files across wirelessly, or you could put them onto an external drive and copy them all back onto the imac.

How much music/other files do you have?
 
a.hay said:
On the imac, everything itunes is in Music/itunes/itunes music (same as the PC). So really you'll need to copy everything there. You could network the two together, give yourself privileges on the PC to copy the files across wirelessly, or you could put them onto an external drive and copy them all back onto the imac.

How much music/other files do you have?
Click to expand...

There's about 40G of music, and where do i put those files in the imac and is it the same filing structure?
 
Same filing structure, your iTunes Music Folder needs to be copied into the iTunes folder in the Music folder in your home... folder :p

Dont work it off the external HD as I'd imagine its NTFS and you cannot write to it.
 
Concorde Rules said:
Same filing structure, your iTunes Music Folder needs to be copied into the iTunes folder in the Music folder in your home... folder :p

Dont work it off the external HD as I'd imagine its NTFS and you cannot write to it.
Click to expand...

I am going to plug the blank 500G HD into the mac, format it in OSX. Then wirelessly transfer 40G of music from my PC to the 500G HD......Its the only way to do it i think as currently:-

Windows – internal HD – 40G of Music

Into Mac

The only other way I could think of is move the music to the external HD…then copy it to the Mac internal HD, and then format the external HD and then move it back over. Which seems too cumbersome, and too much moving……wifi seems easier and probably quicker, just hope I don’t lose connection in the middle.
 
You can puit you Mac in Target mode and it will act like a big Firewire Drive. You will need MacDrive on the PC and a firewiure cable (and a firewire PC)

From there it is a single fast fast copy operation.
 
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