ITunes :: Transfer Its Media Library From One PC To Another Without Losing Files?
May 6, 2012
I have imported a number of Caf del Mar CD's to iTunes, and iTunes keeps scattering the tunes into several different folders in iTunes Media. It also has trouble finding album information, unless it has been downloaded from iTunes Store. Previous versions of iTunes I have tried didn't have this problem.I've tried to tidy the files manually in iTunes Media, but that usually results in duplicates, so I stopped messing with it. I actually wouldn't mind iTunes blowing up my albums into a nightmare file structure of hyper categorization in iTunes Media (Album, Album Artist, Artist, etc.) if only it recognised its own mess when I transfer the library from one iTunes library into another.
An example: I downloaded Cafe del Mar - Essential Elements featuring 13 tunes, two of these can be found in the files Cafe del Mar/Cafe del Mar Essential Elements, iTunes also created the folder Cafe del Mar/Cafe del_Mar Essential Elements containing 0 tunes!?! and the rest of the tunes are found under Rue de Soleil in the root folder, indicating ONE of the artists as the criteria for creating a folder of tunes!?!
I am trying with every fiber NOT to hate this program, and would appreciate it if someone could explain to me how I can move an iTunes Media library of aprox 54 gb from my desktop via an external harddisk onto my laptop. I have tried 4 times, and everytime the result varies. Sometime I transfer 3000 files, other times 4000. Which files follow and don't is random. I lose files tranferring to the external harddisk and lose even more files from the external disk to the new library on my Lap. Do I have to transfer song for song or can this genius program actually transfer a larger amount of files without losing half the files and duplicating the rest?
I've been trying vigorously to connect my itunes library with my Time Capsule Media files.So that I can keep the music I acually listen to on my Macbrook Pro's harddrive but have the rest of my music stored onto my time capsule and listen to when I am at home.What I thought to do was put the music i listen to in the itunes library folder on the harddrive and then change the media location to the TC media file folder.Turns out my idea was wrong.. any others care to elaborate on this issue? I'm pretty much confused with this and i haven't been able to find it on the forums anywhere
Im trying to transfer the music from my iphone to a new imac, the help centre notes say to go to the store, click authorize computer and go from there, i know its a dumb question, but i can't find the authorise computer bit
I have some large video files on an external drive, and I'd like to put them on my iPhone. I have very limited hard drive space on my computer, so I'd rather not copy all of the files onto my iTunes library. Is there any way to transfer the files directly onto my iPhone from the external drive?
I wanted to transfer his iTunes library and few pics and files but I had the wrong firewire cable so I went ahead and setup his MBP for him. I now have the correct cable and need to use migration asst. to transfer the iTunes library and files. I tried once but ran into problems. I am transferring from an iMac running Leopard that has 4 user accts. The problem I had is that it tried to transfer all accounts! All I want is the iTunes library from his account and a few folders from his desktop. What do I select when prompted during the migration? Would it be easier to erase the hard drive and reinstall SNL from the cd and use migration asst. from the beginning? I have installed MS Office 08 and I can reinstall that as well.
Machine - 15 inch MBPro 2007 running 3gb of ram Ran 170 GB Itunes library from a LaCie rugged HD (250GB) for a long time but recent purchase of a Apple TV meant upgrade of disk to WD Passport 500 GB.All files copied across and working fine.Until the last 24 hours.
All songs podcasts etc show the little exclamation mark next to them ... and "cannot be found" except manually.I have - verified and repaired the Passport - all ok Reset and redirected the itunes library in preferences.i am now on the painful step of deleting all tunes .. keeping files and readding them to the library which takes about 2 hours.
I want to deauthorise my old dead computers so I can authorise my new mac but I have already 5 computers authorised. If I de-authorise all my computers what happens to my iTunes library including all movies and tunes downloaded? How can I save my downloads and music library or are they automatically saved on my hard drive.
Ive just installed Windows 7 via Bootcamp on a MacBook. When I go into 'Computer' in Windows, I can see my Macintosh HD drive and most of its contents, some pics and other folders etc are all viewable and draggable into Windows. What im thinking now is, can I setup iTunes or even Media Player to see my iTunes library on the Mac side without actually copying it to Windows?
Ive been searching for the Library whilst in Windows but cant find it.
migrate my music to another computer, but I'm afraid of losing what I have checked and unchecked in "music" library.So let me explain a little more, not a created playlist or smart playlist. If you were to go through every single song you have and uncheck what you don't listen to this is the "master list" I'm referring to.
am new to this and have a new iPhone I was wonder if I can get a simple question answer i tried Google and there seems to be a bunch of ways to do what I?m looking for.So I want to take my friends iTunes library (5300+ songs) and transfer them to my library ( 2000+ songs ) and then once that is done I want to be able to put them on my iPhone / ipod 32g ( 32g 3gs black can anyone tell me how and keep in mind I want to kiss (keep it simple st#$id )
I have a WD my book network drive that i have connected to my router via ethernet.
i am trying to run my itunes library off /volumes/public/shared/music/itunes but when i restart my computer itunes resets the media library back to default ??
I have my iTunes folder on an external drive, and my iTunes library file was damaged. I need to import all of my media, but I don't want iTunes to make duplicates of everything.
Info: iMac (24-inch Early 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I have a number of iTunes libraries, and for the "supplementary" ones, I set the preferences so that iTunes does not copy the media to the Library, instead it just references it.Usually the original media is on a disk other than the one the Library is located on.However I have noticed that when I do this, and add media to the Library, it changes the modification date of all the original media files. This is very impolite and improper behaviour. Why does iTunes change the modification date? For a start, all my backups are made out of sync, because they now think these files have been changed when they haven't.Is there any way to stop this and make iTunes play nice?I haven't tried making the files "read only" but frankly one should not need to do that to avoid the problem (and maybe iTunes would spit the dummy with read only files?).
Info: Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2 x 2.66 Dual Core
Can one itunes library.itl file be used for music in two different itunes media files? I have an Air. Want to have music in MP3 format on the Air and the same music in Lossless format on a large external HD. Would like same playlists etc for both types. Lossless takes up too much room on the Air but for playing tunes on the road, MP3 is fine. Want to keep same music as Lossless for archiving and for playing on very good speakers at times; would be kept on the external HD. Would like to have the same playlists, ratings, etc., for music that is in both MP3 and Lossless format. For example, rating Dylan's Blood on the Tracks album as a 5 for both the tracks that are in MP3 format (that live on the Air) and the same tracks in Lossless format (that reside on the external HD). I realize I could have separate iTunes folders on the Air and the Ext HD but then would have to duplicate all the data on playlists, ratings, etc. for the two independent iTunes folders.Â
I have a 3TB USB 2.0 "media" external hard drive attached to my iMac. I use it to store all itunes media only, since I have over 300 movies. I also have tv shows, music etc. I just got a new 2TB thunderbolt LaCie Big Disk external drive. I want to transfer all stuff in "media" USB hard drive to new thunderbolt drive. Reason for doing this, sometimes current USB "media" drive lags on responding when I come back to use itunes from sleep or inactivity. I'm thinking about just dragging all content from old drive to new drive, eject old drive, name new thunderbolt drive "media", and relaunch itunes. Would that work successfully? I'd like my itunes to remember my play count. If my content play count is lost, does iMatch remembers play count and once I update my iMatch with new thunderbolt drive installed, will my play count be updated to my itunes?
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 27", 3.4 GHz, 12GB RAM.
I have my old iTunes Media file on my iPod and I want to transfer it to my new MacBook Air, but the Apple support article is too old and it doesn't work as it should.
I am not being able to sync my iPad, after having been using it for more than a year now! I had been syncing my iPad2 with iTunes on my Windows Vista machine. After my Windows Vista Laptop crashed, I replaced it with a Macbook Air 128GB (MBA). Since hard disk space on the MBA is at a premium, I transferred my iTunes Media Library to a 64 GB USB drive.
Now I tried to sync my iPad with iTunes on my MBA. iTunes on MBA saw my iPad: sync started: backing up completed without any hitch: and then came the error message "The iPad 'Rishav's iPad' cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the selected items (additional 7.88 GB required)". I checked the available memory on my MBA, USB and iPad.
Details: a. HDD of MBA: 86.6 GB out of 120.47 GB Free. b. USB Drive where iTunes Media Library is located: 39.93 GB out of 64 GB Available. c. iPad 2: 7.7 GB out of 58.1 GB Available.
Despite this availability of free memory, the sync is not going through. The memory utilization within my iPad, as seen graphically on iTunes on my MBA (when iPad is connected to MBA) is as follows:
a. Audio: 8.10 GB b. Video: 7.30 GB c. Photos: 7.50 GB d. Apps: 14.00 GB e. Books: 1.01 GB f. Others: 2.60 GB g. Free: 17.94 GB
How I can carry out my sync.
Info: MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Also involves iTunes
I've searched through all of the threads pertaining to this issue and i've yet to find a solid, good answer. Basically, I have a macbook pro retina machine with 250 GB. I have over 100 movies purchased in iTunes as well as multiple TV shows that if I were to attempt to download onto my local disk the shear size would make my HDD . Â
I have a 1TB external drive and am just wanting to make hard copies of all of my videos and music on my external. Is there a specific way to use my external disk to not only backup my computer via time machine, but to also use it to backup all of my videos and music. I don't mind watching all of my content via the iCloud but I'm having difficulties creating a library on my external and then using that to download all of my movies. As I can't download all of them on my local disk and then transfer a copy, I need to figure out a way to set up my library on the external disk and then download everything to the external.Just to clarify my questions to you powers at be: Â
1. I need to set up a library on my external drive that I can download all of my media to.
2. I want to still be able to use itunes on my macbook and just watch all of my media/music on the icloud
3. Can I still use the same drive that has all of my backed up media as a backup through time machine as well? Â Â
I've scoured all of the forums and really all I could find was how to set up libraries on an external disk. None of them ever mention whether or not I can basically use my itunes library locally however I want, knowing that everything I've ever bought is backed up on my external.
I moved my entire 1.4TB iTunes folder to my Drobo. Then I went into preferences and changed the iTunes Media Folder Location, and I also have Keep iTunes music folder organized. That worked fine all of the music, movies and TV shows opened up fine. Than after adding a new HDD to my drobo I opened my iTunes and all of a sudden it gives me the ! next to all my files and wants me to locate them, and the folder is still the same in the folder location. Is there anyway to fix this, or to automatically reconnect all my media instead of doing it 1 by 1.
I've followed several tutorials on how to get this done, as it seems so simple but it's not working on my end. I've moved the iTunes folder from the /music/ to an external hard drive. I'm opening iTunes, going to Preferences, Advanced, and replacing the iTunes Media folder location to the correct one /Volumes/Volume E/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media Â
I'm checking Keep iTunes Media folder organized & Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library, clicking on the "OK" button, and nothing happens.Â
Funny enough, Spotify finds it in seconds and I can play my music from that player instead.
When importing songs into iTunes, the software by default is set to copy the music files to the iTunes media folder and convert them to .m4a format. This, of course, results in having two copies of each song after the import is done. Before I disable this option I'd like to know what you think are the pros and cons of having this option enabled/disabled.
This morning I tried to play one of my albums and it told me it wasn't able to locate the files (on my external disk) so I located them manually and for some reason it has created a new iTunes folder in the root of my HDD (even though the iTunes prefs still pointed at the external disk) and moved the files in to that.
I deleted the album from the library and then imported the files from the new folder. It imported them fine and copied them to the exiting iTunes folder in the ext HDD but then immediately copied them back to the wrong iTunes folder. Then it told me it couldn't find them again!
I've now discovered 4 other albums that it's doing the same thing with and no matter what I do I can't get them to import, stay on the ext HDD and remain connected.
I've re-installed iTunes and restored my library file from before I upgraded to 10.1.1(4) but it's still doing the same thing.
I recently had my Microsoft music media library shared on my Sony tv through some sore of home share.However, My media library is not that up to date and I want to update it fully with my itunes library?How do I do this?
I have a Macbook with about 5,000 songs on it, all of which are burned from actual hard copies of CDs that I own. Rather than re-burning each CD to my new Windows computer, I would like to see if there's a way to transfer all these songs from Mac to PC using an external hard drive.Â
The real question is how can I format my external hard drive to be recognized on both a Macbook running Snow Leopard and a PC running Windows 7?
I am a long time PC user, and my girlfriend has just recently bought me a Macbook Pro. . So being a Pc user my entire life, i, of course have iTunes on my PC. My question is there any way to transfer my itunes library to my new Macbook Pro? Or is my only choice to do it with a Flash Drive?
So a few weeks ago I bought an external hard drive to put all my music (from multiple computers) on, with the plan of making it my itunes library that I would then only access from my macbook pro. Everything was working great. I got all the songs onto my macbook pro, and then began consolidating my library to the external hard drive. My plan was then to go into my macbook pro after everything had been transferred over to the external hard drive, and delete everything in my music folder to free up space.
Well, during the consolidation we must have had a power failure or something, because the computer shut down and thus stopped the transfer. Now, itunes is looking to my external drive for my music (some of which is there), but since the transfer stopped at some point before it was complete, there are a bunch of songs that didnt move, and therefore it can't "find". I havent deleted any of the stuff from my macbook pro music folder, so everything is still all there, but it is not looking there for my music.
I'm thinking of completely uninstalling itunes, reinstalling it, directing it to my macbook pro music folder (which in theory still has all my stuff) and then reconsolidating to the external hard drive.
I understand how to move the whole library onto an external HD, moving the media folder location on itunes preferences etc, but say i wanted to move the library (which is about 60 gigs) to my external HD but keep about 10 gigs on my internal drive? How do I do this, assuming the amount i want to keep is too large to manually drag and drop each song/album fro my external drive onto my internal one.
Also my itunes says my library is about 52 gigs, but in finder it says my songs are about 65 gigs, why is this and how can i delete the extra gigs? I'm in Home/Music/Itunes/Itunes Music incase thats the wrong location.
My cousin is trying to move her library from her desktop PC to her laptop PC. She used the itunes backup tool to transfer her library. She authorized her laptop to play her itunes store music and videos, but if she tries to play one of those protected files on the laptop it says she is not authorized to play it.
