Moving music to new computer via an external hard drive

Question

I need to move my music library to my new laptop. On my old computer, my music was stored on an external hard drive. I want to use that hard drive to copy my music onto the new laptop. I've installed iTunes and used the default library for my music on the laptop. I think I just need to shut down iTunes, plug in the external drive to the laptop and then copy my music to the designated library. Will that work? Also - big question. How do I copy the artwork, playlists etc. from my old computer? Do I copy the xml and itl files from the C drive on the old computer and overlay these files on the laptop? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

clemsongal88 wrote:
Alright - bear with me. I'm actually an IT person,
Oh no, your friend is doomed now! "Sure, I can do that for you..." Famous last words.
clemsongal88 wrote:
First of all, he has 30,000 songs, so moving things could be an issue
Ya, it will take a LONGGGG time to transfer that much stuff from the external to the internal, so that is part of the reason I suggest trying to run it off the external first like he does currently with his older computer. The other reason is that he likely has the database files, artwork folder, etc. on the internal and the media files on the external, so everything is not self contained in one place so a little more effort to consolidate, so better to do it one step at a time.
clemsongal88 wrote:
1. Will I be able to use a flash drive or something to copy the itl, xml, etc. from the C drive to the new laptop (this is the iTunes folder you were referring to, right?) If so, I copy the whole iTunes folder from the old computer to a flash drive, go to the laptop, rename the existing iTunes folder on the C Drive and then copy from the flash drive onto the laptop.
Yes, flash drive should work or even the external drive itself can be used. If the new computer has had iTunes already installed and run, then it should already have the same iTunes folder in place. Assuming the library is empty, just go ahead and delete the current version on the new computer and then copy in the iTunes folder off the thumb drive (from the old computer) into the same place as the one you just deleted.
In theory, when you open iTunes, it is going to go to that folder for the .itl database file and it should find the one from the old computer and open it up.
clemsongal88 wrote:
2. Plug external drive into the laptop
3. Start iTunes
4. Hopefully iTunes on the laptop will recognize the database - so at that point will it put it all his music onto the C drive of the laptop?
Correct. Ideally it should open up and his old library will pop up looking like it did on the old computer.
If the library comes up blank, then for some reason is didn't read the .itl file and may be looking somewhere else for it and will have generated a new .itl file where ever that is. If that is the case, you can close iTunes, then reopen it using those instructions (hold down the Shift key while starting iTunes from the Start menu I think it is). It should then ask you if you want to create a new library (no) or open an existing library (Yes!). You want to open existing and then point iTunes to the .itl file from the old computer that you copied into the new computer. It should open the library up correctly.
clemsongal88 wrote:
If not, all I have to do is make sure on the Advanced tab that it is pointed to the C drive and then do 'consolidate'?
No. That part is the next step.
What we did above is we got the new computer to open the old library and able to access it from the external hard drive. So at that point, you are running iTunes like the old computer, where the library is stored on the external and that database files on the internal.
The advanced tab setting and CONSOLIDATE commands were to address your second question about how to get it all back into the internal drive of the new computer so you no longer have to use the external drive. So after we have confirmed the library works, when run off the external, next step is to tell iTunes we want it to use the internal drive for now on and we set that in the preferences to change the location of the "iTunes Music folder" from the external drive back to the internal drive, typically putting it into the iTunes folder.
When you change this location, nothing will happen. All this does it sets up where iTunes will store any NEW/FUTURE additions to the library. So if you wanted you can leave all the stuff on the external, change the location to the internal, and new stuff added would now be put on the internal drive while anything on the external drive will remain where it is and will be accessed from there. So you can have iTunes access media from a number of locations if you want.
But in your case, you want to bring everything back together again. The CONSOLIDATE command does one simply thing. Anything not currently in the "iTunes Music folder" location, as set in the preferences, is copied into that location and the database updated so iTunes uses that copy now. So if you had stuff scattered all over different drives, they will now all be self contained in the single location. In your case, we are taking advantage of the consolidate command to make iTunes move the library from one location (the external) to another (the internal) and update the links.
As noted, Consolidate copies the files, so it is up to the user to remove the old copies if needed. Not a big deal for you since everything is on the external and you are just going to unplug it. But if you had tunes scattered all over your internal drive and then used CONSOLIDATE to bring them all into the single folder location, the original copies will remain scattered all over the internal drive, but now ignored by iTunes.
clemsongal88 wrote:
5. Am I making any sense? : )
Of course!
Cheers,
Patrick