My husband bought an imac for the first time. We backed up our separate itunes libraries on external hard drive but when it was retrieved, the 2 libraries had merged and they only appear in my husbands area. How do we split them back up again?

Really need some help here. We got the guys at PC World to back up our old computer onto and external hard drive, but our libraries merged. I've tried retrieving the whole thing from the external hard drive but can't seem to identify any files to retrieve. If I could copy the whole thing into my area, we could both just erase the things from each others' libraries that we didn't want. We are imac virgins, and need some advice!

if it's content purchased from the iTunes store we're talking about, the following script will help to tell the files apart:
Track Down Purchases
This script will examine each track in a selection of tracks or a selected playlist to determine if it was purchased from the iTunes Store and then copies it to a discrete playlist named for the person who purchased it, eg: "Steve Ballmer's Purchased Music". Recognizes song, video, and audiobook purchases. Purchaser information is gleaned by examining the track's file, which, depending on file location and access speed, can take as long a second per track.
for content you added manually (i.e. CD rips), i don't know of any easy way once the libraries were merged.

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lisacooney wrote:
I have recently moved all of my files to a larger external hard drive
How did you move these files?

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If you subscribed to iTunes match the songs are kept in icloud. If you didn't but you did save the actual iTunes library folder which should include the music, video, etc. you should be able to just drag this file back to your machine in the same place and when you open iTunes it will give you a chance to identify the iTunes library folder.
You can test this to find out if you saved the media files or not and don't need to attach your nano to do it.
You are correct that once you connect the nano it will clear the existing files from it and sync it with the new iTunes library.
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I tried transferring my iphoto library from my old macbook onto my new macbook pro (via external hard drive), but when i open the new iphoto, it seems to have transferred ALL images ever used on my old macbook. so i tried to just del

i tried transferring my iphoto library from my old macbook onto my new macbook pro (via external hard drive), but when i open the new iphoto, it seems to have transferred ALL images ever used on my old macbook. so i tried to just delete all those images so i could try a different approach to transferring, but the new iphoto won't let me do anything and every time i try to delete anything it crashes (since the image amount is so high). please help!!
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To move an iPhoto Library to a new machine:
Link the two Macs together: there are several ways to do this: Wireless Network,Firewire Target Disk Mode, Ethernet, or even just copy the Library to an external HD and then on to the new machine...
But however you do choose to link the two machines...
Simply copy the iPhoto Library from the Pictures Folder on the old Machine to the Pictures Folder on the new Machine.
Then launch iPhoto. That's it.
This moves photos, events, albums, books, keywords, slideshows and everything else.

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I have followed th steps to back up my itunes library to an external hard drive but when I try to drag the itunes folder to the hard drive it does not let me. Any suggestions?

Go through the below forum with similar issue and follow the process mentioned by "Macjack" in the beginning.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4499820

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Try starting up your Mac while holding down the Option key. That should prompt the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk then click Restart.
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YAY! That did it.
Thank you so much.
And a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year to you!
bonnie

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The "consolidate" command has nothing to do with making backups. You use that command when you have had content in multiple places and you wish to have it now all in a single iTunes folder. If all of your content is already in the iTunes folder, then the "consolidate" command will be of no use to you. You will make further backups using whatever method you normally would use to make backups of your data in Windows.
Regards.

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You had already done "Repair" and "Rebuild"? These usually takes scores of minutes or hours.
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This is where iTunes stores backups for different operating systems: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
I do not use a Windows machine, have a Windows Vista Dell I rarely startup now. But, from what I remember with Win boxes is, you will have to create on the external hard drive a file system like that one iTunes normally uses, and then in the iTunes preferences or control panel edit the location for the storage to specify the name of the external hard drive, or its letter code, with the name of that file system you created on the exernal drive.
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Have you told iPhoto about the new location? If you haven't then iPhoto is ignoring it and continuing to use the original one. If you have completely transferred the library to the external hdd then you can delete the one on your internal one, but make sure that the one on your external drive is complete and has the iPhoto library icon on it. Whatever you do, don't lose your photos!

My husband bought an imac for the first time. We backed up our separate itunes libraries on external hard drive but when it was retrieved, the 2 libraries had merged and they only appear in my husbands area. How do we split them back up again?

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