Restoring iTunes on reformatted HD from firewire external

Hello. I recently had to reformat my internal hard drive (erase everything and install Tiger). Before doing so, I was able to backup my iTunes folder onto an external HD. Included were several old iTunes libraries, including several damaged ones (likely caused by the problems that led to my reformatting the entire drive). I also moved over any preference files that I could find. I was already keeping my music files on the external, b/c they won't fit on my internal HD.
My question: how do I restore all my old playlists, etc.? I tried just dragging over the entire iTunes folder (with all the libraries, not the music files), but when I launched iTunes, it did the old "not valid, creating new library," and then I could only access some of my songs and none of the playlists showed up. I'd like to still keep the music on the external and access it from there.
Thanks for any help!
iMac G4   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

All that info is in the iTunes Library file. See this: What are iTunes library files: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660

Similar Messages

  • Any way to restore iTunes and iPhoto libraries from failed Time Machine backup?

    Is there a way to restore iTunes and iPhoto libraries from an unmountable Time Machine backup?
    Background: I received an update alert on my iMac (mid-2010, 1TB) from Time Machine (wirelessly connected to a Time Capsule, 2TB 2013)  that it required an update and required rebooting, of course, it happened when I was in the middle of a project and I postponed the restart for later.  That evening I turned off the computer and coincidentally the next morning, the iMac would not start; it loaded to the Apple logo and about an 1/8 of the progress bar would load before the iMac would turn off.
    The iMac had been fine to that day (OS upgrades and all since 2010) so I was assuming something misfired when I declined the Time Machine update. I tried the PRAM and SMC resets mentioned in the forums but no dice. I then went into Disk Utility to try repairs and there were errors on the hard drive that could not be fixed. My next step was to erase the drive and restore from my Time Machine backup. Before doing that I checked Disk Utility and to my horror,  it told me that my Time Machine backups were unmountable so of course my first thought was that all my files were gone.
    The TC was under warranty so I called support and they referred me to the local Genius Bar. The Genius was great and showed me that my files weren't lost even though the Time Machine backup was unmountable. They recommended I erase the partitions, starting from scratch and I would have to transfer the Time Machine backup files manually by directly connecting an ethernet cable from the TC to the computer. If that didn't work, the hard drive was bad and needed replacement which they could take care of.
    I followed their recommendation and the hard drive is fine. I was so relieved to hear that my files were safe that I forgot to ask about all of the metadata that was lost in iTunes (de-selected songs, playlists, rankings, play counts) and iPhoto (geotags, names, etc). Any ideas / help? I sank considerable time into my music and photos and would love to have that time back.
    FWIW, I'm in the process of buying an external hard drive as a secondary backup to the TC as my confidence is a little shaken on the product line - the first time I ever actually need a backup and the backup is unmountable. My whole point of spending a little more and buying into the Apple ecosystem for a backup solution was to streamline the backup process and avoid these types of issues.

    Thank you for the reply. I tried the Disk Utility to repair my TC's Time Machine backup disk with no luck, it stopped with the message:
    Disk utility stopped repairing "iMac"
    Disk Utility can't repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
    It took a night but I was able to copy all the TC Time Machine files to the external hard drive as a backup to a backup just in case. I'm still pretty bummed the TC's backup didn't allow for Disk Utility's restore functionality. Fortunately, the iPhoto library backup I dragged to the iMac from the Time Capsule backup worked without a hitch. On the downside, the "iTunes Library.itl" backup I dragged over is locked so now I'm checking out the forums for any ways to fix that. I temporarily created a new iTunes library with all my apps and music but plan on reverting to the old iTunes library if possible so I can start syncing my iOS devices again.

  • Have copied my iTunes library back-up from my external hard drive (saved from my iTunes on my pc) onto my new Macbook and loads of the tracks have been duplicated, some four times some not at all?? any ideas guys?

    Have copied my iTunes library back-up from my external hard drive (saved from my iTunes on my pc) onto my new Macbook and loads of the tracks have been duplicated, some four times some not at all?? any ideas guys?

    Have copied my iTunes library back-up from my external hard drive (saved from my iTunes on my pc) onto my new Macbook and loads of the tracks have been duplicated, some four times some not at all?? any ideas guys?

  • Moving the iTunes repository from FireWire external to Airport Extreme

    I am looking at getting the Airport Extreme, and moving my iTunes repository from an external firewire drive to an Airport Extreme attached disk. Ideally I'd like to just reattach my firewire disk to the Airport Extreme (it has a USB connection point as well). Is there any easy way to tell iTunes the new mount point? I know I could put in a second disk and do the move within iTunes, but that seems like days of copying for no valid purpose.
    Thoghts or ideas?

    The Airport Extreme base station doesn't have a firewire port. You'd have to move your music to a USB drive.
    You also might want to check out Jason O'Grady's experience with putting his library on an Air Disk.
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/index.php?cat=52&submit=view

  • Erasing all music from iTunes and starting over from an external hard drive

    Hello,
    I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
    Well this backfired big time probably because I did not follow any sort of instructions.
    1st I backed up Finder > music > iTunes > iTunesMedia folder to two seperate external hard drives just in case.
    2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
    3rd I finally decided to erase content from iTunes Media Folder
    4th I deleted the iTunes Media folder because I felt it was stupid to have a "iTunes Media folder" and "iTunes Music Folder" in the same place but not actually have anything in the iTunes Music folder (probably really stupid of me in retrospect)
    5th I unchecked the box under iTunes > Preferences > Advanced "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"
    6th I believe I changed the location of "iTunes Media folder location" in the Advanced area under Preferences thinking this should be pointing to my external drive
    I then believe I tried to run iTunes and play my content, but when I did all it did was copy my music/media back to my MacBook Pro hard drive but I did not realize it was doing this until later the next day when I tried to play some music and realized I had 3 copies of everything in my iTunes program (ie music movies podcasts tv shows etc) however, I could play all three versions of whatever it was I selected there was no "error message" saying that iTunes could not located that file, would you like to try and locate.
    So I checked Finder to see if there were 3 copies of everything (by the way at this point I stopped connecting my external hard drive for the sake of making more copies on iTunes) but there wasn't??? So I tried to go through Option+View > Show Exact Duplicate Copies and delete all but one of the items. When I would delete them and it asked if I wanted to move them to my Trash Bin I clicked yes and all the 2nd and 3rd copies were gone!!! Yeah, so when I played those songs/movies that remained they would play!!!!!
    Than I realized that my Internal Hard Drive was almost full and went looking around for things I could delete to help make my MacBook run better, and realized that my Trash had a large amount of data in it and that emptying it would significantly reduce space on my Internal Hard Drive, but when I went back to iTunes and selected music or movies to play it placed the infamous "!" next to that track or movie and it could not locate those items anymore?
    Long long long story short hopefully, can anyone help me set up iTunes so that it only can play content/media off of my external drive and not take up space on my internal hard drive? Is this even possible to do that or will always start to copy those files from the external hard drive back onto the internal hard drive? and second is there anyway to use the Apple router external hard drive to use as the source for all my media?
    PS I am running Mac OS X Lion version 10.7.5 and iTunes 11.1.3 (8) 64-bit

    2012EVOL wrote:
    Hello,
    I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
    Quit iTunes.
    Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external. Don't only copy the iTunes media folder.
    Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
    This is all you need to do.
    Everything for iTunes (except the application) is on the external.
    2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
    Make a shortcut to this folder on your desktop.
    Nothing should be in this folder. When you put a file here, it will get moved by iTunes and added to the library.
    The reason it had files in it is because you moved it.

  • How to use itunes, and sync ipod from an external hard drive

    All of my music files are on my external hard drive. I moved my itunes media folder to my external hard drive. I have 150 gig of music and only 25 gig free on my macbook, so I'd like to put it all on my ipod without putting it on my computer, as there isn't enough memory. Every time I try to move the music from my external hd to itunes it starts adding music to my computer's internal hard drive- i thought this would be solved by having my media library in my external hd but it isn't I'm not sure how to get around this. I've already followed the directions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449 but it didn't accomplish what I wanted: For all my music to show up in itunes, and be able to sync my ipod to it, without the music being on my computer's internal hd. I have a macbook.

    Make sure the copy to iTunes media folder is unchecked.

  • Need to move (consolidate) my iTunes files (media/library) from my external hard drive (i use time capsule as an ext hd)  back to my main iMac where my iTunes is located.

    I used my time capsule (1st gen) as an external hard drive to store my iTunes files and my iTunes app is on my main iMac.  Now, I've decided to move those iTunes files from my external hard drive (TC) back to my iMac where my iTunes app is located.  What is the best way to do this?

    Is the Time Capsule the right piece of kit for the job?
    Not really, no.
    TC is a dumb as board hard disk in an airport extreme router. It has no media servers.. no backup.. it is slow and designed for TM target for laptops. The major one here is lack of backup. Any files you put on the TC can and will be lost at some point.. and to backup you need to have a computer connected to it with an external hard disk.. and a 3rd party backup because TM is too dumb to back up network drives.
    TC is designed to spin up slow and spin down quickly at the end of backup. You will have issues when you stream media from it.
    ATV needs to connect to itunes server.. not the library. You will still need a computer running. Same for lots of things.. since apple designed their system to be dependent on itunes.
    The best idea is a media computer.. a mac mini is ideal. Don't need the latest greatest.. but an actual mac running itunes. Unfortunately it doesn't have large internal drives.. so it is still a bit kludgy in needing a fast external drive.. but at least you have automatic backups.

  • My laptop crashed and HD had to be wiped clean. How do I restore iTunes on my laptop from my iPad? Using version 4.2.1 on my iPad and Windows 7 on laptop. My backup was lost with the HD crash.

    How can I restore iTunes from my iPad on a laptop the had the HD wiped after a system crash? Using iOS 4.2.1 and Windows 7. My backup was on the HD that crashed (I know...).

    You'll have to download the latest version of iTunes app from Apple' site.
    Sync Your iOS Device with a New Computer Without Losing Data
    http://www.howtogeek.com/104298/sync-your-ios-device-with-a-new-computer-without -losing-data/
     Cheers, Tom

  • Boot from Firewire External, OS 9.2, Lombard 400 with OrangeLink card?

    I have a Lombard 400, running 9.2.1 with an OrangeLink Card. I have a Firewire external drive with a bootable 10.3.9 drive cloned to it. I have sucessfully booted from this drive to clone the drive to another powerbook I have, so I know it is bootable. The firewire drive shows up on the desktop of the Lombard and I can choose it as the startup disk in the control panel. However, when I restart the computer, it boots back into OS 9. What step am I missing here? I read documentation that the Firewire card is okay for booting.

    Amy,
    Unfortunately you cannot boot through a FireWire PC card; it does not have the onboard firmware necessary to initialize at startup as does built-in FireWire. In addition, it does require supporting software and this does not load until the OS loads. The only bootable external drive would be a pure SCSI HD or an ATA/IDE HD in a case that uses a SCSI interface.
    There is one possible alternative which I have never tried, but the application XPostFacto, used to install OSX on unsupported machines, can be used as a "helper" to boot an external FW drive through a PC card. How well this works I just don't know...
    http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/

  • Can I restore settings, apps and data from an external hard drive to new Macbook Pro?

    I recently lost my Macbook Pro to water damage.  It was about 3 years old and tuned for comfort.  Unfortunately, my most recent backup is at least 3 months old.  I purchased a new MacBook Pro and I'm wondering what my options are for migrating my settings, apps and data from the old hard drive to the new MacBook Pro?  I have a USB drive bay that I plan to attach to the new MBP to gain access to the old hard drive.  Someone suggested Migration Assistant but my research hasn't turned up any information about migrating data from an external drive.
    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    THANKS!  I guess my research wasn't THAT thorough.   I booted with the external drive attached and setup immediately gave me the option to setup using Migration Assistant.  It was a little slow via USB (2+ hours) but it was nothing compared to the time it would have taken to do it manually.  My new 15" MBP looks exactly like my old 13" MBP.  AWESOME!!!
    Thanks again!

  • Boot from FireWire External Drive WITHOUT mounting internal Hard Drive

    Is it possible too boot a PowerBook G4 over FireWire (this part works) WITHOUT mounting the internal hard drive at boot time - i.e. never mount the internal hard drive when booting from FireWire?
    There is an Oreilly article at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/341 which discusses using "niutil" but it is not clear how to indicate the internal hard drive should not be mounted.
    The boot from FireWire works fine but how do you tell Mac OS X to ignore and never mount the internal hard drive? There used to be an /etc/fstab file where you could specify drives to mount. The /etc/fstab.hd file comments now say "IGNORE THIS FILE.
    This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in
    future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents."
    Thanks,

    That is not the problem - I have been using the startup manager by holding down the option key during boot-up. I am having no problem getting the PowerBook to boot from the FireWire Drive.
    *The Problem* is that after the PowerBook has booted from the exernal FireWire drive, I still see the internal hard drive of the PowerBook on the desktop. I do not want this. Some key points to note:
    [1] I can unmount the interal hard drive and remove from the desktop only by using the Disk Utility in the Applications/Utilities folder. There is a button there to "unmount selected volume"
    [2] The finder does not have an icon next to the internal hard drive icon to allow the internal hard drive to be unmounted when booted from a FireWire drive
    [3] I want the MacOS X kernel to be configured to not automount any hard drive volumes at bootup - this used to be possible by editing the /etc/fstab.hd file but that file does not appear to be used any more per the commennts in the file.
    **Remaining Question** How do you configure the MacOS X kernel to prevent it from mounting any other hard drive at boot time? I do not want to use methods [1] or [2]
    Thanks

  • Why can't iTunes find the music from an external hard drive?

    I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop.  Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music.  I have to go through and manually select a song for it to find it one and then it says should it use this to find the rest of the songs.  Then it crashes.  I have reinstalled iTunes tonight with no real improvement.  I want to be able to create a playlist to upload to my new iPad as well as updating music on my iPod but I can't do any of it.  Please, any advice!

    angelafromlanchester wrote:
    I moved my music to an external hard drive to free up space on my old laptop.  Since I moved to a new laptop, iTunes never seems to find the music. 
    Has the new laptop given the external drive a different drive letter?
    The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
    Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case.
    In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links.
    If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
    tt2

  • I have yosemite on my iMac.Can i restore to an earlier time from my external hard drive when i had Mavericks installed?

    Hi all. I have Yosemite on my iMac. Can i restore via my external hard drive to an earlier time when i had Mavericks on my iMac? If i can which operating system will i end up with? I would like to do this because i prefer Mavericks to Yosemite. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

    I've never seen that problem, but others have reported it. Maybe you should search for those other topics. You might try the following:
    Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:
    1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
        b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
    2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:
    Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
    3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    4. Reinstall Yosemite: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.
        Then download and install the OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 Combo Update.
    Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
                because it is three times faster than wireless.
    5. Reinstall Yosemite from Scratch:
    Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
        How to Clean Install OS X Yosemite.
        Then download and install the OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 Combo Update.
    Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
                because it is three times faster than wireless.

  • How to restore iTunes library in Leopard from a specific backup date?

    I want to restore my iTunes Library from a specific backup date. I am using OS X Leopard and can't go back to the specific date in TimeMachine. What I do?

    The backups were made, bro. It happens that I did the backups with Snow Leopard, but I had to reformat my iMac and restore it to its factory settings. I am currently using Leopard and I am waiting for Apple to deliver me a copy of Snow Leopard because I have lost my copy and can't upgrade. But all the backups were made, I used to check everyday to see if all files were there. I can see all the backup dates on Time Machine but when I click on them they don't display.

  • Booted from firewire external disk, internet slow

    Hi,
    My iMac is currently being booted from external disk via Firewire 800. I have to do this until I receive new install disks from apple to resore my machine.
    The computer is usable, however internet is very slow... I have other devides, windows machine, ipad, iphone and they all run okay.
    It seems that because I have booted via the external disk..... internet is slow. Could this be as the OS is needed to refer to the external disk?
    Any suggestions to correct this please?
    thanks
    Mark

    I need to restore from a time machine backup - full system restore, only possible from orignial install disks supplied with my imac apparently.
    The bootable external disk , is actually the orignial boot disk, however has disk problems - SMART warning, and when trying to restore this disk to the new installed disk, it fails.
    I can only boot from it, and run some of the apps on it.
    I know that it seems strange that I have slow internet, but it seems to be the case.
    Internet seems to pause lots of times, I wonder if its something to do with tmp files on the external disk.
    I have tried downloading Lion to upgrade and use this as a method of getting a bootable system, but Lion has been downloading for 3 days, and I have had to abort a couple of times.
    It does seem odd, but cant think of anything else.

Maybe you are looking for

  • Where has Adobe HIDDEN the Camera RAW 8.6 update (again!)?

    Starting with the 8.5 release, my CS6 version of Camera RAW no longer updates automatically. Nor can I find it anywhere in the update download section of Adobe's website. I just happened to find an obscure link to the 8.5 update after doing a ton of

  • Trouble restoring Iphone 5s

    i have forgotten the password for my iPhone 5s and i put the phone into recovery mode and restore and update. everything goes well until the end of the update. It will say "The software for the iPhone "iPhone" was corrupted download. I have tried to

  • Temporaru export

    Dear Friend, I want to customize new customs procedure "2300" in my system. Which I am going to use for Temporary export in customs declaration. So please advise what are the things/areas I need to consider for customizing with detail steps ? How thi

  • Skype for Android open automatically randomly

    Hi, My Skype-app starting itself randomly. My guess is that it's when it syncronizing (but it's only a guess). When I'm logging off, the Skype-icon disappear from the status-bar, so I expect it to be closed, but suddenly I'm seeing new Skype-messages

  • CMS 5 and Zen Touch/Mi

    ok i know this might have already been answered im having a problem with Creative Mediasource 5 and my Zen Touch and Zen Micro. Creative Mediasource does not recognize that my zen players are plugged in. I looked and they show that they are connected