Hard drive crashed but backed up - how do I restore to a new PC?

My PC crashed but I had it backed up to an external hard drive, so I've got my whole iTunes folder structure and files from my old PC in tact. I bought a new PC, and would like to get the media (purchased songs; songs from CDs; purchased movies) from the external hard drive and on to my new PC. The PC was running iTunes 7.x and I've installed the latest 9.x iTunes, so we're dealing with this version issue too.
Any easy way to do this?

+so I've got my whole iTunes folder structure and files from my old PC in tact.+
Do a shift-start of itunes.
Press AND HOLD the shift key while starting ituens. Keep pressing until you get a prompt to choose a library.
Browse out to your exHD drive and choose the ITL file there.
Does everything show up? If so, you can
1. Save a copy of that ITL file just because.
2. change the itunes media folder location to your C: drive
3. Consolidate everything to your C: drive
4: Copy the ITL file over to your C: drive and do another shift-start from there
Or perhaps you want to leave everyhing on the exHD drive? If so, just try the shift-start.

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My hard drive crashed on my PC - how do I restore from iPhone back into iTunes?

My hard drive crashed on my PC - how do I get the 24 GB of music off my iPhone and back into iTunes?

You should be able to:
Backup the device to the new installation
Transfer your purchases into a newly authorized library
Recover any other media using third party tools as suggested in this post from forum regular Zevoneer
Restore the device from the backup
This process should switch the association of the device to the new library, preserving the data and settings in your apps.
May also be prudent to attempt a backup to iCloud directly from the device before you start... Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup > iCloud Backup > On. It won't save any media but it would preserve the general account settings and documents in case anything goes wrong while you are trying to extract your other data.
When you get it all fixed, make a backup!
tt2

Hard drive crash; but ipod OK; how can I get ipod music onto itunes?

I had to do a complete recovery of my wife's computer. It appears my "drag" of Music folder prior to recovery did not complete. She has a working iPod with everything on it. How do I get the iPod music, podcasts, and such, back into a brand new and clean and blank itunes?

Recover media from iPod
See this post from forum regular Zevoneer for options on moving your iPod data back to your computer.
tt2

HELP! My hard drive crashed, can I copy my iTunes library files to a new PC

My hard drive crashed, but I attached it as a slave drive using an older PC and I can see all of my files but I can't start any programs (iTunes) from this slave drive.
How can I copy iTunes music files and library to a removable drive, and then use that drive to restore it all in iTunes on another PC? I would like to keep my playlists too.
I have everything I want on my iPod too, can I just copy everything from my iPod to my new PC? Which is easier?

I have everything I want on my iPod too, can I just copy everything from my iPod to my new PC? Which is easier?
For iTunes version 7 or later, then you can transfer purchased iTunes store music from the iPod to an authorized computer by using the "file/transfer purchases from iPod" menu. Note that the maximum of 5 authorized computers applies here.
Find out how to do that here.
How to copy iTunes purchases from an iPod to a computer.
For all other non purchased content (your own CDs etc) try this method which works on some Windows PCs.
Enable your iPod for disk use.
See: iPod Disk Use.
Open iTunes and select edit/preferences/advanced/general. Put a check mark in the box marked "copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library" and also "keep iTunes music folder organized", then click 'ok'.
Connect the iPod whilst holding down the shift/ctrl keys to prevent any auto sync, and if you see the dialogue window asking if you want to sync to this itunes library, click 'no'.
Then go to file/add folder, open 'my computer', select your iPod and click 'ok'.
The music files should transfer to your iTunes.
If this doesn't work (and it may not because officially it's not supposed to), check out the instructions/suggestions here.
Music from iPod to computer (using option 2). This a manual method using "hidden folders" and although it works, it is a little more involved than other methods.
Much easier ways are to use one of the many 3rd party programs that copy music from the iPod to the computer.
One of the most recommended is Yamipod. This is a free program that transfers music from iPod back to the computer. However, it does not transfer playcounts/ratings etc.
Another free program is Pod Player.
SharePod is also freeware.
If you want to recover just the structure of playlists from the iPod (and not the actual song files themselves), there's iRepo for Windows. which I understand has this feature along with all the standard features for these programs.
iPodRip also has the feature enabling you to reconstruct playlists.
There is also CopyTrans. This does preserve ratings/playcounts etc if those are important to you but this program is not free. It also supports video transfer.

My hard drive crashed,I lost everthing how do I transfer my tunes off the ipod back to my computer, My hard drive crashed,I lost everthing how do I transfer my tunes off the ipod back to my computer

My hard drive crashed I lost all songs on computer, how do I transfer the tunes from my ipod back to my computer?

Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive: Apple Support Communities

Unique Hard Drive Crash - But Hard drive good

I have a unique problem. My Hard Drive crashed. But the reason why is because I ran out of space. I downloaded a file that when expanded took the rest of the space on the hard drive and kept expanding til it crashed. When I restarted, The screen gets to the grey apple logo then crashes again. And it does it every time. I took it out and used a USB Hard Drive adapter to try and see if it mounts on another computer to delete the files off of it it crashes every other computer as well when it tries to mount the hard drive. I logged into single user mode and did a Fsck and it said the hard drive is fine. but it is set to Read Only so I can't delete the files off of it in single user mode because its set to read only. I can see all of my files in single user mode but everytime I type rm to delete the files it refuses and says its a read only drive. I guess my question is how do I get it to mount so I can repair it using disk warrior or the disk utility? Is there a single user command line I can use to change it to read and write on the Hard Drive so I can delete the files.

Steve, yes you clone the backup back to the original, but only if the original can not be repaired. And yes, you just swap drives if that is easier for you.
I may have been a little to brief in my instruction above on repair.
Anyway once you bootup from the install CD (C key held down) choose your drive in the left column then select First Aid, now run the Repair Disk, if it does not repair run it again. Now select the startup volume (with the OS) and run the Repair Permissions, quit Disk Utility.
If Disk Utility is able to repair the disk it should now be bootable and you can select it in the Change Startup Disk, if not you need to either exchange the drives or Erase (Re-initialize) the internal and then clone the OS from the external drive.
If you can see the external as a bootable volume when you select Change Startup Drives from the install CD then it is bootable. However if you do not see it as a bootable volume then it is not bootable.
Joe
Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1.5 GB Ram, ENCORE/ST G4, Tempo SATA, ATI Radeon 9000, Adaptec 4000

I have imported and processed photo's in Lightroom 2 and kept stored files on external hard drive. External hard drive crashed....how do I export photo's from Lightroom when it says 'file not found'?

Folders with photo files are lost due to external hard drive crashing. Processed photo's are still in LR. How can I export from LR to a file (any file) that no longer exists? Help!!!

Well, no backups, the technical term for that is "a problem". I think from this point forward, you need to commit yourself to making regular automated backups of all of your photos and catalog file to different physical disks, no excuses.
Your photos are not stored in Lightroom. However, Lightroom does create "previews", this is what you are seeing, but these are usually smaller and low-quality compared to the originals. There are plug-ins that can extract the previews from Lightroom. One such plug-in is here robcole.com - PreviewExporter

Hard drive crashed... How to sync Iphone with New Drive?

My hard drive crashed on my Macbook, I installed a new drive... How to I sync my Iphone without loosing applications, photos, pix,movies and contacts?

You should have a back-up of important info/music/pix/etc on an external source fro this very reason.
The iphone is not a storage device.
Assuming you don't back-up your info:
I think you can re-download Apps from the same itunes account.
Itunes purchased music can be transferred with iphone attached - in itunes click File>Transfer Purchases.
Pix can be e-mailed to yourself one at a time. The photos are optimized for viewing on iphone and will be of much lower quality than the original.
If you enter at least one contact and calendar entry in your computer, before syncing, you will get the option to merge.
The pic and music sync is one-way, computer to iphone.
Unless you can find a 3rd party app that you can trust, the rest is lost.
This would be a good time to begin backing up your important info.

My hard drive crashed on my apple computer recently. I have a new one, but it won't sync with apple tv1, and I want to retrieve my photos from teh appletv1. It appears in devices now, but won't let me go any further with it. Help

The hard drive crashed on my apple computer and I lost a lot of photos. I want to recover them from my apple tv1, but the computer won't seem to pair up with the apple tv. The Apple tv does appear in devices, but it won't let me go any further. The 'apply' button is a pale grey colour and you can't click on it. Help!!

there is no facility to recover your photos from the appletv.
the only way to link the appletv to your new "system" is to remove the existing itunes link and then link it to the new itunes - this will delete all content from the appletv though.

Hard Drive crashed - no back up - a way to recover my purchased songs?

Hello,
I just had my hard drive crash and I had not backed up the majority of the files on my computer including over 50 songs I had recently purchased on iTunes. Is there anyway I can recover these purchases to my computer?!?!
Thank you!

The policy on lost purchases is that you have to pay to download them again:
"Once a Product is purchased and you receive the Product, it is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage the Product, and Apple shall be without liability to you in the event of any loss, destruction, or damage."
You could try contacting the iTunes Music Store Customer Service and you might be able to persuade them to sanction a second free download. There have been occasional reports in the iTunes forum of this happening, however just be aware that they are not under any obligation to do so. If you click on any of the links on this page you'll find a space at the bottom to email your query: iTMS Customer Service
If you have an iPod with the purchases on it the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. A paragraph on it has been added to this article: Transfer iTunes Store purchases using iPod

My hard drive crashed on my Imac 24" 2009, i put in a new hard drive 2TB and a SSD drive 240 GB and removed the opticdrive. What external DVD can I get to work with the IMac? The Apple super drive is not compatible.

My hard drive crashed on my Imac 24" 2009, I installed a new hard drive 2TB and a SSD drive 240 GB and removed the optical drive.
What external DVD can I get to work with the IMac? The Apple super drive is not compatible.

Virtually any DVD burner that can connect to your Mac will work. They start at $40 on Amazon.

My hard drive crashed, but I've got Match. How can I get all 12,000 tracks back?

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Then the other week, my external hard drive just totally crapped out. I had a technician look at it and he says it's toast.
When I get a new external hard drive, what's the easiest way to get all my music from the cloud/Match (sorry if I'm getting the lingo wrong) synched to this new hard drive? I've been searching for the answer to this forever with no joy.

FAQ: Why iTunes Match can NOT be used as a backup!
The best way to get your music back is to restore it from the local backup you kept before the external HDD crashed. You might also find this Apple KB article helpful: Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store.
Alternatly, multiple tracks can be downloaded from iTM by highlighting the ones you want to download, right-clicking and selecting "download."

My 'backup' is taking up a huge space on my hard drive but I have an external hard drive for my back ups - how do i get rid of this?

Please can you help - I have recently added an external hard drive to my Macbook so it can be used as a back up and storage to save space on my hard drive. I have deleted videos and photos from my hard drive but they are being replaced with 'backup'
how do i get rid of this ?
thanks

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
Time Machine makes local snapshots in all portable Macs with Lion or Mountain Lion. They are made in the internal drive and they are removed when your hard disk gets full, so you don't have to worry about it.
If you want to delete them, turn off Time Machine and turn it on every time you want to make a backup. You can also turn them off manually without having to turn off Time Machine, or you can delete those local snapshots > http://pondini.org/TM/30.html

My computer hard drive crashed but I have a HP Recovery Backup of it with all the files unzipped. How can I retrieve my emails from this backup on my new comput

II lost my HP hard drive after doing a HP Recovery Backup using Windows 7. I now have a new computer using Windows 8.1 and I have successfully unzipped all my files including my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles,. I have installed Firefox and Thunderbird on the new computer but cannot figure out how to get my bookmarks (Firefox) or my emails (Thunderbird) off these old profiles. Just substituting the old profiles stops the applications from opening and obviously I did not create these using the application export facility. Can the application be fooled by renaming the file with the name of the new profile? or is there some internal code that the program checks. I'm totally at a loss.

The Profile names have to match what Firefox and Thunderbird is expecting to find. Any difference and they may not start, or they may just create a new Profile ''as they are supposed to when the expected Profile is "gone".''
You can rename the old Profiles to the names of the new Profiles; or you can carefully edit the profiles.ini file to match the Profile names of the old Profiles. ''One mistake and it's toast, though.''
But IMO, the best thing to do is to go to the folder level where the '''profiles.ini''' file and the '''profiles''' folderset is located --
'''%APPDATA%/Mozilla/Firefox/ '''
where you should find '''profiles.ini''' and the '''Profiles''' folder, ''and maybe other files / folders''
Copy that whole '''Firefox''' folder from the old installation over to the new one.
With Thunderbird that should work the same as it is based upon the basics in Firefox, but I have never used Thunderbird.

My hard drive crashed while backing up!

How's this for luck: I finally bought an external drive and was in the process of making a bootable backup to a Maxtor One Touch Firewire 800 drive when my G5's internal drive crashed! I was able to insert the OSX startup disc which opens the installer, and then allows me to open Disk Utility. After several seconds of gathering disk information, I finally get two hard drive icons on the left side of the window. The top one gives me generic info about the drive (74.5GB and the model number). Under that is another hard drive icon followed by "Disk1s9", and that is greyed out. (I do not see the actual name that I gave the drive.) When I select it, Disk Utility tells me that the drive is not mounted, and the 'mount' button on the toolbar becomes active.
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Next time I'm going to back up individual files first and worry about bootable copies later.

You are going to need another SATA drive anyway at this point. And surprised you went this long probably on just one?
Install 10.4.6 on the new drive (assuming you don't want to install on the Maxtor) - later versions of Tiger have improved on Disk Utility than what 10.4.0 had. Apple sells 10.4.6 DVDs now also.
DW can take a long time. But it is possible it is salvageable. Even put SATA drive in a universal SATA/FW case and deal with it there.
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TechTool Pro (4.1.2) might even be of help (DW has not been updated and there IS a need for it, but it has been over a year they've been working on that update).
People have even put hard drives in the freezer (sealed and moisture proof) to get access to a drive.
Heat kills drives. And it could be your system and the drive got too warm.

Hard drive crashed but backed up - how do I restore to a new PC?

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