Where do I find my music?

Question

Recently our computer crashed.   We have our old hard drive as an external now.   I've reinstalled iTunes on my computer, but I cannot find all my music and videos I had in my library.
Apple care was less than helpful.   I have ripped hundreds of CDs into that library. 
Can can someone tell me where my music might be stored on the external hard drive?

Answer 1

The standard locations for the iTunes library folder are:
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\
Windows Vista: C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes\
Windows 7 & 8: C:\Users\username\My Music\iTunes\
You'll need to drill down to find the relevant folder, replacing C: with the current letter assigned to the external drive.
Assuming there is room on the new computer's internal drive I would suggest you restore the entire iTunes folder into the current user's Music/My Music folder although if you already started adding media to a new library you will want to move that to one side first.
See also Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows. This may be needed to make sure that you can make changes to the recovered files.
Once you have the library working see Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy.
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