Moving iTunes to New PC WITH Ratings & Comments In Tact?

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wellsie

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I am having two very big problems. The first is that we have outgrown the hard drive on our laptop, and want to buy a new one. We have spent days or weeks rating & adding comments for about 9000 songs. I have tried moving the library to an external hard drive or to a different laptop many times using procedures found at the Apple site, & here at iLounge. Unfortunately, despite being assured that each method would move our entire Library - including ratings, comments and last played information - I have not been able to successfully transfer the ratings & comments, etc. The strangest part is that one time, a handful of the ratings and comments transferred, but not most of them (this tells me it's possible, but makes this more confusing). I have tried all the methods mentiones at this site & Apple, including just copying the XML & itl files, importing them, etc. Nothing seems to work. If I can't find a way to do this, days or weeks of work will have been for nothing (I'm not exagerrating). This is the main reason we decided to go with iTunes and digital - this categorization capability for the Smart Playlists.

Now I have an even more pressing problem. I moved all of our music to an external hard drive, and had been able to run iTunes in the past this way (from the original laptop with the hard drive attached) w/o having any problems. Now, however, any song we click on gives us the "... could not be used because the original file could not be found ..." message. So to play the music we have to locate each song individually, which would not be a good thing with 9,000 songs! I tried dragging the music back onto the C drive, or dragging it from the ext drive folder into the iTunes library, and I just get duplicates of songs it can't find.

PLEASE, I'm begging for any help anyone can offer for these problems. Especially the second one. Thanks so much!
 
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There are a few important things to keep in mind when moving your iTunes to a new computer...

Firstly, the iTunes Music Library database files (ITL and XML files) must be located in your Windows "My Music" folder for the current user profile that you're logged in as, in a subdirectory called "iTunes". This is where iTunes will look for the files, and this is where it will create them if they do not already exist. Make sure that you shut down iTunes when copying these files so that they are not open.

The second important thing is that iTunes stores the FULL path to each and every item in the iTunes library. This includes the drive letter. So if you have your music on an external hard drive and use it on a different computer (with a copy of the same iTunes library as described above), then you need to ensure that the external hard drive gets assigned the same drive letter on the second computer, or iTunes won't be able to find any of your music files.

The best method for moving your iTunes files to a different drive (ie, from your C: drive to an external hard drive), is to use the "Consolidate Library" function (as described in our iPod 201 tutorial, Moving your iTunes Library to a new hard drive).

From a step-by-step point of view, assuming that you have a working iTunes library with music files on your C: drive, you would take the following steps:
  1. Change your iTunes Library path (Edit->Preferences->iTunes->Advanced) to the external hard drive (ie, E:\Music)
  2. Selected Advanced->Consolidate Library to copy all of your iTunes Music Files to the external hard drive
  3. Once this has completed, shut down iTunes, and copy the "iTunes Library.itl" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" files from your "My Music\iTunes" directory to another directory on the external hard drive.
  4. Disconnect the external hard drive
  5. Connect the external hard drive to the new computer
  6. Ensure iTunes is not running on the new computer
  7. Copy the XML/ITL files to your "My Music\iTunes" directory on the new computer (overwrite them if they already exist).
  8. Ensure that the external drive has been assigned the same drive letter as it had on the old computer (you can set this under Control Panel->Administrative Options->Computer Management->Disk Management)
  9. Start iTunes.
  10. Optionally: change your library path to your C: drive and run "Consolidate Library" again if you want to bring all of your music files onto the C: drive on the new computer.
 

wellsie

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First, thanks so much for the VERY quick response.
jhollington said:
There are a few important things to keep in mind when moving your iTunes to a new computer...

Firstly, the iTunes Music Library database files (ITL and XML files) must be located in your Windows "My Music" folder for the current user profile that you're logged in as, in a subdirectory called "iTunes". This is where iTunes will look for the files, and this is where it will create them if they do not already exist. Make sure that you shut down iTunes when copying these files so that they are not open.
I believe that I have done this (mainly due to the excellent instructions on your site), but I am only 95% sure that I had iTunes closed when I did this. May be worth another try. ... I meant to mention that one person at Apple told me that it was not possible to move iTunes from a PC to either a new PC or a Mac with the ratings & comments in tact. I just find that hard to believe, but I was also told that Apple doesn't own iTunes, which also didn't sound right to me.

The second important thing is that iTunes stores the FULL path to each and every item in the iTunes library. This includes the drive letter. So if you have your music on an external hard drive and use it on a different computer (with a copy of the same iTunes library as described above), then you need to ensure that the external hard drive gets assigned the same drive letter on the second computer, or iTunes won't be able to find any of your music files.
I'm not having this problem, but this is very good information to keep in mind for the future.

The best method for moving your iTunes files to a different drive (ie, from your C: drive to an external hard drive), is to use the "Consolidate Library" function (as described in our iPod 201 tutorial, Moving your iTunes Library to a new hard drive).

From a step-by-step point of view, assuming that you have a working iTunes library with music files on your C: drive, you would take the following steps:
  1. Change your iTunes Library path (Edit->Preferences->iTunes->Advanced) to the external hard drive (ie, E:\Music)
  2. Selected Advanced->Consolidate Library to copy all of your iTunes Music Files to the external hard drive
  3. Once this has completed, shut down iTunes, and copy the "iTunes Library.itl" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" files from your "My Music\iTunes" directory to another directory on the external hard drive.
  4. Disconnect the external hard drive
  5. Connect the external hard drive to the new computer
  6. Ensure iTunes is not running on the new computer
  7. Copy the XML/ITL files to your "My Music\iTunes" directory on the new computer (overwrite them if they already exist).
  8. Ensure that the external drive has been assigned the same drive letter as it had on the old computer (you can set this under Control Panel->Administrative Options->Computer Management->Disk Management)
  9. Start iTunes.
  10. Optionally: change your library path to your C: drive and run "Consolidate Library" again if you want to bring all of your music files onto the C: drive on the new computer.
This is exactly what I did (again following directions from this site, and it seemed to work fine with two different external drives. However, when I was finally comfortable enough to delete the music from the laptop (and forced to by space restraints), this new problem cropped up.

Thanks again ... unfortunately, I'm still open for suggestions.
 
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wellsie said:
I believe that I have done this (mainly due to the excellent instructions on your site), but I am only 95% sure that I had iTunes closed when I did this. May be worth another try. ... I meant to mention that one person at Apple told me that it was not possible to move iTunes from a PC to either a new PC or a Mac with the ratings & comments in tact.
From a PC to a PC or a Mac to a Mac, it's most certainly possible. You can't do it from a PC to a Mac or vice-versa due to the different file system hierarchy (ie, a Mac doesn't use drive letters), so even though the database format is the same, the Mac wouldn't be able to find any of your music, as it would all be referenced using a Windows-based path.

This is exactly what I did (again following directions from this site, and it seemed to work fine with two different external drives. However, when I was finally comfortable enough to delete the music from the laptop (and forced to by space restraints), this new problem cropped up.
One other thing to keep in mind is that once iTunes has located a file, it will only attempt to locate it elsewhere after you close and re-open it.

I'm assuming that you've probably already done this several times, but if you had deleted the music from your local hard drive while iTunes was running, it may not necessary have switched to the external hard drive without a restart.

Also, is it possible that the drive letter assigned to your external drive changed at some point? Again, iTunes stores full paths, so this is the most common reason for files to suddenly disappear from iTunes' view when using an external hard drive.

If you go into the XML file with a text editor, you should find an indication of where iTunes is expecting to find your music files, which might help you track down the problem.
 

wellsie

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Will Try Suggestions - Thanks!

Thanks again so much for the quick response ... The suggestions re: file location issue sound promising. Will try them. ... And you've given me hope that we will hopefully find a way to retain our ratings & comments. I was starting to freak out a tad when the Apple person told me that it was not possible. I just have to find out how! Thanks again SO much!
 
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