How to back up my Music Library so I can reformat

[dawnraid]

I want to reformat my macbook but first I need to backup all of my music from my itunes library. I have about 14gb of music and would like to back it up onto a 500gb external hard-drive, what is the easiest way to do this so that all of my music information is kept eg all my album art.

Cheers

 

[alexbates]

Time Machine is the easiest way to do it by far. I keep everything backed up with Time Machine so I will never have any problems if my HD were to crash.

You must have a hard drive that does not already have things stored on them though. If you do have things stored, Time Machine will erase them for you.

 

[Tomorrow]

Navigate to your iTunes music folder and copy it (along with all the database files) to your external drive. I did this to a network drive, now both of my Macs can access the same iTunes library.

 

[dawnraid]

Time Machine is the easiest way to do it by far. I keep everything backed up with Time Machine so I will never have any problems if my HD were to crash.

You must have a hard drive that does not already have things stored on them though. If you do have things stored, Time Machine will erase them for you.

Thanks but I dont really want to use time machine, I want a clean start, hence the reformat. Any other ideas? I should also note that my music files are scattered around my computer in various locations. So I need someway of collecting them all and backing them up so they maintain their album art, lyrics etc.

Cheers

 

[alexbates]

Navigate to your iTunes music folder and copy it (along with all the database files) to your external drive. I did this to a network drive, now both of my Macs can access the same iTunes library.

Yeah, thats a good way to do it if you are only backing up iTunes. The correct iTunes music folder is under (username-->Music-->iTunes) on a Mac . Just wanted to let you know because if you use Spotlight to search, you will find two different folders.

Thanks but I dont really want to use time machine, I want a clean start, hence the reformat. Any other ideas? I should also note that my music files are scattered around my computer in various locations. So I need someway of collecting them all and backing them up so they maintain their album art, lyrics etc.

Cheers

Are you sure that your music in iTunes is set to those specific locations around your computer? Because if you drag a song from somewhere in your computer and drop it in iTunes, it should have copied it into your iTunes Music Folder.

 

[dawnraid]

Are you sure that your music in iTunes is set to those specific locations around your computer? Because if you drag a song from somewhere in your computer and drop it in iTunes, it should have copied it into your iTunes Music Folder.

Im pretty sure I unchecked that function to save disk space a while ago. If I us itunes to "consolidate my library" will that copy all music to my itunes folder?

 

[michael.lauden]

did this today!

hey i actually have a mac mini and a macbook, and i wanted to put the 34.98 gigs of music from my macbook onto the mini.

i enabled file sharing, connected ethernet to ethernet (i could've just connected via airport - but that would've taken about 7-8 hours, vs 10-12 minutes) and dragged my itunes music folder (user/music/itunes/itunes music) to the drop box and voila!

i then, replaced the iTunes music folder on the mini - with my new crammed folder with 8000 songs, and then hit import! that easy!



if you didn't have itunes organize your file collection. you could go in there and either change a setting (not sure if it's that simple)

or, a way that is sure to work - delete all the songs from itunes (MAKE SURE you DON'T delete the actual FILE from the hard drive), and then change the setting to 'organize music collection' and have iTunes scan your hard drive again.

this time it will arrange folders inside iTunes Music by artist and album.


easy peasy


your thoughts?

 

[alexbates]

Im pretty sure I unchecked that function to save disk space a while ago. If I us itunes to "consolidate my library" will that copy all music to my itunes folder?

I'm not sure if that will work or not but to be safe you can "export library" to your external HD.

 

[dawnraid]

hey i actually have a mac mini and a macbook, and i wanted to put the 34.98 gigs of music from my macbook onto the mini.

i enabled file sharing, connected ethernet to ethernet (i could've just connected via airport - but that would've taken about 7-8 hours, vs 10-12 minutes) and dragged my itunes music folder (user/music/itunes/itunes music) to the drop box and voila!

i then, replaced the iTunes music folder on the mini - with my new crammed folder with 8000 songs, and then hit import! that easy!



if you didn't have itunes organize your file collection. you could go in there and either change a setting (not sure if it's that simple)

or, a way that is sure to work - delete all the songs from itunes (MAKE SURE you DON'T delete the actual FILE from the hard drive), and then change the setting to 'organize music collection' and have iTunes scan your hard drive again.

this time it will arrange folders inside iTunes Music by artist and album.


easy peasy


your thoughts?

mmmm, I think my problem is that my music is everyone on my macbook which only has a 60gb hard-drive, with only about 4gb free on it. I cannot consolidate my library, because doing that would make copies and there is obviously not enough room to make copies of 14gb of music. So what I am doing right is I have changed the default library location in itunes to my external hard-drive and then I clicked consolidate library. It seems to be copying all my music to my external HD now, so heres hoping it works correctly