I will be upgrading my hard drive on my MacBook and was wondering if I have to backup my downloaded songs from iTunes? My playlist that is currently on my MacBook is from purchases on this mac and my ipod touch. Should I move my iTunes library to a portable drive or will I just have to reformat my mac and redownload the songs again?
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iTunes reformat
- Thread starter jrock2004
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Do you use time machine or other backup for you computer? Do you have an external hard drive? If you want your computer to be identical before and after upgrading the hard drive, making a time machine backup and restoring to that backup on the new drive is the fastest option. The second fastest would be using carbon copy cloner and duplicating your system drive to the new hard drive.
If all you've done is purchase music, all of your music should be in the following directory:
Home folder -> Music -> iTunes.
Just copy that folder over and you should be set.
Home folder -> Music -> iTunes.
Just copy that folder over and you should be set.
I am also wondering if copying your entire itunes folder will save play count and ratings, I want to upgrade to a 7k hard drive in my MacBook.
As long as you keep the file "iTunes Library" (or in windows "iTunes Library.itl"), you'll have your play counts and ratings.
You can also back up your iTunes Library.xml file, which is in play list format. Importing this into iTunes as a play list creates your library file same as originally ... as long as iTunes can find the songs the xml file is referring to.
By the way, to the OP, you can redownload songs from iTunes, but you'll be warned that you have already purchased it and charged again. Some people have persuaded Apple to allow them to redownload purchased songs after a disk failure, but that's not standard procedure.
You can also back up your iTunes Library.xml file, which is in play list format. Importing this into iTunes as a play list creates your library file same as originally ... as long as iTunes can find the songs the xml file is referring to.
By the way, to the OP, you can redownload songs from iTunes, but you'll be warned that you have already purchased it and charged again. Some people have persuaded Apple to allow them to redownload purchased songs after a disk failure, but that's not standard procedure.