Moving iTunes Library from external hard drive

[wordlessjam]

Hey guys,

I want to get a mac but one thing that concerns me is my itunes. I have a massive library and if I get a mac I will need to copy the library to my external hard drive from my pc then copy it again to the mac. How could I do this without losing my playlists, rating etc? And also if you have all your photos in iPhoto can you access them without opening iPhoto? If you can how? Because I have played around on Macs in the Apple Store and couldn't see where they would be!

Any help would be great!

Cheers

 

[tdmac]

Hey guys,

I want to get a mac but one thing that concerns me is my itunes. I have a massive library and if I get a mac I will need to copy the library to my external hard drive from my pc then copy it again to the mac. How could I do this without losing my playlists, rating etc? And also if you have all your photos in iPhoto can you access them without opening iPhoto? If you can how? Because I have played around on Macs in the Apple Store and couldn't see where they would be!

Any help would be great!

Cheers

I actually did this last night for my parents. They have a PC now and just got them a 13" macbook pro.

I followed the instructions on the following site:

http://www.myfirstmac.com/index.php/mac/articles/how-do-i-move-my-itunes-library-from-pc-to-mac-and-keep-my-settings-intact

However, there are a few caveats. Under Step #3, I would also also copy all of the folders, except for the "previous itunes library" folder. This should include the "Album artwork" folder, possibly a Genius folder and maybe and applications folder, if you also have an iphone.

Also, the instructions were written under older versions of itunes and the current location of the "Consolidate Library" option is found on the PC under the FILE menu and then under LIBRARY.

As I said I did this last night and all is perfect. I synced their iphone this morning and all of the settings were there when the device came up. I only had to fix contact syncing since those options are different on a MAC.

I can't answer the iphoto question since I do not use iphoto.

 

[tempusfugit]

http://www.ehow.com/how_4621237_access-iphoto-library-opening-iphoto.html

a walkthrough on accessing your photos outside of iPhoto.

Personally, I HATE the way iphoto bogarts the pictures for it's self, so I changed the settings to make it leave files as they are and just add them to the library instead of merging them into the library single file.