Moving iTunes Library

[spot618]

I recently had to install a new hard drive on my pre-intel iMac G5 because the original one died. Fortunately for me, I stored my itunes music on an external drive because my main drive was too small. I now have a clean install of Leopard on my new main hard drive which is considerably larger now. My question is how do I re-establish my itunes library (link it to my music on the external drive) and keep my original playlists intact? I also am looking down the road to move my music library from the external drive back to my new main one (that contains the operating system). Would it be more feasible to do this at this time?

 

[miles01110]

Search results from the past month.

 

[tripletaker]

Quit iTunes. Reopen iTunes holding the option key. This will popup a window asking you where your iTunes library is. Locate the library and it will reconnect it.

If you want to move your music to your internal hard drive, quit iTunes, then move the whole iTunes folder into your music folder of your account. Then do the above again locating and reconnecting your library.

This will work if you have "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" option checked in the Advanced tab of the Preferences.

 

[spot618]

Thank you.

Will that method also restore my various playlists that I had in the iTunes on the drive that failed?

 

[tripletaker]

Yup. As long as you didn't touch the iTunes folder, everything will be preserved from ratings to playlists to album art.

 

[spot618]

Thank you.

Great, that's what I was hoping to hear. I have literally tens of thousands of songs, and to try to reconstruct all my various playlists from scratch would be a very daunting task!