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New Mac User - Itunes transfer

G

goldie74

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 10, 2011
7
0
I bought my first mac last night. i am setting it up today and want to transfer my itunes library from my old (9 years old) HP pavilion to my new Mac Book Pro.

I have copied the itunes folder from my HP to an external hard drive. I am looking for very clear and precise direction on moving that to the new MacBook Pro.

For example do i delete the itunes folder on the macbook pro and replace it with the itunes folder from the external hard drive. Or do i open the itunes folder on the mac and external hard drive and copy the contents within the itunes folder on the hard drive to the open itunes folder on the mac.

I just want to avoid any mistake that will cause me a headache.

Thanks
 
if there's nothing in the itunes folder on your new machine, it really doesn't make any difference. Replace the folder or just replace its contents. Same thing. No worries.
 
I just deleted the one on my MBP and copied the one from my external HDD and it worked flawlessly. Saved all the artwork and everything. I was surprised. I was thinking it was gonna be one of the worst experiences of my life!
 
If there's nothing in the iTunes library on your MacBook Pro, simply open iTunes and navigate to File > Add to Library in the menu bar, point the open dialog to the location of your music library (in this case, your external hard disk), and allow iTunes to import everything to your iTunes library. By default, importing will copy everything to the iTunes folder on your computer.

If there's stuff in your current iTunes library, then simply delete it and then perform the above steps.

Hope that helps.
 
I always seem to end up with a ton of dupes after reloading a library full of music. Is there any way to avoid this?
 
I copied the itunes folder from my old computer to my new and i have all the songs but none of my playlists. How do I get the mac pro version of itunes to recognize the playlists I had on my old HP version of itunes?
 
goldie74 said:
I copied the itunes folder from my old computer to my new and i have all the songs but none of my playlists. How do I get the mac pro version of itunes to recognize the playlists I had on my old HP version of itunes?
Click to expand...

You can export playlists (File->Library->Export Playlist) on one machine and import them on the other. I haven't done this, but it should work.
 
Deauthorize previous computer before or after copying files to external hard drive and moving over to new computer?
 
Hook'Em2006 said:
The easiest way I did it was by using home sharing. I just copied it over from my old computer using my wireless network.
Click to expand...

I've been through this a couple times....Home sharing left big holes in my music collection and screwed up album art. AND, I couldn't even fill in the holes because, even though the song count/library size/etc were all off, Home sharing refused to import the songs because it thought it already had.

Easiest way I found was just to copy the itunes folder from your source computer onto an external and swap it out for the itunes folder on the target computer. Itunes MAY start acting up a little after that (asking permission to connect to the internet EVERY time it is opened....), but that's easily fixed by downloading itunes from apple and re-installing it (Your songs/etc will still be there, all you're doing is reinstalling itunes itself.)
 
Whenever I transfer an iTunes library, this is what I do:

Old computer: copy complete iTunes folder (music, iTunes library files and everything else). Put it on and external HD or have your laptop connected to a network and paste the files anywhere you want on you laptop. The normal place would be in your music folder of the new computer, but it doesn't really matter where. If you don't have any music on your new computer, you can erase everything in your music folder I believe.

New Computer: Once your whole iTunes folder is copied onto the new computers hard drive, make sure iTunes is not open. Next while holding option key down, open itunes. A box should pop up and you'll want to choose the library. A finder window will pop up where you can then locate your iTunes Library file (this is an individual file, not folder). This is the database file essentially. It will load all your music like it was just on your old computer, maintaining the playlists, ratings, play counts etc.

Also, like others have said you will need to authorize your iTunes account again on the new computer so you can play purchased music, videos and apps. If you run into permissions problems, just go to your music folder, right click--> get info. Make sure you have permissions to read and right under the ownership and at the very bottom of the get info screen, there should be a little gear that you can click on and say apply to enclosed items.
 
thanks diamond, i'll be using that guide this week when i get my MBP.

question though: couldn't you just skip the external drive step and copy the files straight from the source computer?

also, if i'm moving files between an iMac and MBP, i need an 800 9-9 pin firewire cable, correct?
 
You do not need a external hard drive, only transfer once if possible. I find its best to transfer using ethernet. If you don't have a router, I believe you can just connect the laptop to the iMac directly using an ethernet cable. This method will likely be faster. Just go into sys pref, and make sure your files sharing is turned on for both computers and then you should be able to just open finder and see the other computer on the sidebar. If your on the laptop, click the iMac name on the sidebar and then you'll see a "connect as" option in the top right corner of finder. Enter your username and password of the account on the iMac you are connecting to and you should be able to see the other hard drive. Find the folder and drag it over to the destination on the laptop.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

ohh. so Ethernet would be faster than FireWire? also, using that method, could I copy the files instead of moving them? I want to keep them on my iMac as well.
 
saucy1360 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

ohh. so Ethernet would be faster than FireWire? also, using that method, could I copy the files instead of moving them? I want to keep them on my iMac as well.
Click to expand...

Interested as well, firewire or ethernet?
 
Hi,
I was just wondering if it matters whether you are transferring itunes from a pc to mac instead of mac to mac. Thx
 
I'm not certain on firewire 800 vs ethernet. If both ethernet connections are gigabit connections, it should be really close as the theoretical speed of FW800 (800Mbps) vs Ethernet (1000Mbps) are similar. If I had to buy a firewire cable, I'd just stick to a ethernet connection since you probably already have one. Ethernet compared to a USB 2 ext hard drive wasn't even close in speeds.

I think you might want to use a Cat6 cable as well to get the fastest transfer rate.

Also, if you want to try both, I'd be interested to know what your results are. I've just never bothered to buy a firewire cable since I've always got plenty of ethernet cables.

Also nucksfan, I don't believe it matters since the database files are the compatible between the two. I'm not certain though, just giving my opinion. Obviously how you get them to share the files between the two computers would be entirely different.
 
diamond3 said:
Whenever I transfer an iTunes library, this is what I do:

Old computer: copy complete iTunes folder (music, iTunes library files and everything else). Put it on and external HD or have your laptop connected to a network and paste the files anywhere you want on you laptop. The normal place would be in your music folder of the new computer, but it doesn't really matter where. If you don't have any music on your new computer, you can erase everything in your music folder I believe.

New Computer: Once your whole iTunes folder is copied onto the new computers hard drive, make sure iTunes is not open. Next while holding option key down, open itunes. A box should pop up and you'll want to choose the library. A finder window will pop up where you can then locate your iTunes Library file (this is an individual file, not folder). This is the database file essentially. It will load all your music like it was just on your old computer, maintaining the playlists, ratings, play counts etc.

Also, like others have said you will need to authorize your iTunes account again on the new computer so you can play purchased music, videos and apps. If you run into permissions problems, just go to your music folder, right click--> get info. Make sure you have permissions to read and right under the ownership and at the very bottom of the get info screen, there should be a little gear that you can click on and say apply to enclosed items.
Click to expand...

so when I put the old computers iTunes folder onto the new computer do I put it straight into the itunes folder location or does it automatically move everything once you import the database file???
 
PAPO said:
so when I put the old computers iTunes folder onto the new computer do I put it straight into the itunes folder location or does it automatically move everything once you import the database file???
Click to expand...

That is what I do when backing up. I make an iTunes folder and drag the iTunes library on my MBP (under username/music/iTunes) to the iTunes folder I made on my external. It will copy everything over, ie; xml files, art work, etc.

This part is important when FIRST setting up iTunes (like a fresh re-format). Open iTunes w/o transferring anything over. That way it will make an iTunes folder when it first opens. This is not there prior to opening iTunes initially. Then you close iTunes and drag over the iTunes backup onto the Mac. Once it is transferred, open iTunes and everything should be A-OK. If you don't open iTunes first and drag over the files, iTunes will say corrupt xml file and then repair it. I made that mistake. My iTunes library is 100GB or so, and took about 30 minutes to transfer, and then ANOTHER 20 minutes to repair the .XML (library).

I will make screen shots of what I am talking about.
 
Helpful thread. Thanks. I just copied my itunes folder to an external hard drive and I'll import that to my Mac. Here's hoping it works well. :)
 
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