Transfer iTunes to new MBP

[bossmanjunior]

okay so i just got a new mbp and i want to transfer my itunes library from my lenovo to it. i also want to keep my playlists, play counts, and ratings (i have about half of my 8000 songs rated). i have googled for hours and the only solution i have found was to completely replace the itunes folder from my new computer with the old one (after copying it to an external hard drive). however, when i am copying the folder from my external to my mbp, the transfer gets halfway done and then it tells me that i do not have permission to copy the files and alot of the songs in my library have ! next to them and cannot be located. can someone PLEASE help me.

and before you ask, yes i have mroogled and googled my a$$ off. Thanks ahead of time.

 

[sdneidich]

okay so i just got a new mbp and i want to transfer my itunes library from my lenovo to it. i also want to keep my playlists, play counts, and ratings (i have about half of my 8000 songs rated). i have googled for hours and the only solution i have found was to completely replace the itunes folder from my new computer with the old one (after copying it to an external hard drive). however, when i am copying the folder from my external to my mbp, the transfer gets halfway done and then it tells me that i do not have permission to copy the files and alot of the songs in my library have ! next to them and cannot be located. can someone PLEASE help me.

and before you ask, yes i have mroogled and googled my a$$ off. Thanks ahead of time.

Need a bit more info before we can find you a solution.
Check those songs that it says you do not have permission for. Can you play them on your old computer?

 

[adnoh]

yes i have mroogled and googled my a$$ off.

LOL

what i did was put my old HD in an enclosure, connected to my mac then added the itunes folder and everything was added automatically.

Still had to re-sync my iP4 and ipad which was annoying

 

[HBOC]

while I don't have experience transferring iTunes from a Windows machine to a Mac, usually iTunes keeps it HERE. For some reason, it seems that iTunes is scattering your files somewhere else, unless you are "manually managing" the locations. Also, is there DRM on any of the files? Are you signed in as an administrator or guest?

 

[ann713]

Am I reading this right? You can transfer the play counts over to a new machine? Guess I've been misinformed.

 

[Mik3F]

Am I reading this right? You can transfer the play counts over to a new machine? Guess I've been misinformed.

Yes you can, I did it when I moved from PC to Mac and then from Mac to Mac

 

[Alonzo84]

okay so i just got a new mbp and i want to transfer my itunes library from my lenovo to it. i also want to keep my playlists, play counts, and ratings (i have about half of my 8000 songs rated). i have googled for hours and the only solution i have found was to completely replace the itunes folder from my new computer with the old one (after copying it to an external hard drive). however, when i am copying the folder from my external to my mbp, the transfer gets halfway done and then it tells me that i do not have permission to copy the files and alot of the songs in my library have ! next to them and cannot be located. can someone PLEASE help me.

and before you ask, yes i have mroogled and googled my a$$ off. Thanks ahead of time.

Were the songs displaying the ! purchased from an AOL account? If so, I have the same issue after adding my library from backup disks. The songs I purchased with an old AOL account refuse to play on my Mac even after I enter the password to that account. My entire library will play on my PC, though.

 

[bossmanjunior]

oddly enough, it seems that it transferred only down to the artists that started with "P" and nothing after. is there a size limit on transfers? and yes i can play them on my old computer.

 

[HBOC]

There is no size limit. I have 110GB of just music in my iTunes and have transferred it from my external many times over the years(re-formatting, new machine, etc).

 

[bossmanjunior]

There is no size limit. I have 110GB of just music in my iTunes and have transferred it from my external many times over the years(re-formatting, new machine, etc).

okay, so how did you do it?

 

[paulold]

I think we need more information about how you are moving the library. Here's how I did it with my two MacBook Pros (one from 2011, the other from 2007):

First I went into my old iTunes and made sure I consolidated my iTunes library so that all of my music files were stored within one folder - the iTunes Music folder. You don't want to copy the folder leaving behind songs that are stored elsewhere. I lost a lot of music in the past that way.

I then connected the two laptops with a FireWire cable. I set the old laptop to Target Disk Mode (holding down the T as the laptop booted up). This turned the old laptop into basically a harddrive seen on my new laptop's desktop.

On my new laptop, I used Finder to go to my Home folder then to the Music folder and I deleted the entire iTunes folder (it was unused - so nothing was lost).

I then opened to the icon on my new laptop's desktop to work my way to the Music folder in my old Home directory and simply dragged the old iTunes folder to the Music folder on my laptop (using two Finder windows). Doing this with an external harddrive instead of another laptop would be essentially the same process.

This process is simply copying files, so I'm not sure where the issue of not having permission to copy files comes in.

Since you have a lot of files, I would also turn off power saving & security features that either put your hard disk to sleep or log you out of your laptop so that your transfer doesn't get interrupted. Just remember to turn them back on afterwards.

I suppose folks on this forum could enlighten us as to how files within one iTunes Music folder could have different permissions. I could see maybe having an issue with some of the files being read-only perhaps, but multiple users would have different music folders - they wouldn't share the same one. As for having songs purchased with a different iTunes account, that would only impact playing the songs or syncing them to an iPod or iPhone. You would have to authorize the laptop, via iTunes, for each account that you bought music with. But again, that shouldn't mess up the transfer. I authorized mine after I transferred the files.

 

[saucy1360]

thanks paulold, i'll be getting my MBP later this week and that's exactly what i wanna do.

question though: i want to copy my itunes library, not move it. how do i do that using the target disk method?

 

[HBOC]

here is another thread to check out, and I posted (link to a picture gallery) how I transfer my library

 

[greytmom]

I think we need more information about how you are moving the library. Here's how I did it with my two MacBook Pros (one from 2011, the other from 2007):

First I went into my old iTunes and made sure I consolidated my iTunes library so that all of my music files were stored within one folder - the iTunes Music folder. You don't want to copy the folder leaving behind songs that are stored elsewhere. I lost a lot of music in the past that way.

I then connected the two laptops with a FireWire cable. I set the old laptop to Target Disk Mode (holding down the T as the laptop booted up). This turned the old laptop into basically a harddrive seen on my new laptop's desktop.

On my new laptop, I used Finder to go to my Home folder then to the Music folder and I deleted the entire iTunes folder (it was unused - so nothing was lost).

I then opened to the icon on my new laptop's desktop to work my way to the Music folder in my old Home directory and simply dragged the old iTunes folder to the Music folder on my laptop (using two Finder windows). Doing this with an external harddrive instead of another laptop would be essentially the same process.

This process is simply copying files, so I'm not sure where the issue of not having permission to copy files comes in.

Since you have a lot of files, I would also turn off power saving & security features that either put your hard disk to sleep or log you out of your laptop so that your transfer doesn't get interrupted. Just remember to turn them back on afterwards.

I suppose folks on this forum could enlighten us as to how files within one iTunes Music folder could have different permissions. I could see maybe having an issue with some of the files being read-only perhaps, but multiple users would have different music folders - they wouldn't share the same one. As for having songs purchased with a different iTunes account, that would only impact playing the songs or syncing them to an iPod or iPhone. You would have to authorize the laptop, via iTunes, for each account that you bought music with. But again, that shouldn't mess up the transfer. I authorized mine after I transferred the files.

Since you deleted the entire iTunes folder from the new mbp, rather than drag just the iTunes Music folder from the old one, shouldn't you drag over the entire iTunes folder? Or does that mess up anything?

Edit: Whoops - I misread it. Never mind!

 

[saucy1360]

another question here... just found a 320 GB external HD lying around. what i want to do is copy SOME of my current itunes library to my new MBP. i can either move everything and delete what i don't want later via firewire, or move only what i do want via usb. could someone show me what would be faster?:

transferring about 80GB via usb (just the stuff i want... right now takes 35-40 minutes)

transferring about 130GB via firewire 800 (my whole itunes library)

 

[paulold]

question though: i want to copy my itunes library, not move it. how do i do that using the target disk method?

When you drag a folder from one folder to another on the same disk, it moves the folder. But if you drag a folder from one disk to another, it copies the folder. So when I dragged the folder from one laptop to the other while in target disk mode, the action was a copy not a move.

(And just FYI, if you want to copy items while dragging between folders on the same disk (instead of moving), press the Option key as you release the icon. And if you would rather move items while dragging between folders on different disks, press the Command key.)

 

[saucy1360]

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thats good to know. thank you!

 

[paulold]

another question here... just found a 320 GB external HD lying around. what i want to do is copy SOME of my current itunes library to my new MBP. i can either move everything and delete what i don't want later via firewire, or move only what i do want via usb. could someone show me what would be faster?:

transferring about 80GB via usb (just the stuff i want... right now takes 35-40 minutes)

transferring about 130GB via firewire 800 (my whole itunes library)

Maybe others will have better advice, but I think if you're wanting the iTunes library on your new MBP to contain less than it currently does, you should move the entire library to your new machine and then use iTunes to delete the songs you don't want. Be sure to consolidate your library before you make this move and I would store a complete copy of full music library on your external drive to serve as a backup before deleting anything. The reason I suggest this is because I don't think you want to mess up your iTunes Library database file. If you simply delete folders of music files, iTunes will still list those songs in your library but it won't be able to find them. When you delete music from an iTunes library via iTunes, it gives you the option of also deleting the music files from the folders. I think that would be a neater method.

One other thing, you could go online to find out comparisons of transfer speeds between firewire and usb2. Something to consider - I had to buy a special cable that was firewire 800 on one end (for my new MBP) and firewire 400 on the other end (for my old MBP). Funny - I didn't even think to connect them with usb. I thought my only choices were firewire or ethernet (for wired connections). I could have used wifi but that would have taken much longer.

 

[greytmom]

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Ok, just finished transferring about 100g of music, video and photos via FireWire between the two computers, and all seems well. Playlists, play counts survived, etc. Pretty painless!