Importing iTunes library from external to internal hard drive

[Chic0]

This has probably been mentioned before, but I cant find the thread.

On my Powerbook G4 12", I had to use an external hard drive to store all my music.

I have just bought a new PowerBook 15" with 120gb hard disk, so would like to run all my music directly from the internal hard disk.

What is the correct way to import all my music from my external drive onto the internal hard drive, so all my playlists are intact?

Help much appreciated.

Chi

 

[fryke]

Hm. You could take the old PB's iTunes preference files etc. and move them to the new one, but that would only let you have the same setup as before, with the songs on the external drive.

I guess importing the songs is no trouble at all, you just copy them to the iTunes folder in your user's Music folder. But that doesn't solve your problem - you'd have to recreate your lists on your own...

 

[Gig']

Simly copy your iTunes music folder to your hard disk then open iTunes and go to preferences > advanced : under general tab change the itunes music folder location that should do the trick.

and congrats on you new PB

SRY fryke I was typing when you answered

 

[Mikuro]

One method I often use to get around iTunes' lack of track-tracking abilities is to use symbolic links. For example, if I want to move a folder of music from drive A to drive B, first I do the copy, then I create a symbolic link of the copy on drive B, and replace the original on drive A with that link. That way when iTunes goes looking for the folder on drive A, it's pointed to drive B, and it'll never know the difference. But this only works if you always have both drives mounted.

If you don't know how to make symbolic links, check out SymbolicLinker.


I've been meaning to make a script or program to record playlist/play-count/rating info on tracks based on things like name, artist, etc, and then re-apply those to any matching tracks later. In theory it shouldn't be too hard, but I've never gotten around to it.