The Official "How To Transfer Your iPod or iTunes Library to Your New Mac" Thread

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Hopefully, this thread can help any of you recent switchers wondering how to take your iTunes Library off of your iPod or old computer. I'll provide what information I know, and other members can add onto it if they have any helpful suggestions.

1. If you wish to transfer music from your iPod to your new Mac, download senuTi Download Here. Follow the instructions and your new Mac's iTunes library will be able to take any and all songs directly off your iPod.

2. If you have an old PC or Mac and wish to transfer your library to your new Mac by using your iPod as a flash drive.I have already posted on this subject giving step by step instructions. You can find all the information you need to do this here.

3. Transfer your library via your home network. To do this, all you have to do after your network is set up is:
1.) Open your Macintosh HD folder on your new Mac's desktop.
2.) Click on 'Network' in the sidebar.
3.) Click on the name that you designated for your Network. For instance,
mine says 'Mshome,' which was the default name given.
4.) Click on the computer that you'd like to remove files from. Usually,
the name of the computer is a several character long combination of
letters and numbers.
5.) Locate your 'Shared Files' folder.
6.) Import the files you want.

*- I believe you can also access your old computer's iTunes library via
your new Mac's iTunes if you have your computers networked properly.

I hope this solves some of your questions and I invite anyone with any other information to add-on to this post.

Enjoy!
 
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Great job!!!
 
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If you buy a new Mac and keep your iTunes music and Library in the default location, using the "Migration Manger" application and connecting the two machines via Firewire will move your whole profile, including the iTunes Library, your Files, your pictures and so on, to the new machine.
 
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Hey schweb, can we sticky this?
 
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what about the cover artwork? how can i move the existing artwork in old pc to a new pc?
 
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what about the cover artwork? how can i move the existing artwork in old pc to a new pc?

Any album art I had on my PC was automatically transferred along with the songs to my Mac. I didn't have to do anything special.
 
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I am posting to keep those, like me, from spending a couple of hours following implicitly the directions for transferring iTunes library from PC to Mac, whether using the iPod as a flash drive or transfering over a network, only to discover, because the music was originally ripped in wma format, that your library will not play in iTunes on the new computer, but in QuickTime.
</run-on sentence> ;D

I just found this thread which says I need to buy easywma ~ hope this saves a few others time and aggravation!

edit: I was WRONG. Woohoo, baby, I found I can transfer my iTunes songs one at a time over my network by playing the song on the new computer! My mac iTunes just copies it right into my library. (When I tried the 'normal' network transfer both systems locked up!)
 
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Man, am I ever glad I got this MacBook! PC repeatedly froze up on me during song transfers, in turn freezing Finder through the network. What an ordeal! I was finally reduced to not only transferring one song at a time, but one album ~ in separate folder ~ at a time to keep the process and connection time short enough so as not to lock up both machines again (and again and again). :Grimmace:
 
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Hey guys, I restored my iPod to factory settings in iTunes, as it was previously formatted for use on a PC.

Before restoring, when I plugged the iPod in the USB port, there was an iPod icon on my desktop, and it appeared under DEVICES in my iTunes.

Now, after restoring it, the desktop shows a random white disk image for my iPod, and it does not appears in iTunes.

Any ideas?
 
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Senuti doesnt work on mine it crashes after transferring about 250 songs grrrrrr. Maybe it's because my iPod is Windows formatted and Im trying to move it to my macbook?
 
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New computer connect with old iTunes library media

I have all my music on a new drive. My iTunes library is complete and looks right on my new machine. But iTunes doesn't recognize the new location of the music media. I would like to connect the old file names in the iTunes library to the media in the new location. this way I can preserve playlists, ratings, and other groups and classifications.

Help, please.
 
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My first post; apologies if I am in the wrong section. How can I transfer photographs from iPod to iPhoto?
 
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Has anyone had any of the issues with senuti that the comments section on the download site mentions?

I had my Itunes library on my old PC harddrive (which since died). Now i want to transfer my 5th gen 80gb ipod content including videos to my new imac.

However since the ipod content is the only remaining copy of the files (lost some of the CDs ages ago), I'm extremely nervous about using this and losing data.

I also think that the transfer itunes purchases but nothing else option is extremely cynical and downright out of order. Why the **** shouldn't you be able to transfer the entire library if you've copied it off CDs that you PAID for?

This is just a deliberate apple ploy it seems to push people to buy itunes content. Itunes content in the UK is rubbish anyway, why is it country specific? There are movies and albums on the USa store that I'm BANNED from buying becuase I'm registered in Britain. Thanks Apple...

Also one last thing, whats people's experience with Apple store staff? Will they feed me the company line and be unhelpful or will they actually understand the ridiculous nature of the situation and try to help? Call me jaded but I've had many problems with PC tech support people in the past.
 
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Would it also be sufficient to use iTunes' backup utility to backup your music library to DVD or CD and then copy onto the new Mac?
 
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How about a free program to transfer your ipot to a pc?
 
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I have another friend whose PC crashed and she lost all her photographs and songs and playlists, but they're all safely in her iPod. Unfortunately, the newly restored PC failed to detect her iPod as a hard drive at all (even though it was previously enabled), so she could not even transfer the files out safely. Anyone has any ideas as to how she could do it? Thanks!
 
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Here is a big trick I found!

HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (when you don’t let iTunes manage your music library)

Follow the link to the solution:

Source:
tp://hifiblog.com/past/2006/05/11/howto-move-your-itunes-music-while-preserving-library-data-when-you-dont-let-itunes-manage-your-music-library/ (outdated link removed)

Copy of part of the text:

… if the ITL file is corrupted or damaged, then iTunes will revert to the XML file in order to rebuild it (and consequently, your library data). So the plan is to edit the XML file to reflect the changes in our file paths, and somehow damage the ITL file in order to get iTunes to rebuild it from our revised XML file. If this sounded a bit complicated, worry not—we describe the actions needed step-by-step below:
1. Quit iTunes.
2. Backup your iTunes Music folder—this contains your library data. Now that it’s relieved from your podcasts and iTunes rips it’s considerably lighter too, so do an additional backup or two just to be on the safe side. Do this. Now
3. Move your music files (those indexed by iTunes that are neither iTunes podcasts nor iTunes rips) from the old location (say, C:Documents and SettingsUsernameMy DocumentsMy MusicNon-iTunes) to the new location (say, D:MusicNon-iTunes).
4. Open the "iTunes Library.itl" file. Select all text (Ctrl+A) and delete it. The file is now blank, with zero characters on it—save it. iTunes Library.itl’s filesize should now be 0 bytes. (This is important, as Schmolle notes, because some unicode aware editors—e.g. UltraEdit—may add invisible characters to the beginning of the file.)
5. Open the "iTunes Music Library.xml" and do a global search and replace with your text editor of choice. A screenshot of how this is done in EditPad Lite, a freeware text editor that’s light and powerful follows after the end of this list.
6. Save the XML file.
7. Launch iTunes. A prompt with a progress bar will come up—iTunes is rebuilding your library. Depending on how powerful your computer is and the size of your music library, this may take a while. When this ends, iTunes will come up with a message saying that the library file was corrupted/damaged and it tried to rebuild things for you. Press “OK”, iTunes finally launches.
8. Check to see if all your music and playlists are there, and if library data (play counts, etc.) has been preserved. (Hopefully everything’s fine.) You’ll also notice a couple of additional static playlists for your podcasts, videos, etc. UPDATE: Simon notes in the comments section:
As a minor aside, this approach ‘loses’ the date and timestamp when the file was originally added. This instead becomes the date and time that the track was (re)added to the library during the rebuild. That said, while this slightly messes-up any ‘recently added’ playlists, it somehow maintains the correct sequence (i.e. the rebuild seems to occur in the same sequence in which the mp3s were originally added, so one can still sort the library/playlist by ‘date file added’ and see the newest ones at the bottom).
9. You’re almost done.
(EditPad Lite screenshot—click for larger size:)

By almost we mean:
all the columns in iTunes have been resetted. You’ll have to re-select those columns that you want to be viewable for each playlist, and resize them if necessary.
your podcast subscriptions have been lost. Do the following:
1.
Go to Edit → Preferences → General and see that “Show Genre when browsing” is checked √). Press the “OK” button.
2. Choose Edit → Show Browser.
3. Go to your Library. From the first column of the browser (the Genre one), choose “Podcast”. In the third column of the browser (Album) those albums you see are the podcasts you were subscribed to do. Click on each “album” (podcast), choose all of its “songs” (the podcast’s shows), and drag them to Podcasts in the Source column—see screenshot after the end of this list.
4. Go to Podcasts, you’ll now see a collapsed entry for the podcast you just dragged and next to it a “Subscribe” button—click on it to re-subscribe to this podcast. (If you click the arrow to expand the entry you’ll see that all of the podcast’s shows that you dragged from the Library are there.)
5. Repeat process for each podcast you want to re-subscribe to.
(Screenshot that shows how to move podcasts from the Library view to Podcasts—click for larger size:)

You’re done, that’s pretty much it.
Thanks to Schmolle—without his findings I’d have probably never figured that out. I just brought his guide a bit up-to-date, and added Part 1 and the podcasts section.
If you’re on a Mac, the process should be similar except your "iTunes Library.itl" file is simply "iTunes Library" (without an extension). (UPDATE: Rich confirms that it works.)
For those switching to Mac and wanting to carry their music and library data over, I’d like to know if the following works (i.e. AFAIK nobody’s tested this):
1. blanking your "iTunes Library" file (on the Mac)
2. bringing over your "iTunes Music Library.xml" (from the PC) revised with the updated filepaths (for the Mac)
Finally, if you want to move your music from a “traditional” hard drive to a NAS (network attached storage) device, you may also want to read Simon’s comment.
If you try it, let me know how it went. Furthermore, if you’ve got anything to add, or feel like sharing a relevant tip or two, leave a comment.
 
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my pc hard drive fried

I am very new to posting so please bear with me. I had a pc notebook with all of our itunes music downloaded to it. No I did not back it up. My hard drive fried yesterday. How can I upload the music from my son's ipod and my ipod to our main computer? Alos is there any way we can get our downloaded music from itunes?
 
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hi! :) my harddrive crashed, and now I want to upload my ipod music onto my new computer, but my friend tried this, and it essentially killed her ipod! I've downloaded Senuti, and the reviews were very comforting, but I'm still worried, but also pretty frustrated with not having any music on my computer. Any advice? Thank you very very much :) <3
 
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What's a good program if I want to put someone elses ipod music on my computer. I tried ipoddisk and senuti isnt working. Any other ways?
 
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