iTunes Transfers

meeker

My hard drive has been going bad gradually. I just ordered a new one off Newegg. I will be replacing Win XP with Win 7 RC when it gets here. I have done this many times and am very comfortable reinstalling OS's.

My only problem is iTunes. I have a very large CD collection that I have been adding to iTunes to make a one -stop shop for all my music since I got a 120g iPod Classic to replace my 15g 3rd Gen.

I have all my albums loaded just the way i want them to be, with cover art and in compilations when necessary. How do I ensure that I don't lose 500 pieces of cover art, playlists and ordering when I reinstall iTunes. I have tried messing with Exporting Library, but it is not obvious how it works. A

Anyone have any luck restoring a library after an OS reinstall?

mts

you can backup your itunes library to dvd and use tht to restore. i have mine backed up but never restored it so i can't tell you the process

Wulf

Its pretty easy. Just make sure that your backed up music is accessible once you replace your drive but before you install iTunes, and the first time you start it up, it asks to find media on your computer. Let it search, and add your stuff, then just consolidate your library through the menu option. Oh and remember to de-authorize your previous install before you remove the drive, or you will have to go into your account and reset your authorized computers if you previously maxed that out.

Fuzzywhale

When I did this i just put everything on to my ipod, reinstalled the OS, and then ripped everything off the ipod with sharepod. It saves all the tags and cover art and dumps its all whever you tell it. Maybe that can help you?

meeker

The problem is not the music, the music is all on a separate drive from my OS. But every previous time I have lost all my cover art when adding the library back, iTunes will then try to load it all from CDDB, not finding a good third of it.

My music library is far too big to try to burn to DVD or to load all onto my iPod.

Gilbert0

It's all stored under My Documents\My Music\Apple or iTunes or something like that (on my work PC with no iTunes on it). It creates some HUGE meta data folder structure thing under there.

I think when you re-import into iTunes, quit iTunes and overwrite the existing structure with the old one.

Try at your own risk though. I think that's how I got it to work the last time I did something like this.

meeker

Knowing what I know about databases and metadata, wouldn't the albums all have a separate ID that would be rewritten when it is imported into a new library? How would it tie the album artwork into the proper album?

C:\Documents and Settings\Me\My Documents\My Music\iTunes

This is the path, I can see the Library files there. I can see the folder with the iTunes Artwork.


I just don't know the exact steps to restore the library and artwork to a music collection...

Gilbert0

Well you can store the album artwork IN the mp3 but iTunes for some reason keeps it in that folder structure.

You're probably right with the association being broken but I think that's how I restored it. Try google to see if others have done it? Sorry I can't really be more help. Worst case, you can backup that folder so you still have it and re-add all the artwork to the files manually on the new install *warning may go insane from such mundane work*