| Computer Related > Itunes / Ipod help | Miscellaneous |
| Thread Author: Slightlyfatdirector | Replies: 7 |
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New Tue 25 Jan 22 13:42
Itunes / Ipod help - Slightlyfatdirector
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Can the forum bring it's undoubted talents to my current frustration please? Apologies, it's a bit of a long one..... I replaced my PC just over a year ago and whilst following various guides on how to transfer my ITunes account - plus the hundreds of albums saved on it - to the other PC via an expansion hard drive, it does not appear to have gone as planned and not all the albums are there. There was about 128Gb of music / podcasts stored and all of this was on this old IPod too. With the old PC, whenever I wanted to update it, add or update podcasts, buy new music, etc I just plugged the Ipod into the old PC and it did it's thing For various reasons - mainly that I have everything stored on my old IPod (classic 160GB) device and have not needed to update it or add any new music to it - and I have just been too busy to be bothered with the palaver - I left well alone, but the fear is if I plug the IPod in, it will sync to the new Itunes on the new PC that has a fraction of the music stored and the rest will be lost, so I have just done nothing I can't bear dealing with PC issues at the weekend and really don't know what I am doing half the time (I'm and analogue man in a digital world!), but then I have just taken delivery of a new car that only has USB-C slots to add a device to it and not the normal USB slots I could plug my old IPod into so I can't play anything in it. Frustrating as I have paid for an up-rated music system too, hence a need to do something about this now.... So I can't plug my old IPod into these (there are adaptors but they wont enable you to play music through them), so I need to come at this from afresh. Option 1, Fire up the old PC and check ITunes is still there and functioning and buy a new / newer IPod that I can transfer music onto that has a USB-C connector - assuming that there is one - and continue to buy new music (Half Man Half Biscuit have a new album pending - can't miss that! :)) and just use the old PC for ITunes (not ideal at all) Option 2, Try to transfer all my music from the Ipod to a new Itunes account on my new PC (technically possible it seems, but not really what should be done, and anyway the new PC is proving to be problematically slow after a day or two for no apparent reason, so this could take days), but I also risk losing lots of albums if the transfer does not go as planned... Option 3, Try to transfer Itunes from the old PC to the new one all over again, or better still try to get my daughter / her boyfriend to do it. Whilst tech savvy though this would be probably old-tech to them so a risk involved. Also I followed everything to the letter first time round so not sure what would change now. Option 4, Abandon all hope, and sign up to a music streaming site, but can I then have access to all of my old music in a format that is as easy to access as an IPod, and would it have some of the more obscure bands / solo artists I have saved over the years? The aforementioned Half Man, etc for example - of which I have a surprising number of their quite brilliant albums, plus other weird and wonderful stuff I have saved over the years as I sought to get replacements to all my old cassettes and CD's from the 80's onwards Is there an Option 5 or another way I should be coming at this that the forum could suggest? I suspect there is a much easier solution that will be obvious to those on here and I would be very grateful for any constructive (or amusing) feedback! Thanks all! |
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New Tue 25 Jan 22 16:22
Itunes / Ipod help - smokie
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Option 3 for me. Done it loads of times and without blowing my own wotsit too hard I do have loads of experience of iTunes, with a mahoosive music library and multiple systems. Run iTunes on your old PC. First we'll just grab some info. Go to Edit/Preferences/advanced and do a screen print (alt/Print Screen on your keyboard, or use snipping tool in Windows accessories), or write down your iTunes Media folder location and which options are ticked. Library info, playlists and meta data is in files the iTunes library. Which is these days, I believe, in c:users[username]Music but if not there I can help you locate it. (Important files are iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Library.xml but your artwork etc is also there in subfolders). Also I believe your music may be there, by default - folder iTunes Media - along with podcasts etc. If you can copy that lot onto your new system somehow then we are 3/4 of the way there. I just have to do something else for 30 mins or so, I'll be back!! Last edited by: smokie on Tue 25 Jan 22 at 16:22
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New Tue 25 Jan 22 17:03
Itunes / Ipod help - smokie
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So. Your iTunes library can live anywhere on your PC, even on an external drive. For my own convenience I don't have it in the default location. But you will know the default location from your efforts above. Does your PC have a second drive (D drive?. If so that is often a good place for it. Anyway - make your iTunes folder then copy all the iTunes stuff into that folder. All the better if that include iTunes media (your songs etc). Then the bit which often takes a few attempts... Hold down the shift button while you start iTunes. If it works, this will throw up a prompt for the location of the iTunes library. Just use Choose Library and point it at your newly created library and Robert is your uncle. (You may have trouble getting this panel to come up - I usually take 3 or 4 goes - but keep the shift held down all the time it is starting. Also if you were double clicking the iTunes icon on your desktop try just highlighting it and pressing enter while holding the shift down.) Once you are in, go to Edit/Preferences/advanced and the details ought to be unchanged form your old settings which you grabbed earlier - except the library may need changing if you've put it in a different place. Your iPod will already be configured as its configuration is stored in one of the files you have copied across, not a new one, so you ought to be able to just sync it right away (after you've checked all your albums etc are there of course) I think that's it. iTunes will remember where stuff is once it's been told once. The good thing about doing it that way is that it is non-destructive i.e. you can't lose your stuff at any point. Have a go and come back with any queries, or questions, especially if anything isn't clear. Good luck. |
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New Wed 26 Jan 22 13:24
Itunes / Ipod help - Slightlyfatdirector
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Smokie, You are an absolute star! I will look to do as you have suggested this weekend. So grateful for your time and comprehensive reply! Until now I had been dreading dealing with this... Will let you know how it goes..... |
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New Tue 1 Feb 22 14:04
Itunes / Ipod help - Slightlyfatdirector
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Thanks for your help Smokie. I did everything you suggested and after some considerable time then indeed the transfer took place. That's the good news. The bad news is that it transferred the same information / music as happened a year ago, and not the full kit and caboodle of all the music I had on the old PC. Most odd.... The old PC shows everything being there (and as is on the iPod from when it was last plugged into it (well over a year ago)) but there are dozens of albums missing when it's on the new PC, plus the play-lists. Does it matter that many (but not all) of the albums had been CD's that I had placed in the CD drive of the old PC and saved into iTunes from it a few years ago? That would perhaps account for some of the missing ones, but definately not all, and as I say, they are all showing in Itunes on the old PC, as are various playlists that are not showing when I transfer it across to the new one either. I did have my daughter and her boyfriend by my side to check and agree with everything I was doing, so your guide was perfect and followed to the letter but with regrettably no joy. Therefore I suspect that there might be more than one sent of files on the old PC, but that would seem to be odd, and why would they not be in the same place? Anyway, after some expressed incredulity as to why I was causing myself so much pain, the 'kids' helped guide me to set up Spotify and show me how to get all my music on that, and then how to connect that wirelesly to the new car so the app is on the dashboard of the car's system and my phone just syncs to it. So, I have music! I am a happy bunny in that respect and the process was surprisingly smooth Now I just need to download / establish a link to all of my saved music... From A-Z I have done to C's but I am a way off from ZZ Top! :) They do have HMHB though, so that's good :) So, I still want to get things onto the ITunes just out of plain b*****-mindedness, but it is not quite so important. Is this user-error I wonder? |
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New Tue 1 Feb 22 15:23
Itunes / Ipod help - smokie
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It probably means that your music is all over the place on your old PC. If you go to Edit/Preferences the second tick box down is "Copy music to iTunes Media folder when adding to library". If this is checked then stuff you add should all end up in the same place. If it isn't then it will remain where it is, so if you ripped the CD to say c:temp that's where it will be. I think if the music isn't there then the playlist won't be either. You can easily check on the old PC where the music is. In iTunes, just go to a file in your library and right click, choose Song Info then File and that will show you its location on your disk. Just look at a few which have transferred then some which haven't and see if the first part of disk location is the same In my case it's M:/Media/iTunes Media/Music. followed by the artist name then album name.(I've had to type forward slashes because this software takes out backslashes) Last edited by: smokie on Tue 1 Feb 22 at 16:37
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New Tue 1 Feb 22 16:36
Itunes / Ipod help - smokie
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Further thoughts - if you find that most of it is in one place but some is in another then the simple thing to do is copy the files in the other location to the same place on your new machine. The messier way would be to ensure the tick box above ("Copy music to iTunes Media folder when adding to library") is ticked the re-add the files by File/Add Folder. This is more like an Import but you would be left with loads of tracks in your Library which cannot be found. There are cunning sways to identify and deal with these but the simple option is better in this case, especially as doing it the hard way would mean that your playlists are lost. There is an import playlist function but I've hardly used it but I'm not convinced it work work in this instance. |
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New Wed 2 Feb 22 13:35
Itunes / Ipod help - Slightlyfatdirector
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| This is really kind of you Smokie. Much appreciated and I will give this a try! Thank you! |
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