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How to Transfer iTunes From One Storage Space to Another – To Share by PC and Mac
By Charles Martin | January 30, 2008
>>Running:: Dell PC Gamer 200gig hd, 3gig RAM, XP/MacBook Pro, 15″, 2gig RAM, 200gig hd, Leopard ~ both with iTunes 7.
Before: PC held 13,000 iTunes songs
After: PC and Mac will share the 13,000 songs through Airport Extreme Wireless with a WD Terrabyte drive attached at the Extreme’s USB port. (DO NOT use a USB Hub!… although Apple lit/help says it works, it doesn’t) See below if you need more USB accessibility from the Extreme.
MAKE SURE to backup all music related files before attempting the following activities. Also, before you start moving files, go into iTunes and click “export library”. Put it on the desktop where you can find it. It will go out as an XML file. If you’d like you can also just export it to a thumb drive or portable disc as you will need it to be accessible by the mac shortly.
I just spent weeks dealing with the intricate ins and outs of moving my 10,000+ songs from a pc hard drive to external terrabyte drive that is accessible and used by both pc and mac. While there are some good posts online from past years, there seems to be two sides of thought– one: make a wholesale move of the actual iTunes music files or two: do a “consolidate music” function and keep a copy on the original space.
The Hothead tried both and while the consolidate music function seems logical, it creates way too many dupes. Dupes on a mac are (pretty) easy to solve but on the pc, not so great. There are two pieces of freeware/cheapware that one can get for the mac/pc. The mac software idupe is great. The pc version is not as great and it’s more cumbersome to understand it’s final output. You get a good feeling from idupe when it processes and it’s interface can be used by (almost) your dog. But, if you are relegated to the pc bin, then you should get the markelsoft ware and try it. Beware, you can’t delete dupes unless you pay. Also iDupe has intelligence that keeps your 13 Dave Matthews songs of same title categorized and not deleted. After all, there are many Dave-like artists that record the same song so many ways and at so many venues with so many guest artists. iDupe can figure this out. Also, when you run iDupe or any duping software make sure you do it after you hit “show duplicates” in iTunes so the work is partly done for you and and in the third and final step, DO NOT delete the file itself, just delete it from the playlist. (do this any time iTunes asks you about file deletion — keep the file for some rainy day)
When I finally figured out that 20,000 dupes and too many missing files were problematic on the consolidate music function, I tried actually “moving” the file. This is not be confused with “copying” the file. In your pc windows explorer find your music folder (usually in my documents, my music, itunes, itunes music) and select all the folders and items in the itunes music folder. If you are a newbie, you can grab any select item with the control key pressed. Then click “move this folder” on the left and show it where your external drive is. Make sure you remember the folder structure when you do this so you can find the music later. Also, for now, do not move your iTunes Library File. It should stay put until later.
As a note, all of this may take as much as an hour + if you have 5,000+ songs.
Note – DO NOT open iTunes until later. If you start now, you’ll just make it angry as you now have hidden the songs.
Once this is all moved, access the itl (now .xml) file of your library on your mac through a text editor. Do not try to open it in or import it into the iTunes on the Mac. It will be greyed out anyway. Take the .xml file which you can open in your text editor (I recommend Text Mate) on the mac and you will see a text listing of every song you own. It will have the location (on the pc) and the title, playlist info etc. Copy the beginning of the file string from location to right before the address gets different per the song. In other words, it should look like this : C:/MyDocuments/MyMusic/iTunes/iTunes Music/Artist…
Do a find and replace of this string and change it to the drive name hierarchy from your mac. If you are accessing the new place of business for iTunes over a network make sure to go the whole way. My new route from the mac is :Office/MyBook/Shared/Music… and so on right up the point where the Artist part starts (do not include the artist part). If you have spaces between words on the mac string, you have to replace the spaces with a %. No spaces allowed. [screen shot forthcoming...]
Once you are done with the find and replace, save the file as it is with the new info. A SaveAs will possibly screw it up so just save as it was titled before. This also, may take about 15 or so minutes.
Open iTunes in the Mac and hold down the CTRL key. You will get an option to create new playlist. Choose that. Then go into Preferences>Advanced and change the default music location with your new one on the external drive. Make sure you are connected to your drive first or you won’t see it. (also, an important note for each time you open iTunes from now on… connect to your network drive first or you get lots of ! songs) Then click Import. Find the xml file that you just made and wahlah! — you’ve just corrupted your first xml pc file for use in a Mac. I had to do this twice and it’s also why I decided to use Text Mate on the 2nd try. The basic text editors are not as robust and can’t handle the work.
Once done, you should have your old pc playlist and the songs you know and love. One caution — YOU WILL have dupes and YOU WILL have some missing songs (denoted by !) but no despair. You will be able to use iDupe as mentioned above and, after an hour or so, have a clean and good working playlist. Also, when iTunes, in either machine, asks to organize files, go ahead. Make sure you have both the places checked in Preferences>Advanced for organizing.
Now, a quick note on the Airport Extreme. 5 Stars. Ya… you might be an Apple doubter, but I can say you get all the power and work of any high-line Linksys router without all the firewall garbage. And look around Best Buy as I did and you’ll see NOT ONE Linksys or other mainline brand of router except one $180.00 model has USB built in. As of press time, Apple announced that the Extreme will be called Time Machine and have it’s own HD built in at 500gig or Terrabyte soon.
(thanks to AutoFreak Charlie for this tip) On the Extreme, do not attempt to us a USB hub. Instead invest another $100 for any further points of USB access you need. I have one running near my stereo amp for AirTunes and one running behind my Dell Color Laser for Printing. The cool software that comes with the Extreme — Bonjour — will make printing simple simon.
Good luck.
[editor's note 10-15-08] I have not tried this, but it could work. http://my.smithmicro.com/win/tuneranger/
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