Transfer music from external hard drive to an iMac

Question

Transfer music from external hard drive to an iMac

OK, so I just bought a new iMac. Im making the change over from a PC and I have all my songs on an external hard drive. What would be the best way to import all my songs (240gb worth of music) to my iMac? I bought an iMac with a 750gb hard drive. Will it keep all the itunes tags (genre, bpm's, album names, etc. etc.) with each track? I really want to do this the right way the first time. After I import the tracks to iMac I want to use the external hard drive to back up my iMac. I read somewhere that you can back up your itunes data to a cd and import it to another cpu. One of my biggest worries would be if I do that and then load that cd to my iMac, will I end up getting double track info when I import my external hard drive? Thanks in advance for anyones help, it is much appreciated.

*Here are the specs. on my iMac*
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB
750GB Serial ATA Drive
SuperDrive 8x DL

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Mar 26, 2008 11:08 AM

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Answer 1

DonH49

Level 6

16,704 points

Mar 26, 2008 1:03 PM in response to dj charlie white

assuming the imac can recognize your external drive:
it all depends how you preferize itunes. what I do > copy all my desired mp3 files to my boot drive. All these files are metatagged. I just will not get equalizer or favorite ie stars(I don't use anyway). I use the add to library function within itunes. once done I do a select all in the itunes library and Apple+i then pick my equalizer, all done in one shot. playlist you must make from scratch. To make it easier for me because I do this frequently, I use Grouping as a metatag and use the same name for my playlist.

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Answer 2

Mar 28, 2008 6:14 AM in response to dj charlie white

OK, so I really don't know much about this iMac yet so please bare with me. I plugged in the hard drive and dragged it to the itunes icon. It loaded all the songs into itunes (took a long time). So now my itunes default location is my external hard drive. I want to actually have all my files on the iMac, so my itunes will read the files from where ever they get stored on the iMac. What do I need to do? Please help as I am not that computer savy.

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Answer 3

Mar 28, 2008 9:00 AM in response to DonH49

What do you mean by copy them to my boot drive? Should I drag my external hard drive icon to the iMac hard drive icon, and then change the default folder in my itunes to...? Im really confused with all of this. I just want to get this done ASAP. Thanks again for anyones help.

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Answer 4

Mar 28, 2008 2:52 PM in response to dj charlie white

Anyone?

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Answer 5

Mar 28, 2008 5:41 PM in response to dj charlie white

open iTunes click on the iTunes drop down menu at the top of your screen and select Preferences. Click Advanced and change your iTunes Music folder location so that it is located where you want it to be on your local HD; click OK. Check the box next to "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library. Click OKAY at the bottom of the preferences window. Then browse through your External HD until you find the folder that contains all of your music. Click and drag the music folder over the Music library icon in the left column of the iTunes interface. The icon should become highlighted, when this happens release the click and iTunes will begin importing the music folder to the destination on your internal HD that was specified in the preferences.

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Answer 6

Mar 28, 2008 6:57 PM in response to digitizedsociety

This is what I keep trying to do, but it isn't working for some reason. Not sure what to do now. I change my default location to my itunes music folder - it takes awhile for the change over "updating itunes library" then I open the hard drive- select all my files - and try to drag them all over to the folder I changed it to, but nothing happens.

Any advice???

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Answer 7

Mar 29, 2008 11:42 AM in response to dj charlie white

in your preferences is the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" box checked? if this option is not checked iTunes will add your songs to the library but be pointing to your external HD.

I guess the alternative is to transfer all your music to your internal HD manually first and then import them into iTunes from your local HD.

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Answer 8

Mar 30, 2008 6:39 PM in response to dj charlie white

Yes I do have that box checked. I don't know what to do now. There is no way I can do each song as I have about 13,000 songs on my external hard drive. I'm getting to the point where I feel like giving up and bringing this thing to the Apple store and pay them money so they can do this move over for me. Is there any other possible thing I can do? What if I eject my Mybook (to be safe) and then erase the itunes library and start over again. I don't understand why this is so difficult to do. Maybe I did something wrong when I first hooked this up.

If there is anything you can do, please provide me with a step by step instruction. Thank you again for your valuable time. I really do appreciate it, have a good night.

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Answer 9

Apr 3, 2008 6:51 AM in response to dj charlie white

Well after about a week it finally worked. Not sure what the problem was. Thanks for all the your time you spent helping me with this issue. Have a good day.

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Answer 10

Apr 3, 2008 11:42 AM in response to dj charlie white

Not a problem.. just glad it finally worked for you.

Cheers!

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Answer 11

Apr 3, 2008 2:27 PM in response to digitizedsociety

I do have one more problem now. I noticed that when I did the transfer it did not carry over the tags on my WAV files. It carried over the song names but not any other info (album, genre, bpm's, etc.). Is there any thing I can do? This happened to over 1,500 songs. The only way I can fix it is to start up my old PC and search for each track on it and then manually adjust it on my iMac.

Any suggestions?

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Answer 12

Apr 3, 2008 2:37 PM in response to dj charlie white

now that im not fully sure about.. if you were using iTunes on your PC, you could attempt to grab the iTunes library file or the .xml file from the PC's iTunes music folder and File>import either file to your Mac iTunes, which could do it. *BUT* _+you could also end up having duplicates of all your songs in your library also+_. So attempt at your own risk.

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