New MacBook Pro (first Mac). I need to move my itunes library from my pc to a networked external hd (wd passport for mac). I have an ipod with all my media (including video) and i have itunes match. What is the best way to do this? PC to Mac HD ...

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Level 1

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New MacBook Pro (first Mac). I need to move my itunes library from my pc to a networked external hd (wd passport for mac). I have an ipod with all my media (including video) and i have itunes match. What is the best way to do this? PC to Mac HD ...

Can I just consolidate and copy to the journaled hard drive over the network? Will a pc recognize a Mac formatted hard drive? I have searchd the forum and online for hours and can't seem to find anything that specifically address this. Does anyone know the best solution?

Itunes library on PC -> WD Passport for Mac (connected via airport extreme to new MacBook Pro). I plan to use this as the default location for my library because the new Pro only has 256 GB onboard.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Windows Vista

Posted on Jun 30, 2012 12:53 PM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

411,223 points

Jun 30, 2012 1:35 PM in response to Law95

A PC cannot read a Mac formatted drive without using special software (MacDrive).

iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527

Macworld - How to transfer iTunes libraries between PC and Mac - http://www.macworld.com/article/46248/2005/08/shiftitunes.html

Move an iTunes library from a Windows PC to a Mac - http://www.macworld.com/article/1146958/move_itunes_windows_mac.html

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Answer 2

Law95 Author

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8 points

Jun 30, 2012 2:10 PM in response to Limnos

Thanks. I have seen some of those. I was wondering if you can transfer from the PC to the HD via itunes match or with my ipod. It seems like the way that the articles suggest is to transfer from the PC to the Mac, then move it again from the Mac to the external. This seems so inefficient. Thoughts?

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Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

411,223 points

Jun 30, 2012 7:28 PM in response to Law95

Unless you can get your PC to talk to the Mac formatted HD you will have to go through another device. iPods are not designed for this. At best you will only be able to transfer iTunes Store purchases which you could download anyway. it also won't get you fill library on there. By that I mean namely the library.itl file which is the whole structured thing you see when you open iTunes.

Not so fun would be to re-format the external (losing all data!) to NTFS for the PC. Transfer whole iTunes folder to it, then to the Mac which can read NTFS but not write to it. Reformat drive to Mac, then transfer iTunes folder to external.

If you have a small enough iTunes collection you could use a FAT formatted flash drive too.

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Answer 4

mjmsm

Level 1

5 points

Jul 1, 2012 6:38 AM in response to Law95

you also could download the software SENUTI on to your mac for a small price and retrieve them from your ipod(classic). it's pretty easy. you can go to youtube and check it out first.

i had the same problem but my pc crashed and i started to panic but after researching on youtube i found out about senuti. i bought a new macpro and after installing senuti it pulled about 8000+ songs including playlists & play counts (but not last played) from my ipod in about an hour if i remember right.

i want to think senuti was in the 14.99-19.99 price range. WARNING the free version only lets you do up to 1000 songs.

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Answer 5

mjmsm

Level 1

5 points

Jul 1, 2012 6:56 AM in response to Law95

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihkz9BvrNOs&feature=related

this is a good video on senuti

you could then back up your itunes library on your mac to your formatted mac HD. i tried the same thing you did. i bought a macHD with my new macpro and tried backing up my pc before it crashed (it was in the process during my efforts). but it was a very complicated process considering it was a formatted macHD. SENUTI made it so much easier.

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Answer 6

Law95 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 2, 2012 9:02 AM in response to Law95

Here is what I have decided to do. I am going to use a WD MyBook for Mac (connected as NAS through my Airport Extreme) to house my itunes library (unless I can find an economical cloud solution). I consolidated the itunes library and copied it over to my NFTS hard drive. I will move it to my macbook pro and then onto the WD MyBook. I will use it as my default location for iTunes. Hopefully it won't be too slow. If so, I will just move it back over to my Mac and move all of my other videos, photos, docs, etc onto a cloud server and use the MyBook as a Time Capsule backup.

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