Migration of iTunes to new Mac, while changing Media folder location.

Hi,

I ordered a new Mac Mini, and I am considering to put a SSD drive in it, as described here:

-->http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIYIMM11D2/

Now I'm in doubt how to properly move my iTunes from my current MBP to the Mac Mini.

My MBP is running 10.6.8 SL, with iTunes 10.7. I do not want to update to iTunes 11 because i don't like certain omissions like coverflow.

I have always let iTunes organise my library, with checkbox "copy files to media folder when adding to library" checked. My library is 155GB.

My Mac Mini (MM), which will arrive next week, will have of course have 10.8.2 ML, and probably iTunes 11 pre-installed.

What I want:

On the MM SSD I want just OSX, applications, and homefolder, minus pictures music & movies.

On the MM stock HDD I want to have pics, music, movies and other data.

If possible, I want to have iTunes version 10.7 on the Mac Mini too.

I absolutely can't afford to lose the rating info of my songs (not stored in ID3-tag, still a mystery to me why this can't be stored in there, can somebody shine a light on this?) because I have a lot of smart playlists using the rating as a parameter.

So, what is the correct procedure to achieve this?

First step: I need to revert to v10.7 instead of v11. I think this is managable, I've seen some threads about this. Any useful tips or links are welcome though.

Step 2: moving the music: I can find a lot of information about moving the iTunes library from an existing boot drive to an external drive, but this is not my situation.

The easiest way of course, would be to buy a SSD large enough, say 240GB, so I could copy my current iTunes folder from my MBP to the MM SSD bootdrive, making sure my homefolder and user name is the same as on my MBP, so filepaths stay the same, and then do the steps as described here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

My iTunes library is 155GB now, so that would mean I have to buy a 240GB SSD to be able to use this method.

Actually, I should have enough with a 120GB SSD for OSX/apps/homefolder (minus music/pics/movies), so I could save some money by using another method. This brings me to my question: if I copy my current iTunes Library to the stock HDD drive, I will certainly run into the problem that iTunes won't find the songs because the filepath has changed. I know this, but I'm not entirely sure how to fix this.

My plan to achieve this would be:

* Boot my MBP from a FW800 backup-drive, a bootable CCC clone from my MBP boot disk. (I have several CCC clones, so I can temporarily use one of those)

* Boot the MacMini in Firewire Target Disk mode, connected to my MBP.

* Perform the steps from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449 to move iTunes Library to the MM stock HDD.

* Then replace the .itl file and album artwork folder on the MM, by the corresponding ones on the MBP clone.

* Disconnect when ready, boot the MM, launch iTunes, and then change the iTunes media folder location to the folder on the HDD.

(and as a final step, make a CCC clone again from my MBP, to the FW backup drive, in order to undo the changes on the backup drive)

I think this workaround would work. Anybody who knows why this would not work for some reason? Am I missing something?

Or am I making it ridiculously difficult, and do you know a much easier way? Please tell me then :-)

Let me re-emphasize that I need to keep my ratings and playlists, which is probably not possible with just copying music and then "add folder" to library.

Another option that comes to my mind is the Migration Assistant app, but I've never used this before, so I don't know how it works. If it even exists in Mountain Lion, I'm afraid it might give problems across different OSX versions, and the problem of changing the media folder location is still not solved with this?

Thanks for any help.