Transferring Itunes to new laptop... help

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Transferring Itunes to new laptop... help

Hi,

I have attempted to transfer my iTunes onto my new laptop. I have around 19gb of music but not all of it was saved into my iTunes folder. I could not consolidate it all as my old laptop did not have enough memory to do so. After trying to free some space it still did not so I dragged and dropped all the folders into iTunes. Then copied this folder onto and external hard drive. Following a you tube video (not very good on computers) I deleted my new iTunes folder and pasted my iTunes folder from hard drive onto my computer. Then I went onto ITunes and all my songs were there - Horaay! However the ones that were downloaded outside iTunes will not play - error message says ITunes can not locate file. They do play in windows. Not following a you tube video I went to add folder and added my entire music folder to iTunes. This worked. however I have ALOT of duplicates. For example an album with 21 songs will be 42 only half will play.

So my questions are - when I dragged and dropped all my folders, this was not following a you tube video, was this an error? Is there a quicker way to resolve this problem? A quick way to delete all duplicates or non working files? Or shall I delete the whole file and start again? - If that's possible.

Or Will I have to go through and delete each song. Do it that way?

Any help / advice would be appreciated.

Thank you, Sara 🙂

null-OTHER, HP Pavilion

Posted on Jan 10, 2015 4:07 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,905 points

Jan 10, 2015 4:17 AM in response to Barls88

Apple's official advice on duplicates is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership.

Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items to display duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created. If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.

Use my DeDuper script if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background, this post for detailed instructions, and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.

(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed.)

The most recent version of the script can tidy dead links as long as there is at least one live duplicate to merge stats and playlist membership to. There are other ways to deal with dead links alone, but those won't preserve that information.

tt2

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Answer 2

luuklp

Level 3

806 points

Jan 10, 2015 4:20 AM in response to Barls88

Easier option:

Set up Home Sharing on both devices (make sure they are using the same network), and simply import the tracks on your new computer.

For more information about Home Sharing, visit Learn more about Home Sharing - Apple Support

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

272,905 points

Jan 10, 2015 5:26 AM in response to luuklp

I'm not sure that Home Sharing is necessarily easier at this stage of the game, and it may not be the best way to do it originally. This migrate iTunes library post has my advice if you're starting from scratch. This method brings over a true clone of the source library which will sync properly with any devices. Importing the media into a new library leaves certain data behind (ratings, play counts, playlists, original date added values, etc.) and may mean that any device is wiped and reloaded unnecessarily.

tt2

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Answer 4

luuklp

Level 3

806 points

Jan 10, 2015 5:45 AM in response to turingtest2

As far as I know, home sharing is the easiest option.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

272,905 points

Jan 10, 2015 6:37 AM in response to luuklp

If you only want to copy the media, perhaps, but if you want the rest of the information that constitutes an iTunes library, no. Copying the entire iTunes folder is the way to go. Preliminary steps may be needed if the library isn't in a standard layout.

tt2

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