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Copying all music in iTunes to a separate hard drive

I am about to undertake a clean reinstall of Mavericks and have already copied all necessary files to a separate hard drive other than the music in iTunes. How do I do this please.I have looked at the following but all that was copied onto my hard drive was a substantial amount of writing - all the names of the tunes but as I understand it after my re-install importing that file back wouldn't provide all the actual music in the present genres - or am I wrong. Help please.

Thank You

Derek Bradley

IMac2.7, Mac OS X (10.6), Snow Leopard

Posted on Mar 6, 2015 10:08 AM

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5 replies

Mar 6, 2015 10:24 AM in response to DerekBradley

Chris CA's instructions are the best solution.


Just to be clear, when you copy everything to the new system you are not reimporting, so all your play counts & other metadata should remain intact.


Taking the entire user folder will also allow you to keep all other preferences & other files you created. Just be aware that to restore all the user data you need to make a user account too, use the name of the user folder as the 'account name' in Users & groups. It will tell you a user folder already exists & ask about reusing it if you do it correctly.

Mar 6, 2015 11:10 AM in response to Chris CA

Thanks for that but now I am likely to show my ignorance or should I say advancing years seems to prevent me from remembering things. How do I actually copy entire/Music/iTunes to an external hard drive I suppose what I am saying is where in my finder do I find the Music file. I don't seem to be able to do it direct from iTunes. Sorry about my ignorance but I really do need it spelling out!!!

Thanks

Derek Bradley

Mar 6, 2015 11:23 AM in response to DerekBradley

In Finder from the top menu, select 'Go > Home'

Music is a folder inside your Home folder.


You may have other data inside the Music folder, iTunes data is inside an 'iTunes' folder.

You need to copy that to the same place on a new system before you run iTunes (avoid connecting any iOS devices or iPods that may open iTunes for you until you have copied the files).

Copying all music in iTunes to a separate hard drive

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