Trouble transferring to a new PC - iTunes doesnt 'see' my media

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Trouble transferring to a new PC - iTunes doesnt 'see' my media

Until recently I was running iTunes on an old XP laptop but the hard drive was near full so I'd transferred the media to an external drive - all was running fine with no issues.

I've now got a newer laptop (running windows 7), have reinstalled iTunes and everything from the cloud has downloaded fine. However, I have copied all the sub folders from \music\iTunes from the old external drive to the same location in the new C drive but iTunes just ignores them. I cant seem to do anything to persuade iTunes to recognise the old music, artwork, podcasts, etc..

I'm sure it's something obvious but its so frustrating as all the files are there but iTunes just wont recognise them. Are there files I should have copied from the old C drive? (Not a disaster - I still have it).

So far I've

Tried restarting
Uninstalled iTunes, copied the media to the new folder then reinstalled iTunes
As above but copied the media across after installing iTunes
Followed the apple instructions step by step (How to move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Support)
Sworn at it.... lots!

Any help appreciated. Thanks

Windows 7

Posted on Jun 1, 2015 1:36 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 1, 2015 5:06 PM in response to Mike 123

Have you enabled adding a file or folder?

First, click on edit on the menu bar in itunes, click preferences-advanced, make sure that "copy files to itunes media folder when adding to library" is checked.

Then click the file tab on the itunes menu bar and select add file or add folder.

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Answer 2

Mike 123 Author

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Jun 2, 2015 2:16 AM in response to sistersoregon

Thanks for the reply.

I do have the "copy files to itunes media folder when adding to library" check box ticked.

I could use add files to folder, but wouldn't this just add the music to the new library rather than getting iTunes to use the old library? Presumably I'd loose some information this way such as artwork that I'd had to manually add?

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Answer 3

Jun 2, 2015 10:12 AM in response to Mike 123

Itunes cannot "just use the old library", the music has to be added to the library. You can go to your purchase history and re-down load, but that will not bring over any music you had on your old computer that was not purchased in Itunes. And yes you may loose some artwork.

Cheers 🙂

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Jun 2, 2015 11:53 AM in response to Mike 123

In most cases all that is required is to copy the entire iTunes folder from the user's music folder on the old computer into the user's music folder on the new one. This assumes that the iTunes folder contains the media folder, and the media folder contains all of the media connected to the library. Copying the iTunes Media folder alone is not enough. You should not need to import media into a migrated library, it should open showing all of your content. If your library wasn't in the correct shape to start with there may be problems with broken links, but the content ought to be visible. In rare cases the library could suffer the issue described in Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

See Make a split library portable for advice if your library wasn't in the standard layout on your old computer.

tt2

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