Where do I put the iTunes folders?

[bj]

I've got my iTunes folders backed up on an external hard drive. I want to
put it all on my new computer but don't know where to copy it to. Some
places I try that seem likely just give me the old "access denied" box & I
can't find how to change that either -- I keep getting an error on changing
the access.

(moving from XP, which is no longer available to me, to Win7-64bit)

I've looked back through some of the messages on the general "access denied"
topic & either I'm missing something or my eyes have completely glazed over
by this time. I seem to have gotten everything in "documents" relocated but
can't figure out the iTunes problem. (I really don't want to have to
"import" everything into iTunes -- not just a lot of individual items &
folders but I'd lose the playlists too.)
Thanks for any help.
bj

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

I've got my iTunes folders backed up on an external hard drive. I want to
put it all on my new computer but don't know where to copy it to. Some
places I try that seem likely just give me the old "access denied" box & I
can't find how to change that either -- I keep getting an error on changing
the access.

Where are you trying to put it? Why not create a folder off the root
called "iTunes Music", then copy the files there?

If you are the only one to use it, you can put it in your own Music
folder.

If you want it usable by all, put it in one of the Public folders.

 

[Nil]

I've got my iTunes folders backed up on an external hard drive. I
want to put it all on my new computer but don't know where to copy
it to. Some places I try that seem likely just give me the old
"access denied" box & I can't find how to change that either -- I
keep getting an error on changing the access.

Maybe this will answer your question:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1364

 

[bj]

Thank you, that does look promising.
bj

"Nil" wrote in message

I've got my iTunes folders backed up on an external hard drive. I
want to put it all on my new computer but don't know where to copy
it to. Some places I try that seem likely just give me the old
"access denied" box & I can't find how to change that either -- I
keep getting an error on changing the access.

Maybe this will answer your question:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1364

 

[KCB]

I've got my iTunes folders backed up on an external hard drive. I want to
put it all on my new computer but don't know where to copy it to. Some
places I try that seem likely just give me the old "access denied" box & I
can't find how to change that either -- I keep getting an error on
changing
the access.

(moving from XP, which is no longer available to me, to Win7-64bit)

I've looked back through some of the messages on the general "access
denied"
topic & either I'm missing something or my eyes have completely glazed
over
by this time. I seem to have gotten everything in "documents" relocated
but
can't figure out the iTunes problem. (I really don't want to have to
"import" everything into iTunes -- not just a lot of individual items &
folders but I'd lose the playlists too.)
Thanks for any help.
bj

Mine is here from a default install:
C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes

 

[Gordon]

Mine is here from a default install:
C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes

Think you'll find that's the PROGRAM files and not the actual music files...

 

[bj]

I tried all the various suggested methods.
The Apple article was very clear, it just didn't work at least not for me.
I did what it said to do and...nothing happened, or it missed
a bunch of stuff (I tried more than once.)

So I went the Brute Force Method (which actually took less time than trying
all the "quick & easy" approaches) & have been importing folders & files
into iTunes, changing media types where the attributes got lost in
transition, & so on. OK, it took a long time to do the imports (since I was
also copying to my media directory from where the files had been stored)
but I didn't have to sit there watching it (& got some overdue
office-clearing done while I monitored the situation!)

I'd like to import my old playlists -- does anyone know where they are? or
what the filenames might look like? anything?

Not that rebuilding them is all bad -- getting things arranged as I want
them now, rather than changing & adjusting from all the old list. Rethinking
it all & doing some necessary housekeeping. At least I don't have to worry
about ratings & last-played, as I never use them.
bj

"bj" wrote in message
Thank you, that does look promising.
bj

"Nil" wrote in message

I've got my iTunes folders backed up on an external hard drive. I
want to put it all on my new computer but don't know where to copy
it to. Some places I try that seem likely just give me the old
"access denied" box & I can't find how to change that either -- I
keep getting an error on changing the access.

Maybe this will answer your question:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1364

 

[Nil]

I'd like to import my old playlists -- does anyone know where they
are? or what the filenames might look like? anything?

I went through a similar exercise after I posted the link to Apple's
instructions. I had built a new computer for a friend and installed a
fresh copy of iTunes on it. Then I copied all his music files from his
old XP computer to the new Windows 7 computer and told iTunes where
they were. iTunes then made a new Library out of them.

Then I shut down iTunes and copied two files from the old machine:
"iTunes Library.itl" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" and replaced the
versions on the new machine (after making a backup of the originals.)
All his playlists, statistics, and ratings reappeared.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

alt.windows7.general:

I went through a similar exercise after I posted the link to Apple's
instructions. I had built a new computer for a friend and installed a
fresh copy of iTunes on it. Then I copied all his music files from his
old XP computer to the new Windows 7 computer and told iTunes where
they were. iTunes then made a new Library out of them.

Then I shut down iTunes and copied two files from the old machine:
"iTunes Library.itl" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" and replaced the
versions on the new machine (after making a backup of the originals.)
All his playlists, statistics, and ratings reappeared.

Thanks! Excellent timing - this is my day to import iTunes files...

I'll try your method and report later.

 

[Nil]

Thanks! Excellent timing - this is my day to import iTunes
files...

I'll try your method and report later.

Don't forget this most important four little disclaiming words...

"Your Mileage May Vary"!

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

It looks like my mileage didn't vary...

It's already done (just 10 minutes ago), and that was after I spent 15
minutes figuring out where things were and realizing I had to alter the
setup, mostly in order to copy the data to this new computer instead of
leaving it on the old one; I used a clone backup drive, rather than copying
over the LAN.

Again, thanks. It was easy enough. Under 40 minutes for arond 21.5GB of
stuff.

Well, I haven't played anything yet. I'll try that first.

OK - I'm listening to Dies Irae from "Ego sum Resurrectio - Gregorian chant
for the dead", anonymous from (I'm guessing) around the XIIth century, from
my playlist "Dies Irae". Sounds great!

Then I connected the iPod...

A hundred songs could not be copied to the iPod because they couldn't
be found - and there's no way I have found (yet) to copy the list.

No - I did find a way. The window could be expanded, and the snip tool
did the rest (except I think I lost part of it due to a mis-click).

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Then I connected the iPod...

A hundred songs could not be copied to the iPod because they couldn't be
found - and there's no way I have found (yet) to copy the list.

No - I did find a way. The window could be expanded, and the snip tool did
the rest (except I think I lost part of it due to a mis-click).

Well, it tunes out that I didn't lose any part of the list, but oddly
enough, all of the songs exist on the iPod and in the iTunes files on
the computer. They represent part or all of the tunes on eight albums.

Apple.com Help, here I come

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Well, it tunes out that I didn't lose any part of the list, but oddly enough,
all of the songs exist on the iPod and in the iTunes files on the computer.
They represent part or all of the tunes on eight albums.

Apple.com Help, here I come

Actually, the tunes are *not* present on the hard drive, but they are
in the display in the iTunes window.

They were somehow lost from the hard drive on the old computer (or
before), but remain on the iPod from before that loss, and also remain
listed in the library database.

So now I need to find them or upload them from the iPod...

 

[Nil]

Actually, the tunes are *not* present on the hard drive, but they
are in the display in the iTunes window.

They were somehow lost from the hard drive on the old computer (or
before), but remain on the iPod from before that loss, and also
remain listed in the library database.

Actually, I forgot to mention one step I took. The last step was that I
selected all the songs in the iTunes library, then right-clicked on the
selection, and chose Get Info. That scanned the whole list of songs,
and indicated any that weren't present (there were just a couple in
this case.)

In your case, no knowing the history behind it, if some files were lost
on the original hard disk but they are still present on the iPod *DO
NOT* sync the iPod to the computer - it will erase them from the iPod
forever. If the only copy of those files is on the iPod, there are ways
to copy them off the iPod before syncing. You could then put them back
among the rest of the audio files in your iPod library, THEN sync. I'd
have to check out how to do it, though, I don't remember at the moment.
I'm not really well-versed in the ways of Apple.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

alt.windows7.general:

Actually, I forgot to mention one step I took. The last step was that I
selected all the songs in the iTunes library, then right-clicked on the
selection, and chose Get Info. That scanned the whole list of songs,
and indicated any that weren't present (there were just a couple in
this case.)

In your case, no knowing the history behind it, if some files were lost
on the original hard disk but they are still present on the iPod *DO
NOT* sync the iPod to the computer - it will erase them from the iPod
forever. If the only copy of those files is on the iPod, there are ways
to copy them off the iPod before syncing. You could then put them back
among the rest of the audio files in your iPod library, THEN sync. I'd
have to check out how to do it, though, I don't remember at the moment.
I'm not really well-versed in the ways of Apple.

Nothing seems to have gotten lost from the iPod. Lucky me?

Some of the files actually existed elsewhere. The ones I know about at
this pont are Beatles albums. It seem I have to directory trees, one
called Beatles and one called The Beatles, and for some reason unknown
to me that caused iTunes to have some great problems.

But after I fixed a few of those problems (by putting "the" into the
sort files or by taking it out) I *still* had 100 lost files - there
looked to be as many new ones as the ones I had fixed

At that pont, I just used the freeware program I had just downloaded to
copy everything from the iPod to a new folder on the PC. It seems to
have some bugs (error reports midstream, some foreign characters in
files names not correct) that I'm suspicious.

The program is available here:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/IPOD-TOOLS/Multimedia-IPOD-tools/iDump.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/yxq7yl

I also watched a YouTube on how to do it without extra software. That
is at:

I might try that if the first method fails.

But before I try either of the above, I will try your trick with Show
info.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Nothing seems to have gotten lost from the iPod. Lucky me?

Some of the files actually existed elsewhere. The ones I know about at this
pont are Beatles albums. It seem I have to directory trees, one called
Beatles and one called The Beatles, and for some reason unknown to me that
caused iTunes to have some great problems.

But after I fixed a few of those problems (by putting "the" into the sort
files or by taking it out) I *still* had 100 lost files - there looked to be
as many new ones as the ones I had fixed

At that pont, I just used the freeware program I had just downloaded to copy
everything from the iPod to a new folder on the PC. It seems to have some
bugs (error reports midstream, some foreign characters in files names not
correct) that I'm suspicious.

The program is available here:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/IPOD-TOOLS/Multimedia-IPOD-tools/iDump.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/yxq7yl

I also watched a YouTube on how to do it without extra software. That is at:

I might try that if the first method fails.

But before I try either of the above, I will try your trick with Show info.

1. I forgot to try the Show Info trick and deleted all the music, then
I remembered. OK, iTunes puts the files in the recycle bin, so I
restored all. But then, the Library index was lost, so I imported all
(Add File to Library), in place since it was already there.

2. Whoa - nothing seemed to be missing. But then I found the Beatles
album Let it Be was gone, so I imported it from the iDump upload I had
already done.

3. My conclusion: copying the files from the backup drive confused
iTunes. But if I had run the import in place right then, iTunes
would've straightened itself out. Maybe.

4. Selecting all songs and choosing Show Info just gives me an info box
with nothing displayed...because that's how any field with varying
contents is displayed. It seems I don't know how to do what you did.

5. I'm also doing the upload described in the video I mentioned. Now
I'll have an extra backup for when I goof up. Also there's another iPod
in the house with (I hope) the same files on it that hasn't been near
this computer .

6. No dogs, cats, alligators, or whales were harmed in this process
(take that sentence as evidence that it's time to shut off the
computer!).

 

[bj]

I didn't dare try copying over any .itl or xml files (didn't even bother
looking to see if I had them anywhere) -- I had no idea what havoc they
might cause since I'd already done a lot of re-naming & so on. I don't need
statistics or ratings, but the playlists would have been nice. I'm
re-creating them using what's on my devices as a guide -- I may make some
updating/housekeeping changes, as my list of playlists grew over the past
couple of years & is getting pretty unweildy -- and I'm not using some of
them. Starting From Scratch (more or less) does have its benefits.

I'm still grappling with the problem of Audible content. Brute Force
again -- trying the re-d/l method & hope the items all import into iTunes as
they did before. Tried importing from b/u folder but had
password/authentication problems (& I *was* using the right ID & p/w, I even
signed on to Audible to make sure!)

I may actually be able to sync my devices in another week or so!

I still have to do whatever about my Outlook content, which fortunately
isn't all that much.
I have one device that is less important about what's on it, so it'll be my
test-case when I dare to sync again.

I somehow think that none of these companies -- who deal in download
material -- have any understanding of "got a new computer, what now?" or
"crashed & rebuilt! now what do I do?" and don't actually *try out* their
"simple instructions" that they recommend to customers.
(otherwise we wouldn't be here in the thread!)
bj

"Nil" wrote in message

I'd like to import my old playlists -- does anyone know where they
are? or what the filenames might look like? anything?

I went through a similar exercise after I posted the link to Apple's
instructions. I had built a new computer for a friend and installed a
fresh copy of iTunes on it. Then I copied all his music files from his
old XP computer to the new Windows 7 computer and told iTunes where
they were. iTunes then made a new Library out of them.

Then I shut down iTunes and copied two files from the old machine:
"iTunes Library.itl" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" and replaced the
versions on the new machine (after making a backup of the originals.)
All his playlists, statistics, and ratings reappeared.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I didn't dare try copying over any .itl or xml files (didn't even bother
looking to see if I had them anywhere) -- I had no idea what havoc they
might cause since I'd already done a lot of re-naming & so on. I don't need
statistics or ratings, but the playlists would have been nice. I'm
re-creating them using what's on my devices as a guide -- I may make some
updating/housekeeping changes, as my list of playlists grew over the past
couple of years & is getting pretty unweildy -- and I'm not using some of
them. Starting From Scratch (more or less) does have its benefits.

You could back up the original files before copying the others.

I did that, but Nil's method worked fine and I never needed the
backups.

 

[bj]

I'm not going to bother starting over *again*.

Current problems have to do with Audible authorization & access.
Gotta call them tomorrow & see if I can straighten out that mess.

More minorly is some podcasts that don't want to import.

As long as I'm re-building everything I am also doing some long-overdue
pruning & reorganizing (not just in iTunes.) I will keep the external drive
that BB put what data-recovery they could on but thin out what I'm keeping
on my new machine until I know I have things working nicely.

Meanwhile, of course, I'm not syncing *anything*!
<sigh>
bj

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message

I didn't dare try copying over any .itl or xml files (didn't even bother
looking to see if I had them anywhere) -- I had no idea what havoc they
might cause since I'd already done a lot of re-naming & so on. I don't
need
statistics or ratings, but the playlists would have been nice. I'm
re-creating them using what's on my devices as a guide -- I may make some
updating/housekeeping changes, as my list of playlists grew over the past
couple of years & is getting pretty unweildy -- and I'm not using some of
them. Starting From Scratch (more or less) does have its benefits.

You could back up the original files before copying the others.

I did that, but Nil's method worked fine and I never needed the
backups.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I'm not going to bother starting over *again*.

Such a wuss!

I restored my iPod twice this weekend, and still had some anomalies.
However, I let iTunes fix one of them, and it used that opportunity to
fix all but a dozen or so of the 480 +- that it found. The remaining
dozen and the missing movies were easy enough for me to find & fix...

Current problems have to do with Audible authorization & access.
Gotta call them tomorrow & see if I can straighten out that mess.

More minorly is some podcasts that don't want to import.

As long as I'm re-building everything I am also doing some long-overdue
pruning & reorganizing (not just in iTunes.) I will keep the external drive
that BB put what data-recovery they could on but thin out what I'm keeping
on my new machine until I know I have things working nicely.

I'm trying to reorganize a bit too. That is *not* my strong suit

Meanwhile, of course, I'm not syncing *anything*!
<sigh>
bj

As they (don't) say, sync or swim...

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message news:[email protected]...