Comments on: Switchers Will Lose All Their iTunes Metadata When Moving from PC to the Mac*

By: Jefferson Clavey

Jefferson Clavey — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 09:34:22 +0000

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By: losing love handles

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By: ton

ton — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:30:37 +0000

As a former member of the mac helpdesk Ive tried to understand the problem but it is not clear what you want to happen…. as a mac and pc user i have tried to restore librairy’s in many ways and the easyst quick and dirty way is to delete all lbrary files and have itunes import all existing music (and copy to the “new” library). On a server it should work the same: its just a path that has to exist to the computer that has the actual data.

By: Humor4FUn

Humor4FUn — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:55:28 +0000

(14) no longer works. iTunes 8.0.2.20 just creates a new library and says that it’s damaged.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:44:13 +0000

As a followup (a year and a half later!) to anyone having trouble moving their iTunes library from one PC to another (or in my case, to the same PC after reinstalling windows) where the path to the music folder itself is different:
After you update the paths in the .xml file, and before you open iTunes, open the .itl file in WordPad/etc. and clear the contents of the file. If you delete the .itl file outright, iTunes 8 will assume it has no library at all and make a new empty one, but if you leave the itl file as is, the xml file’s paths will be updated (back to the incorrect old ones) from the itl file, instead of the other way around! Somewhat frustrating. : ) Hence: close iTunes, update the paths in the xml file, erase the contents of the itl file, save both, and then launch iTunes, and that blessed “Updating your iTunes library” message will pop up, followed by a message saying that your itl file was damaged and that a new one had been generated.

Good luck! : )

By: Sven Rafferty

Sven Rafferty — Wed, 09 May 2007 15:46:57 +0000

Thank you, Roy. I got them all but 30 files. Don’t know why those 30 didn’t make it, but I’m going to do a diff between the iTunes XML and the imported one to see which files didn’t make it. But heck, 30 out of 20k works for me!

I figure what I’m doing is a rare thing, but as more Windows users come to the Mac, I figure it’ll become more common. Hopefully with your documentation, AppleCare will be able to better handle this with the next call.

Again, thank you Roy. Once again, you proved why Apple is different than any other company.

By: Roy

Roy — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:29:46 +0000

The Consolidate Library function will put a copy of all of the files in your iTunes library in the Articst >Album folder hierarchy in whichever folder you have designated to be your iTunes Music folder location in iTunes preferences > Advanced > General. It will copy (not move) the files, so you’ll need to have enough space on the server for two copies of all the files in the “MP3′s” folder. After the consolidation is completed, verify that all the files got copied, and then you can trash the “MP3′s” folder.

What you’re doing is pretty edge case, but I’ll see what we can do about our documentation.

By: Sven Rafferty

Sven Rafferty — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:12:04 +0000

I’m thinking I’m close, Roy. Real close. So if I do the Consolidate Library, it won’t move all my files locally but just move them on the server? I’ve been wanting to do this for some time now, but I was afraid it would bring everything local even though my settings clearly show the mapped network drive as the iTunes folder location. I have 350 GB free on the server (more than enough for the move) so I’ll try this. It’ll be nice to have everything in one path.

Roy, what part of Apple are working in? Please, forward your information to AppleCare. It’ll be a great help!

By: Roy

Roy — Mon, 07 May 2007 17:00:14 +0000

Ah, I think I understand. By default, iTunes for Windows does not copy songs from their original location into the iTunes Music folder when you add them to the library. So only the songs that you buy from the iTunes Store or import from CD in iTunes will be in that folder, and the other songs will be in their original locations. You can change this setting in iTunes preferences > Advanced > General. Also, if you have the disk space on your server, you can choose Consolidate Library from the Advanced menu. This will copy all of the files that are elsewhere into the iTunes Music folder.

By: Sven Rafferty

Sven Rafferty — Mon, 07 May 2007 14:37:47 +0000

It seems my older library is the missing amount. The ones that do make it are in the path:

file://localhost/Volumes/NetworkShareName/iTunes Music/Artist/Song

as opposed to:

file://localhost/Volumes/NetworkShareName/MP3′s/Category/Artist/Song