Dave Taylor answers free tech support questions about a wide variety of business and technical topics, including blogging, iphone help, ipod help, AdSense, MySpace, Sony PSP help, Mp3 players, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

How do I transfer my 1700 song iTunes library?

I am currently living with my Dad, have about 1700 songs in iTunes and don't want to lose them when I move to my Mother's house! How could I somehow transfer the songs to my computer at my Mom's house? Is there a way where I could burn the data to a CD or something? If you could please let me know, it'd be very appreciated.


Dave's Answer:

Does your Dad's computer have a DVD burner? If so, you could use one of the slick iTunes export utilities to pull them out of iTunes, then burn them onto DVD.

Hmmm, so how many would DVDs would you need?

Let's see... 1700 songs at an average song size of 4MB means your 1700 song library takes up 6.8GB. An average DVD disk holds about 4GB so you should be in good shape with two DVDs for the entire music library. Not too bad.

Or, if you can afford it, go buy an external 30GB disk or larger, drag and drop your entire iTunes Library onto the disk, then import it when you get to your Moms house.

Checking CompUSA, they have a nice looking Buslink 60GB external USB 2.0 Drive for $128. Not a bad price!

To look for export utilities, by the way, I encourage you to pop over to VersionTracker and search for 'itunes'. There are plenty of options available.

Hope that helps you get things worked out!



Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Simpy.


Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

PLEASE HELP! I don't have a home computer, so when I got an iPod last year, I intalled iTunes on the c drive of my computer at work. I've never liked the idea of storing my songs at work, so I bought a 250 G external hard drive (the E drive). I want to be able to open iTunes and store everything on E. I clicked and dragged the iTunes icon from my C drive to the E drive, which didn't really move iTunes but rather made a copy of it. I deleted iTunes on my C drive, clicked on iTunes in E, and was shocked to see there were no songs -- it was completely empty! Luckily I was able to retrieve the deleted iTunes from the recycling bin, so it's now still on my C drive.

Is it possible to move iTunes to the E drive? If so, if you could walk me through this, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Posted by: Linda S at March 6, 2007 5:30 PM

Well, I'm looking at the Mac version of iTunes and in the Preferences area, under "Advanced", there's a setting that lets you have your library anywhere. You should be able to use that to specify that you want it on the E: drive, then manually copy everything across and you should be good to go.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at March 6, 2007 9:38 PM

I have moved all my music, lectures, stories and movies onto a 0.5 TB drive on my new PC but whenever I ask iTunes to add D:\ to the library, it adds a bunch of directories then crashes.

I used to have separate network drives for music, stories, lectures, movies, etc. and had put a lot of work into many smart playlists. What I want to do is add everything again then delete all the exclamation-marked entries. However, iTunes forgets all the deletions each time I reboot. I keep spending hours deleting dead wood only to find it back in place next time. I have checked that my library files are not read-only. I went through the registry and found the drive to scan in background key and changed it to drive D:\ but this did not help. Windows set up system restore on D:\ as well as C:\. I was about to get rid of this, when I found the setting, but was warned that it was protecting the drive from such evil as may befall a big young SATA drive and was disuaded. It seems that iTunes chokes on different files each time rather than because it finds something particular that it doesn't like.

I an hoping to get a NAS with a firmware iTunes server. Do you know about these?

Pleae help.

Posted by: Vanessa at March 24, 2007 12:42 AM

Thanks for the tip on exporting to an external drive. Worked great. It beats putting my iTunes library on a bunch of disks!

Posted by: Lance at April 3, 2007 5:22 PM

I have a PC and my hard drive recently crashed and had to be replaced so I lost my itunes library. Luckily, I had most of my music on my ipod so I didn't lose that much but when I got my new computer I couldn't sync my ipod to my computer because it thinks that it's already connected to another one (even though that computer doesn't exist anymore.) When I connect my ipod to my computer it gives me the choice of erasing what is currently on my ipod and replacing it with my current itunes library but I don't want to do that because none of my music is on my computer; it's only on my ipod right now. I am wondering how I can sync my ipod to my computer so I can download music on my new computer and put it on my ipod along with my existing music.

Posted by: Stacey at May 6, 2007 7:29 PM

My computer crashed and we had to get a whole new hard drive. All my music is on my ipod and I want to get that on my new hard drive but it wont let me. I don't know how to sync my ipod without losing the music that is already on there and then having to redownload it. What do I do?

Posted by: Kimberly at June 6, 2007 1:15 PM

Kimberly, check out ipodcopy if you're running a PC, or Senuti if you're on a Mac:

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_get_songs_off_my_ipod.html

Posted by: Dave Taylor at June 6, 2007 10:25 PM

how can i put my ipod music back to my itune library...i accidently deleted my file. I hate to lose all my songs from my ipod........please help

Posted by: arminda at June 28, 2007 6:43 PM

I have microsoft windows. My face broke on my 30 gig ipod. I want to buy a new 30 gig but I don't want to spend the money on a new one if I can't take all the songs from my old one and put it on my new ipod. Is there anyway that you can take all of your songs from your ipod and put it on your itunes library with microsoft windows? I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me with this. Thank you


Posted by: Desmond Foreman at July 14, 2007 9:34 PM

help i got all my i tunes on my moms computer but my parents got divorced man so im at my dads full time and i want to put more songs my ipod but i have to get my itunes back and i dont know how to get the songs of my ipod to my itunesi tried some things i read of theinterent from you or other people and itworked but when i tried putting it on my itunes it stopped at bb king and nothing else would go on my itunes from the folder i have it in how do i fix that or is there any other way i can do it

Posted by: Brodie at July 29, 2007 12:09 PM

Hey. I am over at my sisters house and I am trying to sync my ipod with her computer.The prob is that it will not let me. It does not say it can't, it doesnt say anything. How can i sync my ipod to my sisters computer and get the music from her i tunes to my ipod?

Melanie

Posted by: Melanie at August 13, 2007 1:39 PM

if you're trying to download your iPod tunes onto a new computer, download a program called Senuti. It will allow you to do so, I'm sure there are others as well. I use transmission' as a bit torrent client.

Posted by: jack at August 24, 2007 6:55 PM

I lost my hard drive on my computer. All songs were on an external hard drive and are usable. However I purchased a new computer and now can't find the libraries. If I open a song it gets added to itunes new library. Can I get the library, not songs from my ipod?

Posted by: Bob at September 29, 2007 11:08 AM

I have all my Itunes music on an external hard drive and now I bought a new computer not Mac and need to transfer it but can't get my playlist to transfer. windows xP

Posted by: Linda at October 17, 2007 9:31 AM

I have a problem tried to download from itunes to my ipod i get a message saying some of the items in the itune library were not copied because you are not authorized to play them from this computer. What does that mean? I've had my ipod for over a year and never had this problem

Posted by: dnita at October 20, 2007 8:47 AM

hi,
im 14 and my parents both have and ipod and my brother does to we save all our music to the same computer is there some way how i can keep my music in a diffrent library then the same library as my parents?

Posted by: Alan at October 26, 2007 4:28 PM

I really don't know what URL is. I have a inspiron 8100 Dell Laptop. I just purchased a 80 gb Classic ipod. I also purchased a seagate external hard drive. I would like to know how to transfer future itune to the E drive. I am incredibly old and unfortunatley not to bright with this technology. I would appreciate help; simplistic elementary help.
Thanks

Posted by: Kurt at November 8, 2007 5:36 PM

I recently bough an 8GB nano second generation and right away i started to download music. but as itunes was transferring music from a cd, i only got the first five songs from it. the "help" for itunes is kind of vague. i'm going to keep tring stuff, but if anyone has an easier way, please email me.

ninjastealthypb@aol.com

Posted by: Zach at December 2, 2007 7:16 AM

Senior moment. Just re-read your advice. Mis-understood ipod copy. Assume mac can be ignored in this scenario and that the ipodcopy software you recommend executes only on a Microsoft PC and this accesses the IPOD directly.Please confirm and apologies.

Posted by: MikeThomas at December 13, 2007 1:57 PM

Senior moment. Just re-read your advice. Mis-understood ipod copy. Assume mac can be ignored in this scenario and that the ipodcopy software you recommend executes only on a Microsoft PC and this accesses the IPOD directly.Please confirm and apologies.

Posted by: MikeThomas at December 13, 2007 2:01 PM

i accidently put my itunes library in my documents. How can i put my itunes back into my library?

Posted by: lori at December 28, 2007 7:57 PM

how can i put my itunes tunes on my computer onto a CD for my mom?

Posted by: Diane at January 10, 2008 7:10 PM

ok, This was very easy everyone. I just bought a new laptop. My old laptop had windows xp on it, my new laptop has windows vista on it. My itunes library has 38GB of music in it and about 300 playlists. This is what I did and it was very easy. Go to your my documents folder and find your music folder. In that folder you will find a folder called Itunes. I had a 500GB usb external drive that I used to move my music. I copeid the entire ITunes folder onto my USB Drive. Once I had everything copied I renamed it ITunes 1-12-08 I used the date to make a difference between my old file and the new Itunes folder on my new computer. You can call your file anything you want. Just rename it something. I plugged the USB into my new computer. I loaded a new version of Itunes onto the new computer. I than open my documents, my music, and than opened my Itunes folder. I copied the entire folder that I renamed of my old itunes into the Itunes folder on my new computer. After everything was copied, I opened Itunes up on the new computer. I went File, add folder to library, I browsed for my renamed folder that I copied into my Itunes folder My itunes musidc folder and told Itunes to import it. ALL of my old music was imported into my new itunes. All I had to do is click on a song and than authorize the new computer to play my music and that was all there was to it. To Get my playlists into my new Itunes I just went File, Add File to Library and Browsed for my renamed ITunes folder again and this time picked the file that says Itunes music library or Itunes library, This is not a music file it is a XML file, Add this file to your Itunes and it will import all of your playlists that were in your old library. That is all there is too it. It does not take very long. It is easier to do than what it sounds and everything is moved to your new computer, music, movies, podcasts, everything.
Thats it. No problem.

Posted by: Sandy at January 13, 2008 11:03 PM

My last computer got hit by lightning and the people that fixed it reimaged it and I lost all my music. Now I have a new PC with vista and all But all my music is still on my 8GB nano. So I was wondering if anyone knows how I can sync my IPod to the new computer without losing all the music?

PLEASE HELP!!! I am dying without music !!!!


Thanks

Posted by: choliver36 at February 1, 2008 11:01 PM

i got a new ipod but want to keep the same library how do i transfer my songs on to my new ipod without erasing all of them

Posted by: lisa at April 17, 2008 3:37 PM

I am new to Ipod and Itunes. I have recently bought an external hard drive and want to move my music and etc. files to free free up space on my laptop. If I delete the music from my computer will they be deleted on my Ipod or will they stay on there?

Posted by: Dave at May 18, 2008 1:34 PM

i got a new ipod but want to keep the same library how do i transfer my songs on to my new ipod without erasing all of them

Posted by: Nicole at July 31, 2008 11:59 AM

i have 1456 songs in my ipod and 7 songs in my itunes.
any way i could transfer songs from ipod to my itunes.
pleasee help =]

Posted by: Ag at August 16, 2008 2:58 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!









Remember personal info?


Please note that I will never send you any unsolicited commercial email. Ever.

While I'm at it, please note that by submitting a question or comment you're agreeing to my terms of service, which are: you relinquish any subsequent rights of ownership to your material by submitting it on this site.









Uniblue: Free Virus Scan

Search
Find just the answers you seek from among our 1700+ free tech support articles by using our Lijit search engine.


Help!





Subscribe to
Ask Dave Taylor!

Add to Google Reader
Add to My Yahoo!
Subscribe in NewsGator Online

RDF   XML

Free Updates!
Sign up and get free weekly updates and special offers on books, seminars, workshops and more.


Recent Entries
Join the List!
Join my author info mailing list, where you'll learn about my upcoming books, speaking gigs, and more!


Book Links
© 2002 - 2008 by Dave Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site.

[whiteboard marker tray]