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Moving to Mac soon, how to transfer music?

T

Tragedies

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 4, 2007
374
0
Melbourne, Australia
Hey all,

I'm moving to an iMac from a PC in late October after Leopard comes out, and one of the things I worry about is how to transfer music from my PC to my Mac.

I looked into Support on the Apple website and it says I should back it up onto an external hard drive, but I don't have one. Is there anyway I can somehow put the music onto my Mac from my PC without using an external hard drive?

Please help, thanks =D
 
kuebby

kuebby

macrumors 68000
Jan 18, 2007
1,586
12
MD
When I went Mac to PC I used an external HD and it was really easy. Externals are really cheap now (in the US at least) and are often useful so it would probably be good to get one anyway.

If you're against getting an external you could use your iPod if you have one.

You could also get an external enclosure, put your current HD in it, and plug that into your new mac.
 
B

bonafide

macrumors regular
Feb 26, 2007
156
0
Good question...

Couldn't he just burn the stuff onto a DVD and xfer it that way?
 
macjonny1

macjonny1

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2006
554
117
Yes the 1GB drive would be fine if that's all the room you need, or you could move a little at a time. Just drag the music folders onto your thumb drive, then plug it into the mac, and drag the folders onto the itunes icon in the dock. It will import it automatically!
 
wiseguy27

wiseguy27

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2005
420
0
USA
Assuming you know where your music is located on your PC (by which I mean you haven't let iTunes control the location without being aware where it stores the music), all you need is a normal ethernet cable (also called CAT5 cable).

Steps:
1. Boot both the machines
2. Change your network settings in both machines to use static IP addresses and put them on the same subnet - you could use IP addresses like 192.168.1.1 for one and 192.168.1.2 for the other (the subnet mask would be 255.255.255.0 for both of them)
3. Connect both the computers directly using the ethernet cable
4. Go to "System Preferences" in your Mac, then go to "Sharing" and enable "Windows File Sharing"
5. In your Windows machine, run Explorer and type \\192.168.1.2\username (assuming this is the IP address you configured in your Mac; 'username' here refers to the username you used to login to the Mac)
6. Shortly, Windows Explorer will ask you to login to the Mac - enter the Mac username and the Mac username's password
7. Voila, you'll now see your Mac user's home directory in Windows Explorer - copy the files you require using drag-and-drop or copy/paste!

P.S.: There's something called "crossover ethernet cable" - you don't need that one. The Mac works well with a normal ethernet cable when connected to a Windows PC.
 
T

torrid30

macrumors member
Jun 15, 2007
71
0
Illinois
PC External straight to Mac?

kuebby said:
When I went Mac to PC I used an external HD and it was really easy. Externals are really cheap now (in the US at least) and are often useful so it would probably be good to get one anyway.

If you're against getting an external you could use your iPod if you have one.

You could also get an external enclosure, put your current HD in it, and plug that into your new mac.
Click to expand...

I was curious about this too because my iMac is all ordered and I'm just waiting now. But if you had a PC formatted External with all your media on it (As I do), would your Mac still recognize it if you plugged it directly in?

I was going to go the 'use a friend's PC to plug my external in and transfer over a netword' but it'll go much quicker if I don't need to do that.

I'm just worried if I plug my external into the Mac, the Mac will reformat it automatically losing all my media that I have.

Thanks

Torrid
 
wiseguy27

wiseguy27

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2005
420
0
USA
torrid30 said:
I was curious about this too because my iMac is all ordered and I'm just waiting now. But if you had a PC formatted External with all your media on it (As I do), would your Mac still recognize it if you plugged it directly in?
Click to expand...
Yes, Mac OS X supports FAT32 (read and write) and NTFS (read only) external drives. It will automatically show up in Finder and your desktop a few moments after you connect it to the Mac.

torrid30 said:
I'm just worried if I plug my external into the Mac, the Mac will reformat it automatically losing all my media that I have.
Click to expand...

No, the Mac is actually a very friendly machine - it will neither reformat your external drive by itself nor chew your shoes while you try to use it. :p Unless you use Disk Utility and choose to format the drive, nothing will be lost. And as mentioned above, Mac OS X can read the filesystems used in Windows PCs (FAT32 and NTFS).
 
mustang_dvs

mustang_dvs

macrumors 6502a
Feb 9, 2003
694
13
Durham, NC
In the Finder: Help > Mac Help

Under the heading, "Top Customer Issues," click "Switching from Windows"

Then, choose "Transferring Windows documents to your Mac" under "Moving Windows files to your Mac"

Then click " Connecting your Mac directly to a Windows computer"

You do have to share the enclosing folder for this to work, though... you're going to have to use Windows help for that...
 

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binarymelon

macrumors member
Jul 27, 2007
36
0
Tragedies said:
Hey all,

I'm moving to an iMac from a PC in late October after Leopard comes out, and one of the things I worry about is how to transfer music from my PC to my Mac.

I looked into Support on the Apple website and it says I should back it up onto an external hard drive, but I don't have one. Is there anyway I can somehow put the music onto my Mac from my PC without using an external hard drive?

Please help, thanks =D
Click to expand...

Are you using iTunes on the PC? iTunes backup facility is pretty good.
 
T

torrid30

macrumors member
Jun 15, 2007
71
0
Illinois
wiseguy27 said:
Yes, Mac OS X supports FAT32 (read and write) and NTFS (read only) external drives. It will automatically show up in Finder and your desktop a few moments after you connect it to the Mac.



No, the Mac is actually a very friendly machine - it will neither reformat your external drive by itself nor chew your shoes while you try to use it. :p Unless you use Disk Utility and choose to format the drive, nothing will be lost. And as mentioned above, Mac OS X can read the filesystems used in Windows PCs (FAT32 and NTFS).
Click to expand...

Thank you wiseguy for the help. I feel much more relieved now.
 
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