need help with data transfer

[wnameth]

okay, i am reinstalling tiger on my dads machine (450mhz G4 tower). he is a musician and has 55GB of music in his itunes, but unfortunately i haven't been keeping a close enough eye on his computer dooings, and he only has 8GB of music in his actual music (itunes) folder and the rest is in his root and elsewhere. The music is all he wants me to save and then after reinstalling tiger i will put it all in his music folder and keep him organized from there. I can't find all his music and i looking for maybe a program that will find all stuff on a HD, like individual song wise.

should i just do a carbon copy cloner of his main HD to the external, then reinstall Tiger after erasing his main, and then transfer his music back? this is very frustrating, his computer is a mess. I can't lose any of his music, anything else is fine. What i am doing is taking all the files in his Two HD's (total of 100GB's) and transfering them to the external, then erasing the two internal HD's. Then i am going to pic and chose (sift through all the crap) and then transfer the stuff (music mostly) that my dad needs back onto his main. any other ideas?

 

[mad jew]

Is the music all accounted for in iTunes? If so, you could consolidate the library to a certain folder/drive by setting the iTunes preferences to Keep iTunes Folder Organised (through the Advanced tab).

If not, I recommend doing cloning the hard drive with CCC and then once you've installed the fresh version of Tiger, go to iTunes, click Add To Library from the File menu and select the cloned hard drive. This will take a while but it should add all sound files to iTunes. Then sort by size and delete the smaller sound files that are used in the system.

I recommend telling him to use iTunes and to let iTunes manage the files. Explain to him how he can just drag tunes to the iTunes window and they'll add themselves.

Good luck with it.

 

[wnameth]

okay, that helps a bit, and yes all 55GB are accounted for in itunes, in the advanced settings, it is set to store on the main HD. so basically if i change that to say my dads external, all the itunes music on the computer will all be stored in one folder on the external, then i can wipe the main and then use the external for itunes from now on, because that would be much easier, will that work?

 

[mad jew]

If you change the settings in the preferences to have the external drive as the new location then all the music should copy across to the external drive, leaving all of your current music where it is as well.

Just a warning, it'll take a while.

Now, inside his Music folder (well, actually the original iTunes folder on his start up disk) there'll be a couple of files called iTunes Library (or something). These store his play counts, playlists and other song information so make sure you get a copy of them too.

If I were you and the start up drive has enough spare space, I'd make iTunes copy the music into the default iTunes folder in the Music folder. This way you literally just have to copy that single iTunes folder (with iTunes Music and the two data files) and replace it on the new machine and all info plus songs should remain.

 

[wnameth]

If you change the settings in the preferences to have the external drive as the new location then all the music should copy across to the external drive, leaving all of your current music where it is as well.

Just a warning, it'll take a while.

Now, inside his Music folder (well, actually the original iTunes folder on his start up disk) there'll be a couple of files called iTunes Library (or something). These store his play counts, playlists and other song information so make sure you get a copy of them too.

If I were you and the start up drive has enough spare space, I'd make iTunes copy the music into the default iTunes folder in the Music folder. This way you literally just have to copy that single iTunes folder (with iTunes Music and the two data files) and replace it on the new machine and all info plus songs should remain.

there isn't enough space...

 

[mad jew]

How much more space do you need? Could you keep an eye on it and maybe halfway through delete all redundant files?

Do you have a drive with 55GB of space available to music, even if it's already using some of that (for music)?

 

[DeSnousa]

I did this a while ago, you need to just copy over the 'iTunes Music' folder from inside the iTunes folder. Then go into preferences and change the source. Once it changes the source it asks a question to do an action, can't quite remember what it was, but cancel that action (don't allow it to occur).

I did it this way because when I dragged the whole iTunes folder it stuffed up my stats and would not play properly, it gave me could not find song. This was because it made a new iTunes folder with a new xml and etc file.

I think I might of done something wrong but it worked for me.