Moving iTunes...

[Weegee]

For the past seven hours I've been trying to transfer my iTunes library from the old family PC to my new laptop, with no luck. The most popular method doesn't work for iTunes 10, and most others are far too complicated for any non-Korean to possibly comprehend. I don't own an external hard drive or any such geeky bull[dukar], by the way. If it requires more hardware than two computers and a USB stick, don't bother posting it.

So, who here knows of a simple transfer method? Please don't **** around with DOHOHO THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR USING ITUNES. I'm ****ing ****ed as is.

[bobman37]

An external hard drive is not geeky bull[dukar], it's a good idea in general and definitely the easiest way to solve your problem. Anyway, you should need to do nothing more than copy the files onto your flash drive and then move them to the new computer.

[Weegee]

But wouldn't the songs be unplayable, since iTunes would try to follow the path to where they were saved on the old computer?

[bobman37]

I don't know what you mean by that, but it sounds like you didn't try it. The only reason iTunes would block the songs on the new computer is if you purchased them on iTunes on the old computer and it says that the new computer is unauthorized to play the song because it's tied to the old computer. I think you can get around that by adding the old computer to a homegroup or something like that but I don't know for sure.

[Weegee]

What I mean is that iTunes looks for a "source" to the files it plays, as they're not actually stored on iTunes itself. Songs pasted into one's library from another computer would still be stored in C:/[WhateverTheOldComputerCallsItsFiles]/Music/iTunes/blahblahblah.

I didn't try it because nobody suggested it until now, so I figured it wouldn't work. I'm currently copying all 1500 songs onto my USB for the third time. The progress bar says it'll be done in 150 minutes, but it's said that for the last hour.

[bobman37]

Well yeah you have to move the actual song files from the directory, not from iTunes. If you're not sure what I mean, or if they're not all conveniently located in one place like they should be, a good way to do it is make a folder on your desktop, go into iTunes, and click and drag the songs from iTunes to the folder on your desktop. It's going to take a long time because 1500 is a lot of songs. Then move that folder onto your USB, and then cut/paste from USB to new computer. Then open iTunes and go file > import folder and boom headshot.