[Robert57]

I am working with a good buddy and fellow AC member, Sabes, on how to move his 700 GB iTunes library from his Infrant Ready NAS RAID (via ethernet) to a new 1 TB external HD drive connected to his Mac Mini by Firewire. He uses the Mac Mini's internal HD to store his iTunes database (but not the music files) and to run SqueezeCenter for his SB's. Basically, he wants to use the new external FW hard drive as his primary iTunes library storage, and then use the Infrant RAID as a backup. We were hoping this direct FW connection will greatly speed up the long SqueezeCenter recanning process when adding new rips and playlists. His technician apparently has managed to move all the music files to the FW HDD, and updated the iTunes paths to point to the new FW HD drive, but all the cover art jpg's Sabes had copied into each album folder so painstakingly is lost on the new HD. I'm afraid using the automated iTunes cover art finding tool will not work with Slim, as the art needs to be embedded in the music album folders, not stored in a central folder with aliases, for SC to find the art jpgs with each album.

I was not able to find Crimson's superb quidance on an earlier thread on how to move a large library to a new ext. HD. Any suggestions on how to redo this massive library move in a way that preserves all the cover artwork and old playlists? Would we better off reformatting the new ext. HD and redoing the library transfer from scratch?

btw, here is the tech's note after talking to Apple: 

Quote: After going back and forward with apple a few times and trying all
their suggestions, it's basically done. Problem was that there is really no good way to get itunes to update the file path locations for existing library songs (even if you change the defauly itunes library location
in preferences as we did). The only way to get itunes to do this on the
fly is to use iTunes to do all the file copying from the NAS to the new HD. We did try this during the initial drive changeover a while back and is not a realistic solution for 20,000 songs over an Ethernet connection. iTunes would have taken ~300 hours to copy the files and process the changes and had it hung, run the risk of wiping out parts of the library. (End Quote)

Thanks for your help, guys!

Rob

[Crimson]

Depending on how the album art etc was stored (whether the files were ripped as AIFF, ALAC, WAV, etc), and assuming he still has the original library on the NAS drive, there may be a chance he can still make a successful move. Before proceeding, please make sure you have a backup of the entire library.

1. Disconnect all external drives. Open iTunes and delete all songs from within iTunes. Close iTunes
2. Connect the original NAS drive. Open iTunes and point to the original path on the NAS as the new default folder. Click File > Add to Library, and select the directory that contains all album subdirectories. Click OK, this will rebuild the library database file.
3. After the library is rebuilt, check to see if you have all associated artwork etc. and that everything is working ok.

If the artwork is still missing, stop here and proceed to tear your hair out. If it's all present and accounted for, I'd recommend letting iTunes do the transfer via the Consolidate command in Advanced. I've successfully transferred 10-12000 song libraries to new drives with no issues, and it took about 36 hours over ethernet.

Let us know how it goes.

[Robert57]

Thanks for your advice, Crimson. I'm sure sabes will give this a try later this weekend. We'll let you know how it goes!

Rob

[kitten]

Hi,
I know nothing about Macs so this might not apply, but in iTunes for Windows "delete all songs from within iTunes" would permanently delete all cover art. The cover art is located locally under the local user's settings (irrespective of where the music library is pointing to in iTunes preferences). To copy all music from one drive to another while retaining cover art, I would try it this way:
1. Export the original library from iTunes. This will export all information to an xml file.
2. Copy the artwork files (in windows this is the directory local user name\my music\iTunes\album artwork - all subdirectories) to a safe location.
3. Copy/move the music files from old to new location.
4. Delete all songs from within iTunes (the music will remain, however all cover art gets deleted).
5. restore the cover art files using the copy made in 2. above.
6. Using any text editor, edit the library xml file, using find and replace, eg if your old music library was "g:\music" and new location "x:\music", bulk replace all instances of g:\music with x:\music within the library file.
7. Save the library file with the replaced text.
8. Import the library with the replaced text. iTunes will then be looking at the new file locations with the original cover art still in place.

All the best,
kitten