I'd have posted this in the 'switch it up' forum... but... I think it's disappeared, along with one of my (rare) other threads. :horse:
So, will I lose my iTunes library data when I switch from Win to Mac?
Everything's on an external HD, so am I good to go with OSX's iTunes?
I just helped a friend switch about a week ago, it was no problem, but we burned his music to cd's, as aac files, not as music cds. I dont think that an external drive that is formatted to work with windows will work with a mac, but i am not positive. I am somewhat new to the whole different file systems thing. I am thinking that the external drive that is formatted in a windows file system(fat32 or ntfs) will not work with osx. I could be wrong about it though.
DO NOT FORGET TO DEAUTHORIZE YOUR COMPUTER. Its very important, i forgot to when i reformatted and completely lost that one computer that i am allowed to authorize, so i am down to 1 or 2 that can be authorized
What do you mean by 'loose' it? Loose the songs you bought, or loose like all your special playlists and such. If the first, no they will transfter, but youve got to authorise. The second yes you will loose thoes. As far as file systems are concerned, im shure there is a program that will elt you read a NTFS or win32 partition, if its not native (which i would think so). So just copy the songs to the mac hard drive, reformat the external (so theres no conflicts), and put the songs back.
I am thinking that the external drive that is formatted in a windows file system(fat32 or ntfs) will not work with osx. I could be wrong about it though.
Fat32 works cross-platform. That's been established.
DO NOT FORGET TO DEAUTHORIZE YOUR COMPUTER. Its very important, i forgot to when i reformatted and completely lost that one computer that i am allowed to authorize, so i am down to 1 or 2 that can be authorized
This, unfortunately, I have no idea what you're talking about. What is this authorization.
@ lostpyder: Library = that XML file which keeps not just song data, but playlist data, too, I believe. I also hope iTunes doesn't need to redo the volume level adjustment for my entire 25gb of albums.
The songs, if you have them on a fat32 will transfer no problem and use the same categories they used before as in artist, genre and so on (that is if the ID tags are properly set up.
About the playlists, i think that they are stored in XML format on the pc, but i cant figure out yet where to put these on a mac... the folder structure is very different.
About the volume normalization, just make sure you untick it from the properties, if youve done it already, why do it again...
Originally posted by lostspyder@Feb 27 2004, 02:58 AMWhat do you mean by 'loose' it? Loose the songs you bought, or loose like all your special playlists and such. If the first, no they will transfter, but youve got to authorise. The second yes you will loose thoes. As far as file systems are concerned, im shure there is a program that will elt you read a NTFS or win32 partition, if its not native (which i would think so). So just copy the songs to the mac hard drive, reformat the external (so theres no conflicts), and put the songs back.
I've been through this question with Apple, and (although I haven't tried it yet), they said that if you've kept all of your iTunes music in the iTunes folder (I think if you haven't, threre's an easy checkbox somewhere that'll copy them all there), then it's as simple as dragging out the "iTunes" folder in "My Music" onto a personal storage device/DVD (the iPod works great for this), then off of it and onto your new Mac's "Music folder". Then drag the folder into iTunes, and voila - all of your playlists, play counts and so on.
Hmmm... how much space does OSX occupy on the HD?
I have a 30Gb internal drive coming on the iBook.
And I have 28.6Gb of data on my external HD.
I like lostspyder's idea about moving everything over to the iBook, then reformatting the external HD and re-copying back to that.
That would settle iTunes and any other compatibility issues for that drive forever.
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