PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
Hi - I am happy to report that I am leaving the world of PC's and joining the brotherhood of Mac! However, I currently store all of my music on a Maxtor 200 GB external hard drive, and my PC is the main hub. Now I want my mac to use the external hard drive...
The main questions: Do i simply point the mac to the external hard drive and itunes populates by itself. What about my playlists -will they, too, populate. What about my purchased music, will it be OK? Man, I'm confused. I see tons of information on how to get music off the ipod, but nothing on how to make the new mac simply go to an external hard drive. Any help would be very appreciated. Thanks!
[682 byte] By [
Gigante] at [2007-11-11 16:53:35]
# 1 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
Start by reading this guide ( http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-backing-up-ipod-and-itunes-music/).
Galley at 2007-11-15 16:47:59 >
# 2 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
Thank you, Galley, but the information you suggested is more about making a back-up of files. The steps I'm looking for is how to populate a new itunes / format / computer with the music from the external hard drive.
The long road would be for me to use my ipod to populate the new itunes, reformat my ipod to mac, reload my ipod, recopy the music to the external hard drive, and then clear my mac's hard drive. That's a long road to travel to get back to the start. Hopefully, there's a much easier way to do this.
Thank you.
# 3 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
Well, first things first -- if the Maxtor is formatted NTFS, the Mac will see it as read-only; if it's FAT32 the Mac can read/write. So, if it's NTFS, you wanna start thinking about how to offload everything that 's on it so you can format it something friendlier.
I dunno how it goes when "transferring" a collection via external drive...but when transferring a "default" collection -- music files in .../My Documents/My Music/iTunes/ folder -- all you have to do is copy over the entire iTunes folder (including the two library files), and iTunes will never know the difference. Playcounts, ratings, Last Played...all that stuff transfers right over.
(I'm writing up a how-to on moving from PC to Mac; tonight's experiment was moving "default" collection, tomorrow's project is moving an "external" collection. I'll post back with results.
S2
S2_Mac at 2007-11-15 16:50:09 >
# 4 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
Thank you for replying. As luck would have it , my Maxtor HD is PC only... So it looks like I'll use Podutil to populate my new mac, buy a new external HD for mac and transfer the music onto it. I could always continue to use my current PC-but where's the fun in that?
# 5 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
As luck would have it , my Maxtor HD is PC only...
I find that hard to believe. Where did you get that info?
LukeA at 2007-11-15 16:52:02 >
# 6 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
The disk itself is certainly not Win-only. And most likely the case retailer just doesn't want to add the layer of support costs to handle questions/claims from Mac users.
S2
S2_Mac at 2007-11-15 16:53:10 >
# 7 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
My external Maxtor runs rather nicely on my MacBook. Just use Disk Utility to reformat it as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).
Galley at 2007-11-15 16:54:14 >
# 8 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
Thanks for all of the feedback. I used podutil to load my mac, and then copied the files to the Maxtor, pointed itunes to the Maxtor, reformatted the ipod to mac, and then synced the ipod. All in all, two hours of effort to move 5K songs w/ playlists. Works flawlessly, and now my mac has 25GB of extra space. Cool, thanks again. BTW, this macbook with the core duo2 hauls arse, and the Apple UI is just so easy to use...
# 9 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
I wouldn't have bothered to reformat the iPod. Windows-formatted iPods work just fine on Mac; it's Mac-formatted iPods that are one-trick ponies. Now if you ever want to plug it into a PC to snag a song or two, you can't.
# 10 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
Ok guys i have a mac formated 30GIG video and want to know if there is a way to down load it to a hard drive and then reformat it to PC and then use the same files or music once it is formated for PC ?
thanx the dumb plumber
# 11 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
I was browsing all the forums and I thought i saw some one say that there was a third part soft ware out to do this with ?
# 12 Re: PC to Mac via external Hard Drive
MacOpener is the name of the software you've seen.
LukeA at 2007-11-15 16:59:13 >
