Snacktime

How to move your iTunes library on a PC

Posted on September 23rd, 2007 by Snack.
Categories: News, Random.

First off, this procedure assumes that you have the little box ‘Let iTunes keep my music organized’ button UNCHECKED. If you have this box checked then you are on your own as you will find that sooner or later iTunes is going to screw up your shiite big time. At some point, when I have time, I’ll post a migration plan for getting you out of this situation…but that could be a long time coming.

Now the problem is…when you move your music to a different machine or even a different folder on the same machine and you open up iTunes, you’ll notice a lot of broken links (most likely all of them). Do not fret…simply do the following:

1. Close iTunes
2. Make a backup of your iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes Music Library.itl files. They are located in C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\My Music\iTunes by default.
3. Open the iTunes Music Library.xml file in Wordpad and do a search and replace for all occurrences of your current drive/directory location and replace with your new location. Note that directories are separated with a forward slash, and all spaces in directory names must be escaped as %20. Depending on the size of your XML file, this could take a while.
4. Now, you need to corrupt your current .itl database file. The easiest way to do this is to open it up in Wordpad and just delete the contents of the entire file, then save it. You should have a zero byte file.
5. Lastly, open iTunes and let it rebuild your database. After it scans in all of your mp3’s, it will tell you that the .itl file is damaged and ask if it’s ok to rebuild it. Let it rebuild the database, and when it’s all done, you are all set!
6. Crack open a cold one and get crunk! Your back in business as if by magic!!!!

Thanks to Rob Brooks-Bilson for figuring this shit out. It was a life saver for me.

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