iPod and iTunes in new computer?

Poststructural Pub
1

OK-- I just bought a new PC. I can easily transfer photos and documents by copying them to a thumb drive and then into the new PC. The part I can’t figure out is iTunes.
I can install iTunes on the new computer, but when I try to synch my iPod Touch, will I lose all my data (music, contacts, notes, etc)? As I understand it, iTunes overwrites the iPod with whatever is in iTunes. Being a new, blank copy of iTunes, this should wipe my iPod clean, which I definitely DON’T want.
Also, my iTunes library has a lot of music that is not currently in my iPod, but I’d like to transfer that too.

How can I do all of this? Online instructions are confusing to say the least. Thanks.

2

In my own experience it is not possible. This is why I don’t buy tunes online.
Us bottom-feeding Windoze users regard this as the problem with Macs and Jobsworth software: anything they haven’t considered you doing - you can’t do.

I’m not alone in this. Charlie Brooker: The problem with Macs.


In fairness, I have the same problem with Sonic Stage. Sometimes you can get it to download from the hardware, but I can’t figure out what the conditions are.


3

I dunno about on a PC, but on a Mac, you can drag-and-drop within iTunes as long as you don’t tell it to sync the device.

4

Paul -

Where are the online instructions you are referring to - we’ll get you through this.

Reg

5

Paul

Have you tried using the windows transfer utility?, you can use thumb drives, burn the transfer files to DVD, to an external hard disk, connect the two pcs using an ethernet cable etc.

Windows Easy Transfer

David

6

These weren’t instructions from Apple. I did some Googling and came up with :

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/

I asked the same question on an Apple user’s forum, and got this:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2774380&tstart=0

A little scary, as it will first wipe my iPod, then, hopefully, restore it from a backup. It won’t transfer music but I may be able to manually transfer that. Worst come to worst, I can recreate the music library, but it will be a pain.

7

Depending on the size of my iTunes music library, I might start by burning everything to CDs, as backup copies. They could then be re-installed in an empty iTunes.

8

Unless I could compress the files, it would take quite a few CDs. Might just as well reinstall from the original CDs, just burn the files that I’ve bought and downloaded. Files purchased from the iTunes store can be easily reinstated, but I don’t generally buy there: Amazon.com is cheaper.

9

That’s how much I don’t know…I might’ve figured they’d be goners.

10

[quote="brewerpaulUnless I could compress the files, it would take quite a few CDs.[/quote]

The files should already be compressed as MP3 or some such encoding, usually at about a 10:1 ratio. So ten cd’s worth of music could conceivably fit on a single CD-R. Better yet go to DVD. About 4.5x more storage there. For our library, it is worth the extra time to back up the MP3s on removable media so we don’t have to re-rip everything in case of theft, loss, lightning strikes, etc… Just a thought.

11

Part of the reason I got a new 'puter is that my old one is so old it does not have a DVD player-- just CD. I thought I was hot stuff because it had a CD burner, not just a player. :smiley: