Moving An iTunes Library

As mentioned previously, I had to move an iTunes library over to a new PC without wanting to re-install 90GB of music. And having bought yet another new PC (well it has been 10 years!) I had to go through the process all over again. And because APple don’t make it easy, here’s a step-by-step guide for Windows on how to do it so you too can do it without screwing everything up…

This process assumes your music is stored on NAS storage (which mine is). I also recommend keeping a backup of all the files mentioned so you can revert back should something go wrong.

1. First of all, copy your iTunes folder (usually found in My Documents) from the old machine to the new one and then rename it to distinguish it as a backup. This is the folder that contains the library information and not the mp3 files, which are on that external disk.

2. Download, install, run and then close iTunes on the new PC. This creates the new iTunes folder where it looks for the library information.

3. Ensure that the new PC can access the networked storage device where your music is stored by using Windows Explorer to navigate to the necessary folders.

4. Replace the files in this folder with the back up copies. The two important files are the itl and xml library files.

5. Start iTunes and it should now include your whole music library and you can start playing your songs

6. And that’s it. You may have to change some of the Preferences within iTunes to get it working the way you want to, I had to change the Play Audio Using value as I didn’t have sound on the new PC.

If anything should go wrong you during this process you always have your back up files to go back to and rerun the process.