Hi
I was recently bogged down by some annoying, though not crippling, virusy crap.
Rather than try to find the virus/i, I just backed everything up on an external hard drive and did a full system restore.
System restore was a success. I was fully confident that I could handle that. Moved all important text documents and photos/graphics back onto my computer.
I’m not sure what to do with iTunes, though. My full iTunes Library is on the external hard drive. I have not yet reloaded it onto my computer. I have not yet re-downloaded iTunes.
When I did this before, I had a friend help. When I say “help”, I mean that she did it and I sat back and kinda paid attention.
Do I load the library onto my computer first, then download iTunes, then have iTunes find the library by some manner that iTunes will make self explanatory?
Do I download iTunes first, then import the library from the hard drive directly to iTunes by some manner that iTunes will make self explanatory?
P.S. PLEASE instruct me like you are talking to a dumb guy.
I run two hard drives C & D, where C is the ‘system’ drive with the OS and applications and D is the ‘data’ drive with, well, data (pictures, docs, music etc.) I backup my system drive locally, and backup my data drive via a cloud service (Mozy). Recently my data drive overheated & died so I was able to just buy a new external HD, plug it in, define it as the new D: drive, and restore everything from the online backup service. Took a day or two to download about 50GB worth of data, but when it finished I just rebooted and Windows was (almost) right back where it started.
Unfortunately iTunes for some reason decided that even though I had essentially replaced all my music with exact, digital duplicates of themselves, it would not recognize the restored music library as being the old one (the files must contain some ‘meta-data’ that doesn’t get duplicated exactly). So first I had to re-import the ‘new’ music library into iTunes (no big deal, only took a few minutes). But then, much to my displeasure, iTunes insisted that I do the same with all the music files on my iPhone! In other words I had to replace all 13GB of the iPhone’s music with essentially exact copies of themselves because iTunes insisted they were no longer the original files. Again not a huge deal, but it did take like seven hours to transfer them all (and it was completely unnecessary!)
Point is, I would say restore your music files from the external drive to your hard drive, and I mean restore them using the restore software, don’t just copy them with Windows, then re-install iTunes and enter your iTunes account name & password to re-establish its identity. Hopefully it may recognize your restored music library as unchanged, but it probably won’t, so just re-import them into iTunes. If you have an external device (an iPod or iPhone) though you’ll probably have to restore their files too. Again, a pain in the ass because it takes all night, but not a disaster…
Thanks Hail Ants.
With all the text files and photos, I just copied the files.
I’ll have to make sure I figure out the proper way to restore with the restore software.
Any special system restore software is unnecessary. Before you ever wipe your computer, do this:
In iTunes, Edit/Preferences/Advanced
Either note the iTunes media folder location or specify a new one
In iTunes, File/Library/Organize Library/Consolidate files. This will copy ALL iTunes media files (including meta-data) into the iTunes media folder. This may take a few hours.
Copy the iTunes media folder onto an external HDD, or blu-ray, or whatever
Wipe your computer
Reinstall iTunes
In iTunes, File/Add Folder to Library (this will probably take a few hours)
Task complete! I typically wipe my computer a few times per year, and I’ve done this multiple times.