Need Help Transferring iTunes Library to a New Hard Drive

Hope someone can help me here…

I installed a new hard drive in my laptop after the one I had experienced a failure. I have an iPod with a few hundred songs on it, and I’d like to download more. After doing some research online, everything I’ve seen says I can’t simply download and install iTunes to the new HD, plug in my iPod and push all my music to the new HD. Most places say this can lead to completely wiping the iPod.

Does anyone know how I can transfer the songs from my iPod (all valid, paid-for songs from iTunes) to the new HD, or am I pretty much hosed? Access to the old hard drive is an option; I have a USB to SATA connector so I can see data on it, but I can not run iTunes from the old drive through the USB cable (if that makes sense).

I guess that real question is this: assume someone had a total hard drive failure, and accessing it was NOT an option. They have an iPod full of movies and songs that they’ve legally purchased from iTunes. How do they get those songs on a new (or newly repaired) system?

Any help is appreciated…

You should not have a problem.
When you say “paid-for songs from iTunes” do you mean the iTunes Music store?

If so, then you should be able to install iTunes and log in with your iTunes user account and poke around for re-download purchased music. iTunes should then re-download all the stuff you bought already.
If you did not buy your music from iTunes, then you would need to access your old drive and copy the files to the new drive.

Yes, all purchased from the iTunes Music store.

Thanks for the quick reply, sachertorte. I’ll take a stab at it.

Actually, if it’s music purchased from iTunes, I think it’ll ask you if you want to transfer the music from the iPod to iTunes. You must authorize the computer first though before connecting the iPod.

There are third-party applications that can transfer music (and, I presume, podcasts and movies) from an iPod to a new hard drive.

E.g. for Mac OS: Senuti. Read that backwards. :wink:

An iPod can be “connected” to five computers.

I think you can do the authorization when you do the connection, actually.

And yes, when you connect the iPod to computer #2, you should get a popup asking if you want to transfer purchases from the ipod; I use my laptop as a backup for purchases made on the desktop computer in just this manner.

For what it’s worth, I think iTunes can now automatically download purchases to all linked computers. While it might take a little while when you first connect, that would save the need to even connect the iPod at first.

Easiest ways to do this:

  1. Just copy the files from your original computer to your new computer.
  2. If ALL of your music was purchased from iTunes, then just download “purchased music” to your new computer.
  3. Spend $25 on Senuti.