How do I restore my itunes library, songs, movies and playlists

October 30, 2009 5:00 PM

How do I restore my itunes library, songs, movies and playlists from a cloned backup after doing a clean install of Snow Leopard.

I've googled this, and checked the archives and when I've tried it it hasn't worked like it's supposed to.

The goal is for my itunes songs, movies and playlists to appear in itunes exactly as they did prior to the clean install.

Can someone give me as simple as possible instructions for how to do this?

TIA

posted by jeffreyclong to computers & internet (4 comments total)

This should work if you copy all of the iTunes-related files (including preferences) to the same locations they used to be in.
posted by designbot at 5:26 PM on October 30

You back up the itunes library first in your external hard drive. Here's the official apple link with instructions on how to back up your library so that it will appear as it was after your clean install...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751

Hope this helps.
posted by zagyzebra at 5:34 PM on October 30

migration assistant will bring EVERYTHING over, making the new drive look exactly like the old one. May not be what you want, but if the clone is current, you could try it and re-wipe if you don't like it.

it's in /applications/utilities

heh heh he said re-wipe
posted by KenManiac at 7:01 PM on October 30

I've googled this, and checked the archives and when I've tried it it hasn't worked like it's supposed to.

More information on this point would be useful. What exactly are you trying, and how doesn't it work like it's supposed to?


Can someone give me as simple as possible instructions for how to do this?

If everything was stored in its default location (i.e. you're not keeping your iTunes library on a different external HD or anything), and you're starting from a fresh user account under 10.6, the process should go like this:
- Run Software Update to make sure you have the newest version of iTunes.
- Quit iTunes
- Copy the "iTunes" folder from Your Backup Drive/Users/yourname/Music/ to Your Internal Drive/Users/yourname/Music/ -- overwriting the one currently there, if necessary.
- Relaunch iTunes

Is this what you've already done? What happens?


> migration assistant will bring EVERYTHING over, making the new drive look exactly like the old one.

This is sort of misleading. In OS 10.6, Migration Assistant will allow you to select what you're migrating in a very granular way. Migration Assistant will specifically copy user account(s), applications, application support files, and certain system-level settings. It will not, however, clone the backup over the new OS which is sort of what it sounds like you're saying.
posted by churl at 7:31 PM on October 30