Just got a new laptop, how do I transfer songs from old laptop?

So i've had my new pc for a week now. So I synced my IPOD to this laptop. Everything was good except that the only things that were transferred back to my laptop were the purchased songs. The songs that I added from my own collection of actual cd's didn't transfer. So I was wondering if there was a way to get those songs also w/o haveing to burn them all to discs. I pretty much want the fastest solution as extra time doens't come around too much for me. I know this thread is off topic from the Hp forum but I have realized that a lot of ppl look at this forum more than any other ones. When i post threads at other forums i never get an answer. Thanks.

 

Connect the two either by networking, crossover cable, or USB transfer cable.

 

Network them by getting them both on the same wireless network.

Then, on your old laptop, right click the folder where you have all your songs and click Sharing, and click Share this folder.

Then, go to your new laptop, go to Start menu, then network, and double click Your old laptop's computer name and voila! Life made simple.

 

Use a network cable RJ-45

 

Did you get your answer yet?

I'm assuming your iPod is big enough to hold your entire collection, right? If thats the case, then theres a much easier way to transfer all of your music. You don't need to network the computers or anything like that. Thats actually the slower method.

Connect your iPod to your computer with all the music on it. When iTunes pops up, make sure "Enable Disk Mode" and "Manually Manage music and video" are both checked. When they are, delete all the music off your iPod (assuming its all on that computer). Now minimize iTunes. Go into My Computer. You'll see the iPod there. Go ahead and double click it. Now open up My Music and browse to the iTunes Music Folder. Copy and paste that folder to your iPod. Then hook your iPod up to the new computer and reverse the process.

Be sure to backup all of your playlists too. You can do that by right clicking the playlist in iTunes and click "Export Song List".

 

Is that a standard telephone cable? How does one transfer files through a RJ-45?

 

A telephone cable use RJ11 connectors, RJ45s are normal ethernet connectors. What you actually need is a crossover cable if you intend to do this without a router of some kind. Here is a good guide on how to use a crossover cable. If you choose to use a hub or a switch, make sure that you use patch cables instead of crossover cables. You also shouldn't have to manually set up an IP address with a hub or a switch.

After you're done with the crossover cable, go ahead and change the IP settings back to the default.

 

Be a lot easier for the OP to just use the iPod as an external drive and copy all their files over that way Faster too. My 80GB iPod gets a good 12MB/sec transfer rate. My 3G 8GB iPod nano is even faster.

 

You think it makes sense to delete all of the music on the ipod, and then recopy all of it there? Not really.

The problem the OP is seeing is that the iPod is a 1-way device, that is, most music only goes from the PC to the ipod, and not the other way. Apple has hidden some ways to get around this, but that doesn't help someone in this situation. The way around it is to download sharepod, and use that to transfer the music already on the ipod to the computer.

However, that brings up other questions:
Did the OP set up itunes to automatically sync the ipod? If so, then the music on the ipod got wiped out when it was synced the first time on the new computer.

Is music the only thing you have on the old computer? How are you going to get all your other data over? The ipod external drive thing would work for that, but maybe it's time to set up a network so you can transfer all of your stuff.

 

The music won't be automatically wiped out the first time the iPod is connected. If he wants to use the iPod to transfer the music, I would suggest using a program called yamipod. The .exe just sits in the root directory of the iPod, no installation required, and you can use it to copy music to or from the iPod. It has worked well for my 4g and my friend's video.

 

If depends on if the ipod is set to automatically sync. iTunes should give a warning about that though.
yamipod looks pretty cool!

 

Very true, and I think you're right, it should ask you or give you a warning that the iPod hasn't been used on this computer before and is registered for another computer, something to that effect. Yamipod is nice if you don't want to hassle with iTunes, but it's really not as convenient if you're alright with using iTunes.

I believe that yamipod is compatible with everything except for the newest rendition of iPods, including the iPhone and the iPod Touch. There's a beta out that supports the classic and the new nano, but I don't know how stable it is.

 

Network is too slow compared to using the iPod as an external drive.

Using 3rd party software always runs the risk of corrupting the iPod/iTunes database file and requiring everything to be resynced anyway.

The best thing for the OP to do is my way. If he synced it in a manner that wiped the music off the iPod already, he needs to resync it with the PC that has all of the music. It'd be faster to just copy the music over as files instead of through iTunes. Trust me, I've done this before and seen how much faster it is.

 

I remember going through this when I got my laptop and I wanted to transfer my songs off my dad's Gateway onto mine. I don't remember all the details, but I do know that I did not use a network cable or 3rd-party software to do it.

1. If I recall, you have to first make sure that you can view hidden files and folders. To do that in Windows XP, go to the control panel, double-click on "Folder Options", click on the view tab, and the option should be there.

2. Then, browse to the folder that contains your music. It's usually under C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\ (replace [username] with your windows login name).

3. Copy this folder onto a USB drive, CD or other portable media.

4. Insert the USB drive/CD/etc. into the other PC (the PC where you want the music copied to)

5. Copy the files from the USB drive/CD/etc. to the PC. I recommend you copy them to a location similar to what was on the previous PC, though it doesn't really matter.

6. Open iTunes, and go to File>Import... Now, I'm not sure if you select the folder containing all the music and libraries, or just the library file, or what. You're going to have to experiment with that (It's been over a year since I did this). Keep in mind that when you do the import, you may get some dialog boxes stating that "This file is not authorized for this computer. Do you want to authorize it?" Click yes for all files.

I *think* this was how I did it; I'm not sure if these instructions are 100% correct, however. Keep us posted on how it goes.

Good Luck!

 

Here is a link I have used in the past:

http://people.dsv.su.se/~david-bo/itunes.shtml

Though it does not talk about moving files between computers, I am assuming that can be done easily by any of several ways (external hard drive / flash drive / burn DVD / use ipod as hard drive to move songs as files and not songs etc). I would recommend having the songs as a backup on some other media anyways. Hope this helps

 

Teraforce, yes, your method will work, but many people have significantly more music than will fit on any conventional thumb drive, CD, or DVD, so this would be a time consuming process unless one had access to a portable HDD. Sauron's suggestion would work, but it's too slow in my opinion. If you want to use the iPod to transfer the music, just use a third party app to pull the music off of it once you connect it to the new computer. I've done this many, many times, and I've never damaged any iPod doing this with yamipod. I can't say it's 100% safe for everyone, but it has been for me.

Having said that, I'm fairly certain you could copy the music folder off the iPod just in windows explorer, reimport the music into iTunes and then have it organize and rename the files back to sensible filenames, not the 102sks23r023 gibberish that they get renamed to when they're put on the iPod. This wouldn't involve third party apps or deleting music off of the iPod.

 

All i did was make all the hidden folders visible. Went into itunes, copied all of the Itunes music into the ipod as files. Then imported them into my new laptop. I was done in about 5 minutes. I dont see why ANYONE. Would need a program to do that. I mean as long as you know how to copy and paste files this should be a piece of cake for anybody.

 

The issue becomes if your iPod has enough storage space in order to do this. Say he has a 20GB iPod and 18GB of music; with the music already on his iPod from syncing with iTunes, he would not have enough room to copy the music onto the iPod again in order to transfer. Unless you're just reiterating my second paragraph, which negates the need for a second copy of the music. So would using a third party app.

Or maybe I'm just completely misunderstanding your suggestion

 

i mean if your Ipod doesn't have enough room then...get a bigger iPod!

 

Hahaha, excellent solution! Especially with the iPod Classic it's even a possibility.

However, I'm not sure it's entirely practical to own an mp3 player that holds more than twice as much music as you have, unless you intend to use it as an external HDD which is certainly a possible and practical use.

 

Too slow? I copied music off my 80GB iPod just yesterday after a Vista reinstall and I had a sustained transfer rate of 14MB/sec. Faster than a network connection and no 3rd party apps that might destroy the iTunes DB file.

 

That may be true, but the fact is that you have to remove the music from your iPod, copy it back onto your iPod, copy it back onto the new computer, remove it from the iPod, rebuild the iTunes database and then restore the files to the iPod through iTunes. Counting those up, I see... 6 steps. Using yamipod would yield you these steps: download yamipod, copy onto iPod, use yamipod to copy music to new computer, restore iTunes DB. 4 steps, and the first two should take you about 3 minutes. The other two steps completely depend on how much music you have. Oh yeah, if by chance your music isn't organized well on your old computer, yamipod will rename and reorganize your files and folders for you when you copy them off. Oh yeah, I have never messed up the iTunes DB file, despite having used yamipod countless times.

Following my other suggestion of just copying the music straight off of the iPod, you get 2 steps, not including telling iTunes to rename / reorganize your music.

I think that we can both agree that both of our methods will work, it's really up to the OP's preference, which it looks like he followed something closer to your suggestion. In my opinion though, there are better, easier, and faster methods.

 

You could have done it 10 times by now over the network in the time you guys have been talking about this For any process where you are copying large data, just start it and go eat dinner or watch a movie. It doesn't matter if it takes 20 minutes or 2 hours.