New Hard Drive & ITunes

[Joe_SP]

Hi all

I need to fit a new had drive to my laptop - Dell Latitude D610, it currently only has a 30gb drive which is full.

I am guessing my only option is to buy a new drive and do a full rebuild?

If I do this I am worried that my IPODS will think it is a new PC, as you can only connevt an IPOD to a limited number of PC's and I already have them connected to two how can I get round this?

Thanks in advance

Joe

 

[seymansey]

Well, you could actually clone the drive - I am assuming here that you are using Windows? Disk cloning will allow you to copy the contents of your current hard disk to the new one and will also take account of the extra space, so everything will appear as before - just with the extra space

Software such as this will help you

 

[Joe_SP]

Sorry if this is a stupid question but how do you put the data onto the new drive without instaling it first?

 

[seymansey]

Ah, sorry. Depending on the type of drive you have (either SATA or IDE) you will need an adapter cable to plug into your new drive and a the USB port of your PC. Something like thi would do the job nicely - makes your nw drive show up in my computer. Then its a case of doing the drive clone and installing the new drive in the computer.

Obviously this would be at extra cost to you getting the softwre and the cable but the process is pretty hssle free. The USB cable above woudl also let you use your old drive as a backup drive should you need to in future, a bit like a 30GB usb key

 

[Rory]

In addition to other answers, you could buy a USB drive enclosure for a tenner or so - they're quite handy to have.
It needs to be 2.5" for laptop drives and I think the D610 is an IDE (rather than SATA) interface drive: http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...rchKey=All&SearchMode=All&NavigationKey=11026
or at PCWorld:
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...m=null&tm=null&sku=854879&category_oid=-31459
Software like Acronis True Image is popular for making a clone of the drive, and also good for backups. They also have a package specifically for upgrading HDD - you could always download the free trial!: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/

Not sure on the iTunes thing, but literally millions of users must change their PC every year, so it can't be difficult. I seem to recall you're "allowed" to connect to 5 machines at a time?


ETA: One thing to be very careful of if you're cloning drives is to be absolutely certain which drive is the existing one and which is the new. It's not impossible to get them the wrong way around and end up with 2 blank drives! Make a backup of your existing drive first, if you possibly can.

Also, if you buy a new hard drive, it needs to be formatted before the laptop will recognise it:
http://www.ehow.com/how_6026_format-hard-drive.html

 

[davidjpowell]

Itunes allows up to 5 PC's so you should be fine. I think you can de-authorise an account as well from the menus.

David

 

[HughJarse]

Youare only you are allowed to have iTunes music on up to five computers (this only refers to DRM music files). Your old PC will count as one of the allowed five PCs unless you deauthorize it. To deauthorize these files, just launch iTunes and select Advanced, Deauthorize computer, and then Deauthorize Computer for Apple Account. At this point, you will need to input both your Apple ID and password. Once this process is complete, you old PC's music will no longer count as an authorized set of music files.

Then copy all music on dvd as data. STart up new itunes and import. ACTUALLY DO THIS BIT BEFORE YOU DEAUTHORISE

 

[w124coupe]

iTunes, via the apple acount, also allows for a "deauthorise all" - so you can drop broken or stolen PCs from your new one.

In your situation I would de-auth the PC, use the caddy and clone software, swap the drives over, reboot and then sign on to Apple and auth the PC.


Re the process for moving the iTunes library to a new PC (i.e. not as part of a clone of the hard disk):

Set up options to copy files to itunes when importing and from advanced menu, run "consolidate library" - this will make sure the song files are in the itunes directory.

Navigate to my documents/my music and copy the itunes folder to an external drive.

De-auth the PC (leave this step out if you just want a second copy of the library for another person to use).


On new PC, install itunes and make sure the parameters about the library are the same as the old (location, consolidate option, copy files to itunes directory option etc).

Close iTunes.

Remove the default created itunes folder from my documents/my music

Copy the itunes folder from the external drive to my document/my music

Start up itunes and authorise the PC.

All done!

 

[Joe_SP]

Thanks all for your help - I knew you would have the answer!

I have ordered a 120gb seagate drive and a drive enclosure from ebuyer - should arrive on friday.

Cheers

Joe

 

[stevesey]

If your libary isn't in the default location of My Documents\My Music (mine's in F:\iTunes, with the Music in F:\My Music) - hold shift down when you start and itunes and it will prompt you to select the library location.