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[Madcow]

I'm getting a new, larger hard drive soon and I'd like to move my sizeable MP3 collection to the new drive (while leaving my system files etc on the original drive).

What's the easiest way to do this while retaining my library settings in Media Center?

If I move these files en masse using the My Computer function in MC, will it automatically track the new location and update the library?

Alternatively, would I lose anything by simply deleting my existing library, moving the files and re-importing the lot?

Any suggestions welcome - thanks.

[tubedogg]

If you use extended information (i.e. information that is not stored inside the music files) you will lose all of that information if you start over and reimport.

The easiest way to do what you want is install your new hard drive, then open MC and go to the root Audio viewscheme, then do Control+A to select all. Right click on one of them and select Rename Files from Properties and fill in the selected info. You're going to want to set a base path (probably just D:\ or whatever your new hard drive is at) then how you want them organized. I use
[Album Artist (auto)]\[Album]
in the Directories Rule box and
[Track #] [Name]
in the Filename Rules box. You can play around with it on a couple test files to see what you like best or what matches your current directory structure.

Keep in mind if you have a lot of files you will want to do this in batches, i.e. select say 500 files and do it, then do another 500 etc.

[Rands]

There's actually an easier way.  Move all the files to the new drive.  Go to Library Tools -> Find & Replace.  Make sure only Filename (path) has a checkmark, do a search for the old location (e.g., C:\Music\) and then replace it with where you moved the files (e.g., D:\Music\).  

Make sure you back up your library first and do a small batch of files to make sure it's replacing correctly.  This doesn't affect your MP3 files at all, only their location according to the MC database.

[nila]

You can also do rands method BEFORE you move the files and when u do the find and replace, MC will automatically move all the files to the new drive for you.

That lets MC take care of it all for you.

[Chris Shaw]

What about cover art, though. Won't that get left on the old drive? MC8 allowed you to do a Find & Replace on the image path, but that's not allowed any more.