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[BullishDad]

I currently have my music files on a separate hard drive (E:) and am anticipating getting a new PC soon.  I'm thinking that I should be able to take the drive out of the old machine and put it into the new one.  The new one will run Vista Premium, the old one XP.

My MC12 program files are on C:, so I figure I would need to install MC on the new machine, restore license and the libraries that were saved.

Will the drive letter assigned by Vista have to be E: (music drive) like it was on the old?  Do I have control over this?  Is there anything else I should be doing?

I don't want my music to get messed up.  I'll back up the music drive before taking it out of the old PC.  However, I'm concerned that when I install it in the new PC, that MC could have trouble with the file locations matching the library.

[glynor]

I currently have my music files on a separate hard drive (E:) and am anticipating getting a new PC soon.  I'm thinking that I should be able to take the drive out of the old machine and put it into the new one.  The new one will run Vista Premium, the old one XP.

My MC12 program files are on C:, so I figure I would need to install MC on the new machine, restore license and the libraries that were saved.

Will the drive letter assigned by Vista have to be E: (music drive) like it was on the old?  Do I have control over this?  Is there anything else I should be doing?

As long as you name it E you should be fine.  If you do this, the MC library should work straight off.  You can change it if you want to though, but that'll break all the links in MC's library when you restore your library database.  That's not a huge deal though.  You can easily fix them using the Library Tools --> Find and Replace tool.

Say you have these files:

E:\Music\Pink Floyd\Atom Heart Mother\01 - Atom Heart Mother.mp3
E:\Music\Pink Floyd\Atom Heart Mother\02 - If.mp3
E:\Music\Pink Floyd\Atom Heart Mother\03 - Summer of '68.mp3
E:\Music\Pink Floyd\Atom Heart Mother\04 - Fat Old Sun.mp3
E:\Music\Pink Floyd\Atom Heart Mother\05 - Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast.mp3

But you assign the new drive as M (for "media" or "music") in the new computer.  If you don't know how to assign a drive letter to a drive read this: http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/windows/2006/11/23/change-your-drives-letter-in-vista/

So, you need them to look like this to MC:

M:\Music\Pink Floyd\Atom Heart Mother\01 - Atom Heart Mother.mp3
M:\Music\Pink Floyd\Atom Heart Mother\02 - If.mp3
(etc)

Simply restore the MC library normally, and then select those files and right-click --> Library Tools --> Find and Replace.  Then, in the dialog that appears, scroll down and choose only Filename as the field to search.  Then, in the Find What box type E:\ and in the Replace box type M:\.  Hit enter and you should be set.

I'd STRONGLY recommend you do a few before you do them all.  If you mess it up, just do Edit --> Undo (Control-Z).  The backup is also a good idea.   You might as well!

[BullishDad]

Thanks, glynor.  Your reply was extremely helpful.

I just thought of one more concern.  My drive is a couple years old and the computer is almost five years old.  These days the drives are listed as SATA, I think I have ATA.  Will I need any special cables or adapters?  Hopefully, this won't mess up my plan.

I don't change the hardware that often, so thanks for your patience.

[benn600]

Most new motherboards (computers) still have at least one PATA connector but this may be in use for the CD/DVD drive.  You will have to see what connection options are available and at that point you may have trouble.  You may be better off just copying your music to your new computer because then you won't have to use the older drive and even more importantly, you'll have a backup.  Backup!

[KingSparta]

SATA, I think I have ATA.  Will I need any special cables or adapters?

You may just want to buy new drives, if you need to buy a adapter card for old drives.

Besides you will see Better performance out of new SATA drives.

[BullishDad]

Thanks Benn and King.  I'm leaning towards creating an E: partition on the new drive and copying the music there.  I can add a second drive later if need be.  I don't know if there is an extra PATA connector.  If there is, I may try that.  I could still copy to the new drive and use the old one for backup inside the machine.

I found the article below which lays out the options.  I agree with King that it is not worth paying for an adapter card when the money could go towards a new drive.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=175723&messageID=1931108

[dcwebman]

Or you could buy an external hard drive enclosure for your old drive (pretty cheap) and hook it up to your new computer via USB/Firewire. That way you can copy all your music to the PC's hard drive if you want or just use it connected to the computer instead of E:, and when you get a new second drive, use the external drive for your backups.

[JONCAT]

You can search this forum for info on transferring unique MC settings (Options etc.) and playlists will have to be rebuilt if you name the drive differently or store in a different path.

DC

[olarte]

Or you could buy an external hard drive enclosure for your old drive (pretty cheap) and hook it up to your new computer via USB/Firewire. That way you can copy all your music to the PC's hard drive if you want or just use it connected to the computer instead of E:, and when you get a new second drive, use the external drive for your backups.

YOu can get a Western Digital 500gb external for about 129 on sale practically every weekend at bestbuy or circuit city.

I use this and SyncBackSE (Excellent backup program) to do transfers, and to keep a good backup of my media. When not in use I disconnect and poweroff "Mybook" to keep the data safe from viruses, crashes etc...

[benn600]

You probably don't even need 500GB.  But keep in mind that you will want a good backup strategy so you may want two smaller drives.  Also, remember you will probably be expanding your collection--weird how we always expand and never shrink in our digital collections.

Anyone shrunk their digital collection by choice lately?

[glynor]

Besides you will see Better performance out of new SATA drives.

The older PATA interface still outperforms the newer SATA interface by a slim margin.  You won't likely see any difference in performance if the two drives have similar spindle speeds.  Newer drives often do contain fancier features (such as Native Command Queuing and bigger caches) so this is sometimes not quite true, though the performance impact of these features is often dubious at best.

The new motherboard will almost definitely have at least one PATA interface, which will allow you to connect 2 devices, so you should be set (one CD-ROM/DVD-ROM and one HDD).  However, they may only provide a cable with 1 port on it, so you might need to run out to Best Buy, Staples, Radio Shack, or somewhere similar and pick up a new PATA IDE ribbon cable with two connectors on it (make sure to get the 80 wire variety with the blue, black, and gray connectors).

[benn600]

Hard drives and CDs on the same IDE cable aren't a good idea because I believe CDs run much slower and the HDD gets slowed down.

Isn't SATA faster?  300Mb/s?  IDE was usually rated at 160 or so, I thought.

[glynor]

Isn't SATA faster?  300Mb/s?  IDE was usually rated at 160 or so, I thought.

They're rated differently, and the rating is somewhat irrelevant anyway because they're both burst rates (and no hard drive on the market can even saturate the SATA 150 bus fully).  Check this thread out: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=36842.msg253000#msg253000

[rjm]

I can confirm that external e-Sata drives are faster than USB 2.0 drives.

Only problem with e-Sata is that the standard Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" does not work with some Sata controllers and you may need to get a little free utility called HotSwap! to disconnect the drive.

[BullishDad]

I just got the new computer, a Dell Inspiron 530, and of course there are wrinkles in trying to keep the files of the same name and drive letter.  Is it true that playlists will have to be recreated if a different drive letter is used in the new machine?

Dell created a D: partition (10GB) for Recovery (on the same physical drive as C:), then assigned E: to the optical drive.

I thought about changing the letter assigned to the optical drive, but am afraid this may affect programs that were installed to use the optical drive, and they won't be able to find it.

I also thought about creating a partition using Windows Disk Management to keep the music separate from the C: partition.  However, when I called Dell, they said that doing so could corrupt the Recovery partition, so I'm not thrilled about that.

Back to the original idea of installing the old PATA drive in the new machine, it looks like there is an unused PATA connector on the motherboard, but the power supply cables are not the Molex ones I'm used to, which fit my old drive.

I'm leaning towards using an external enclosure and using the drive via USB.

Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

[jgreen]

Bullish--

You're halfway home!  Using your OLD (E) drive on your OLD computer, rename your (E) drive "(N)", using the computer management/disk management tool in the control panel. 

At this point, NONE of your MC library will be connected.  Now, open MC.  First off, save your old library with a distinctive, date-specific name.   Once that's done, go to the audio view.  Do a "find and replace" of "e:\" with "n:\".  Try this on one or two selected files just to verify that it works properly, then let her rip!

Once the library is re-pointed from e to n, everything should be as you want.  Save this off as a NEW library.  Now, put the drive on the new computer--it should read in as (N).  Copy the NEW library from the old computer to the new.  Does everything work?  I hope it does, because I'm out of ideas.  At any rate, this is what I did when I got a new computer and it worked for me, FWIW.  Hope this helps.   

[rjm]

Dell created a D: partition (10GB) for Recovery (on the same physical drive as C:), then assigned E: to the optical drive.

I thought about changing the letter assigned to the optical drive, but am afraid this may affect programs that were installed to use the optical drive, and they won't be able to find it.

I also thought about creating a partition using Windows Disk Management to keep the music separate from the C: partition.  However, when I called Dell, they said that doing so could corrupt the Recovery partition, so I'm not thrilled about that.

Back to the original idea of installing the old PATA drive in the new machine, it looks like there is an unused PATA connector on the motherboard, but the power supply cables are not the Molex ones I'm used to, which fit my old drive.

I'm leaning towards using an external enclosure and using the drive via USB.

Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

I purchased a new Dell laptop about 6 months ago. I do not like the way Dell delivers its drive partitions and software configuration so I wiped it clean and rebuilt the system from scratch. It turned out to be a painless process and I am much happier with my system now.

I wrote a review on my laptop with a focus on how to do a clean build here:

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=197849&highlight=KyeBay

Feel free to ask questions if you do not understand anything.

[BullishDad]

JGreen, thanks so much.  We're making progress.

I reassigned the drive the letter "M".  When I tried to load MC12, I got an error message, so I uninstalled MC12, then reinstalled it.  That worked.  Next, when I restored the library backup, the files were not connected as you told me to expect.  Next, I used the Find/Replace command on a few files and the changes took.  The tested files were connected to the appropriate Playlists as well.  So I did a "Select All" and did the Find/Replace on all files and MC12 quickly updated the library. 

I haven't moved the drive yet to the new PC.  Most likely, I will order a drive enclosure to access the drive externally.  This will also make it easier if I need to attach it to the old PC.

There is still plenty to do with other programs and settings so I will move on to those until I get the drive enclosure.

[BullishDad]

RJM, thanks for your suggestion.  The thought of a clean install did cross my mind, but I'm afraid I might make a mess of it.  You did a great job in your review listing everything you did.  I appreciate your willingness to answer questions if I went that route, but for now I am going to leave the Recovery partition and DVD drive alone.

[rjm]

ok

One other tip. I am certain you can reassign the DVD to a different drive letter without causing problems. If an application does complain you will be able to tell it the new location.

[glynor]

One other tip. I am certain you can reassign the DVD to a different drive letter without causing problems. If an application does complain you will be able to tell it the new location.

I agree here... Though, I think that reassigning the media drive to drive M (as it appears you've already done) is a much better option. 

[BullishDad]

   MC12 is up and running on the new machine with libraries restored and working!!!

The enclosure came today.  I put the old drive in it and attached the enclosure to the new machine. Haven't had much of a chance to play with MC12 yet, but a brief test showed that files are connected to the library, and a couple of songs played fine.

Thanks to all who have replied to this thread.