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Author Topic: Move from one PC to a new one  (Read 1189 times)

gottwavo

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Move from one PC to a new one
« on: July 03, 2011, 04:03:24 pm »

I will be getting a new PC to use as a replacement for the current music server. Currently I have MC 16 installed with the music files spread over two 1 TB hard disks. The library is reading both disks and keeps everything organized.

I now will have one 3TB disk only on the new machine.

What is the best way to move the files and to reduce the effort in creating a new library especially not loosing all the smart playlists and other settings?

Thanks for any advice.
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JimH

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Re: Move from one PC to a new one
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2011, 04:37:53 pm »

Our wiki has an article on Moving Files.
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BartMan01

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Re: Move from one PC to a new one
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2011, 05:05:55 pm »

One thing the WIKI doesn't address is stacked copies of files.  While stacked unexpanded, the find replace for file name doesn't happen for them.  A problem if your stacked files are handheld cache files since it will create a mess of your cache files the next time you try to sync.
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gottwavo

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Re: Move from one PC to a new one
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2011, 01:58:32 am »

Thanks for the hint to look at the wiki.

Actually MC is finally working on the new PC. However the wiki didn't help much and I had some additional work to make it work.

So I copied the files from one PC to the other which took more than a day with 1.5 TB. Then I installed MC16 on the new machine. Imported the earlier saved library from the other PC. Changed the drive names as described in the wiki.

So far so good. Then I had to import a few new files. Worked OK. But then - guess what - MC imported all the old files again and after a day I had them all twice in the library. So I removed them manually.

Then I noticed that half of my files had lost the BMP analysed earlier and which where present in the old library. Also half the cover art was lost. So I had to rebuild this. And still MC is busy to reanalyse BMP for the 60,000 files that lost it. Takes another day.

So the conclusion is: If anybody from MC could wright a failsafe instruction on how to best move (a lot of) files from one PC to another would be really great and save some rework for others, that do the same.

Otherwise: MC16 is a great software and I still love it.
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BartMan01

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Re: Move from one PC to a new one
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2011, 01:57:29 pm »

I would do the following:
Backup library/settings from old machine.
Share the folder with the music from the old machine.
Install JRMC16 on the new machine.
Restore library/settings to new install.
Find and expand all stacked files.
Use find/replace on file names to point files to shared folder on old computer.
At this point you should have your library in place, but the files on the wrong machine.
Finally use either find/replace or 'rename files' to move files from the old machine's shared folder to their final resting place on the new machine.
Collapse all stacked files.

Am I missing anything?
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