As many of you know, iTunes is a wonderful program that allows you to directly purchase new music and iPhone/iPod touch applications on-line, organize and download your existing music collection and best of all, to find and download great podcasts. It also allows you to make custom “smart” playlists for your music and podcasts as well as allowing you to rate the stuff you listen to.

So, lets say you have had your computer for a few years, and it is time to upgrade. You install iTunes on the new computer, sign in to your iTunes account and connect your iPod. If the iPod is set to sync automatically, you will watch in horror as everything except your purchased music is erased from your iPod. all of your custom playlists, music ratings and self-ripped CDs are now gone. Time to dig out the CD collection and start over, right?

Not necessarily. There is something you can do to prevent this from happening, prior to installing iTunes on the new computer.

Here’s what you do:

1. If you can connect the old computer hard drive to the new computer, this will make things much easier, but if not, prior to turning your old machine off for good, find your iTunes music folder. If you are using Windows it is usually in Documents(My Documente)/Music/iTunes .

2. If you have the old hard drive connected to your new computer, simply create a new iTunes folder in the same location on your new hard drive. Go to the old drive and COPY (ctrl + c) the entire contents, folders, .xml files (especially important)…EVERYTHING…and paste (ctrl + v) it into the new folder on the new hard drive. DO NOT drag and drop the iTunes folder to the new drive…for some reason this won’t work.

If you don’t have the old hard drive connected, you need to get a USB external drive or flash drive big enough to hold your entire music library. Create an iTunes music folder on the external drive, then, COPY (ctrl + c) the ENTIRE contents in the iTunes folder and paste (ctrl +v) it into the folder on the external drive. DO NOT drag the iTunes folder onto the external drive!

Shut down the old computer and set up the new one. Create a new iTunes folder in the exact same place as it was on the old computer. Connect the external drive and open the iTunes folder on it. Again, COPY and PASTE the entire contents from the external drive to the new computer’s hard drive in the iTunes folder.

3. Install iTunes as normal and BINGO, all of your playlists and data are there.

Here is the reason why this works. In the iTunes folder there are 2 xml files that hold all of your playlists and settings for iTunes, as well as indexing information for your library of music. By copying all of the music and these files over to the exact place where iTunes normally sets them up, the new install of iTunes recognizes the data and imports it.

Alternatively, there is a free program that can also assist you in doing this. http://www.get411.com/ However, I had no problems simply moving the files myself.

Here’s to not sitting at the computer for hours re-ripping music CDs. Now you can just re-connect your iPod, download the latest Catholic podcasts and away you go.