My wet laptop... I miss my music!

[stevek83]

Hey Everyone,

So, here is the background.. I am currently traveling around the world. I bought a Macbook Pro whilst in the USA. After having it for one week I spilled a glass of water on it and it fried. LUCKILY I took out the accidental damage clause, so I sent it back to the USA and they have given me a new one and sent it to me in Australia. I am from the UK and won't be going back until August 2010.

Basically it HAD all of my music on it, which I miss dearly. I have it backed up on my PC in the UK, which my brother has access to.

My question is which is the best way to get my music from my PC (Windows Vista, using iTunes) in the UK to my new Macbook Pro with me in Australia?

I have considered a couple of options but am unsure of the step by step processes to carry out to ensure that it works. All options would entail posting them from the UK to Australia.

1. Buying a Portable External Hard drive.
- Would it work by reformatting with mediafour's macdrive? or would this only work if I have the music on my Mac already?

2. Transferring files onto DVD's
- Would these be in the correct format to load straight on to my Mac? Also, this would take my brother a rather long time, which he does not have much of.

3. Buying a new Ipod.
- This would be very expensive as I have around 100GB worth of music I want sent over and Ipods of that size do not come cheap. I already have the software to transfer from Ipod to Mac (I can re-download this from a web link)

Thanks so much in advance for your answers.

All the best,

Steve

[Las_Vegas]

1) Yes. This would work. Format the drive is FAT32 and copy the entire iTunes library to it.

2) Yes. Backup the iTunes Library to DVD. Same as above, but you may need more than 1 disc.

3) Yes. moving everything to the iPod and then importing them back (with a third party utility) would work. Check VersionTracker for a good utility for this.

[stevek83]

Hey Las Vegas,

Thanks for your reply!!

I think the portable would be my fave option as then I would not have to clogg my Mac up with so many files, making it snail slow.

I have heard of limitations/issues with the FAT32. Namely, it not being very robust file system, meaning that it can be a nightmare when running a large library (as mentioned mine is around 100GB, minimum). Also, are you not limited the size of files you are adding. I know that most of my music (individual songs) would not be any more than a GB, but I have a number of album wraps on there and I'm not sure of the size of these.
I have heard that mediafour's macdrive would be a better option?? But I am not sure whether I would need to be transferring files from a Mac to work on a PC with this. Or, whether it would work the other way round (Install the program on a PC then add the Files from a PC to work on a Mac), please clarify.

At the moment it is a toss up between 2 ext hard drives.

1.Iomega eGo Portable Mac Edition - Hard drive - 500 GB - external - FireWire / FireWire 800 / Hi-Speed USB - Ruby Red - C.95GBP
2.Transcend 500GB StoreJet Mobile 2.5 Inch SATA Portable Hard Disk Drive - Red - C.67GBP

A few questions:
1. Obviously I understand the benefits of having fire wire, but as I am reformatting the hard drive with a new file system, would this still be readable on my mac? i.e is it worth forking out an extra 30GBP for the fire wire?
2. Do I need the Ext HD to be a Mac edition? ... or as I am reformatting it would this not make a difference?
3. Which would you choose?



Thanks again,

Steve

[Las_Vegas]

Your primary concern at this point is to get the files to your Mac from a PC. Once you have the music transferred to your Mac, you're free to reformat the drive and use it as an external. The reason for FAT32 is to get the iTunes folder from the PC. Your brother could write the files onto an NTFS drive, but your Mac would be limited to only reading it since the Mac, by default cannot write to NTFS. If you wanted to send something back to your brother on the drive, you would then have to format it in FAT32 so that you could write to it and he could read it.

You do not need to purchase a Mac compatible external drive. All external drives are Mac compatible.

[stevek83]

Thanks again Las Vegas,

Sorry for so many questions!

So, once I have transferred the music to my Mac from the FAT32 formatted Ext HD, how would I reformat the HD back to use as an HD with my Mac? And what would I need to reformat it as?

Also, what about the fire wire issue? Would you recommend getting this or would it screw up the fire wire function by constantly reformatting it? (this may be a really stupid question , but better safe than sorry I say)

Thanks again for all your help.

Best,

Steve

[Las_Vegas]

You would use Disk Utility located in your Utilities folder (in Applications) to reformat the drive. Simply erase the drive to Mac OS Extended.

You could go with either a Firewire or USB drive. Either would work fine for your purposes. Your concern would be if your brother's PC has Firewire. Likely not.