Gabbs’ Random Thoughts

So now comes the fun part, right? Gotta figure out how to do all the things that I’ve got to do on a Mac that I do in Windows. Well, the snag is, I’m still in preparations mode, as my Mac has yet to arrive. I’ve been researching lots of things to help me in my trasition, and this time, I’ll be writing about moving my iTunes library from Windows XP to OS X.

So here’s the situation. I have a 55-GB music library. I’ve ripped all of my 900 some odd CD’s, and have them as MP3s on my computer for the last 5 years. I have an iPod which I carry around my whole CD collection around on. I don’t currently use it for pictures, videos, contacts, or calanders, but that will change as I move over to OS X. The MP3s currently reside on my computer, ‘The-Doctor’.

Why not just copy over the files to the Mac, and then use iTunes to discover the files I’ve copied over? Well, I spent about 2.5 years rating all my music while traveling to customer sites. I did this so that I could always have ‘my favorite’ songs with me on my 20-GB iPod (which FINALLY died and was replace with an 80-GB model after 3 years of abuse), and so that I could figure out what I like to listen to a little more. So now that I’ve got 7000 songs rated, and some history about play counts and last play dates, I’d like to keep that information (not only that, but I pride myself on having kept all my metadata correct, and have tested this to the nth degree). If I just copied the files over to the Mac, and imported those songs, I would lose the ratings and play dates and times that I’ve been keeping track of.

So in planning my iTunes migration, I backed up the files that make up my iTunes directory on my Windows machine. Not the MP3’s, as those are already backed up, but the ‘iTunes Library.itl’ and ‘iTunes Music Library.xml’ files (these files make up the iTunes ‘database’. I moved my ‘iTunes Music’ folder to a different directory so that I could do some importing/exporting with the software and not ‘damage’ my MP3 files and their metadata. After the backup of those core files, which contain all the important data about my MP3 library, I’m ready to explore my options for moving around my MP3 Library. I deleted the files left in my iTunes Music folder, and that gives me a clean iTunes database

So I went into my iTunes preference (found under the Edit pull-down menu in Windows) and looked for some settings to tweak to see if there was anything to help me migrate my data. I found something in the ‘Advanced’ tab’s ‘General’ tab. I do NOT have the ‘Keep iTunes’ Music Folder Organized’ check box ticked. ‘I’ want to keep my folders organized (long story, but being anal retentive, I like to have all my Opeth albums under Opeth, not have some songs under Opeth, and some under Opeth & guest Star…). More importantly and relevant to the discussion, is the 2nd checkbox, ‘Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library’. I put a tick in this checkbox to enable the feature and try it out with a SMALL subset of my data. I import the band 311, and some of my compilations (namely Star Wars Soundtrack, Raiders of the Lost Ark Soundtrack, and Judgement Night Soundtracks) because these compilations have ‘Various Artists’, and mulitple artists in their metadata. I was very happy with the results…it kept all the 311 albums under the 311 band folder…it kept all the soundtracks under the ‘Compilations’ folder and did NOT seperate or break them down by ‘artist’ which could have been a mess. the Judgement Night soundtrack has 11 songs, and they are all co-operative efforts between rap and metal bands, so the ‘artist’ metatag has 2 entries, like Biohazard & Onyx. The problem I had was that I lost ALL of my ratings, and other information that I use in iTunes (but all the metadata was right at least). Time to try another way. I clean out my iTunes directory structure, and try again.

So…under the iTunes ‘Advanced’ pull down menu, I found something interesting…’Consolidate Library’. This is actually what solved my problem…I think…
So before adding music to the fresh and clean library, I cleared the ‘Advanced’ tab’s ‘General’ tab, ‘Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library’ setting. I added the same subset of music. I then went to teh ‘Advanced’ pull down menu, and did a ‘Consolidate Libray’ action. It stated…
‘Consolidating your library will copy all of your music into the iTunes Music folder. This cannot be undone.’
Not being concerned at this point about losing data, I clicked the ‘consolidate’ button.

The result was perfect. It maintained the directory structure I spent so much time creating…with NO issues! This leaves me with some ideas on how to migrate my MP3 data, the metadata, as well as the iTunes database with all its information. I’ve got the plan, so now, to see if it will actually perform in the way I expect it to.

The plan is to do the following…I plan to change the default ‘iTunes Music Folder Location’ to point out to my network share out on ‘Tardis’, do a ‘Consolidate Library’ action, and let all my music copy out to the network share. I’m expecting that when I move the iTunes files (the itl and xml files) over to the Mac after the ‘Consolidation’ to the network drive, that the files and their metadata will be absolutely fine.

Results will be posted…

I plan to keep this up on MY MySpace page as a blog as well, so for those of you interested, click the link above, and check out my page.

Now for a little bit of my normal use of my computers, both work and home, as well as the setup of how my hardware is configured at both my home and in my office (without giving specific details of either network).

I’ll be discussing Virtual Machines a lot, so for those of you who do not know what they are, check out VMware, Wikipedia, and Virtual-Strategy Magazine.

My home world is easier to work with first, so let me start there. I have a computer at home call ‘The-Doctor’. This is the machine I use for iTunes, backups (both work and home), my simple web sites (check out Gabbs.com if you care to) that I manage with Dreamweaver, editing home video with Quicktime, doing my surfing when at home using Firefox, and running Virtual Machines to test things out for work. I also use a Virtual Machine to do all my day to day work. The reason for this is because I’ve been using Windows long enough to realize that no matter how careful you are, you WILL catch a virus, or get some spyware, or some kind of stupid problem that means you have to rebuild your system…no getting around it. My old record, prior to Virtual Machines, was about 3-6 months using Windows XP Professional.

I have a 2nd system, call ‘Tardis’, which is a NAS (or Networked Attached Storage) device where I keep backups of all my data. The exception to that is that all my video is out on ‘Tardis’ because to keep it all on ‘The-Doctor’ would be a bit too troublesome.

Since we’re on the discussion of backups, what I do with backups…I run a full backup every month to ‘Tardis’, and then incremental backups every day to ‘Tardis’. This way, at the end of the month, I copy all the ‘backups’ to ‘The-Doctor’, burn them off to DVD, and start the process over again. Once things are backed up, I can be assured that I don’t lose any data (only someone who HAS lost data will do things to this extent, let me tell you!). Oh…and being SOOOO paranoid…I make 2 copies of each DVD that I create as a backup, one to leave at home, and one to leave at my office. I do this for both my work data and my personal data. It only takes a matter of a couple of hours to do this, while I’m doing other things, so it is not much of a time commitment, just a commitment to do the work every month.

At work, I’ve got my IBM ThinkPad T-42. It’s my 4th laptop in 5.5 years at my office. I would consider myself a road warrior, as I’m off on customer sites at least one-third of the time, up to one-half of the time. I use VMware Workstation a lot, Microsoft Office, Outlook for my e-mail, Microsoft Visio, things like Acrobat Reader, Winzip, Secure FTP, Putty, Magic ISO, Firefox, Thunderbird, and a couple of work specific appliations that require Microsoft’s .NET. I have a mix of physical machine use and Virtual Machine use to get me through the day at the office. I have a small insignificant problem when I travel away from home though, and that is my data does not go with me. This is due to the fact that I don’t really need or want to mix personal data with work data on a work owned machine. Really, it’s more of a ‘I don’t have the disk space to do so’ issue rather than a ‘I don’t want to mix the data on the same machine’ issue.

Now my goal is to be off Windows ENTIRELY in 2 months, so January 11th will be the deadline. I will be cutting over my work environment to the Mac sooner than that…I’m expecting the end of this month that the only way I’ll be using Windows at the office is SPECIFICALLY for things that I can not find a replacement for in OS X, things like my office’s home grown applications, specific web sites that REQUIRE Intenet Explorer, and other things that I’ll keep track of.

Some of the resources I’ll be using to help me through my trasition to the Mac. My buddy, let’s call him Ratbert. He’s been a Mac guy for a long time. Another Engineer at my office, let’s call him Dilbert. This is the kind of guy Unix/Linux loves. He can script, embrace, and communicate how to solve problems. Dilbert has a 2 week advantage over me, in that he got his new MacBook Pro ahead of me, but I’ve got an advantage over Dilbert because I’ve been looking into this for a year.

Ahh….the next chapter….coming soon to a web page near you…

I plan to keep this up on MY MySpace page as a blog as well, so for those of you interested, click the link above, and check out my page.