Move Spanned Library to New Mac Mini

Steve shared this question 10 years ago
Answered

My 2008 MacBook Pro has it's woefully too small original 186 GB drive. As I continued to purchase TV seasons and movies, it naturally filled up. So I bought an external 1 TB drive and used TuneSpan to span old content to the new drive. I probably have 400 GB of content which greatly exceeds the original HD in the MBP.


Now I'm thinking of getting a Mac Mini as a media server and attaching a quad RAID enclosure with 12 or 16 TB. This should solve my storage problems for a few years.


Here's the question: How can I migrate the Content left in my MPB (some TV, lots of music) plus the Spanned Content on the external HD to the Mac Mini? I want to create a new single Library on the Mac Mini and store all the content on the new RAID array.

Replies (6)

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Thanks for getting in touch.


Have you ever migrated between computers before?


Having TuneSpan shouldn't change the basic migration process. You just need to make sure to transfer the TuneSpan Library and Preferences which are in your User Library folder within your Home folder. That folder is hidden on 10.7 and later though.


If you properly transition your iTunes Library to the Mac mini, and then plug in the external drive with all your spanned media to the mini, it should all the recognized as the "relative" paths will still be the same.


Once that transition is done, then you can use TuneSpan normally to move your media to your new RAID setup from the current external.


Let me know if you need more advice on how to transfer between computers, but again, TuneSpan doesn't fundamentally change anything about the transition.

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Thanks for the prompt reply, Pico. That sounds simple enough.


I've migrated Macs a couple of times, but it's been five years, so I don't recall how to do it. I am doing several things simultaneously -- upgrading my old MBP with an SSD and more RAM as well as moving the iTunes library to the new Mac Mini w RAID storage. I'm trying to map out all the steps and precise sequence.


By the way, I have major problems with Get Satisfaction -- of all things, it will not accept a space character typed from the keyboard. I'm typing this in TextEdit and will paste into the text box in your Community powered by GS. I've had this problem with GS at other companies, too, but haven't reported the bug.


Steve

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By the way, thanks for writing such a great app. It's been a huge time saver for me.

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If you run into any issues during the migration process, or have any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch.


But, the most important thing is having a backup, if *everything* is backed up, then even if you make a mistake during the transfer, you can fix it.


About the Get Satisfaction bug, I don't have that issue on my end, I'm typing in the text box right now... What browser are you using?


In the future, feel free to email me directly at "pico {at} randomapplications.com" or through the form at http://contact.tunespan.com or any of the Contact Developer buttons in TuneSpan. It all goes to the same place :-) No one way of communication will get my attention over another, I try to respond as quick as I can no matter what.


Anyway, so glad to hear that TuneSpan is useful for you! I've had a minor update in the works for a while, and I'm finally getting around to the final testing across all the supported versions of OS X and will be submitting the update the Apple shortly. If all goes well (as it should) you should see TuneSpan 1.1.3 on the Mac App Store sometime next week.

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MacBook Pro


OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard)


Safari 5.0.6


Just tried FF 7.0.1 and it works fine. Does seem to be a browser problem. Thanks.


Probably when I get the upgrade to Lion completed soon, it'll be ok. My machine suddenly stopped recognizing the preferred network, too, and I have to enter it manually every time. I'm tempted to get a new machine, but new MBP with Retina is a hefty price.

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Yea, that's probably the issue. I'm using Safari 6.0.5 on OS X 10.8.4 and it works fine.


The Retina MacBook Pros are pretty pricy, but once you start using it, you won't be able to go back. Now that I've had the Retina MBP for about a year, every other screen looks like crap. It's nuts.


So, you must still be using the free TuneSpan beta version on 10.5? Glad to see that's still getting some use. Once you upgrade, you'll be able to get TuneSpan from the Mac App Store which has quite a few nice improvements over that old beta.

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