I'm trying my best to migrate my entire library from Mac to PC, but it's not working.
1)- I backed up the RB database and saved it on a flash drive.
2)- I copied the entire music folder to an external HD.
3)- I created a user on Windows with the same name as I have on Mac.
4)- Installed RB on PC.
5)- I copied the entire Music folder from the external HD to the PC.
6)- Restored the RB database on the PC.
7)- All the songs were there, but obviously with an exclamation mark on the front.
8)- I clicked on "display all missing files" and it showed all that were missing.
9)- I clicked on "auto-relocate". RB started looking for the songs in the "Music" folder and subsequently in its subfolders.
10)- Finished, a warning appeared that there were already files in my collection, as if it was in duplicate, but it doesn't exist!
11)- Several files still continued with a "!" ahead. I clicked on these files one by one, selected the "relocate" option, pointed to its location in "C:\users\rodrigovolta\music" but it says it is already in the collection.
12)- I clicked on "Import > Import Folder" and reimported the "Music\Music Files" folder into the RB. Several new songs appeared, but in duplicate.
My songs are saved in subfolders and each subfolder is a genre. I don't have all the songs mixed in one folder.
My folder structure on Mac is: "/Users/rodrigovolta/Music/Music Files". Underneath that folder I have subfolders like BALLAD, FLASHBACK, EDM, etc and under some of these folders I have more subfolders. Example: FLASHBACK/DANCE, FLASHBACK/HOUSE, FLASHBACK/NEWWAVE, EDM/TECH HOUSE, EDM/DANCE, EDM/SOULFUL and so on. I've had this structure for years!
I don't understand what happened when the Mac is all right. No repeated music, no problem, everything working, but when I migrate to the PC, there are problems!!
I have some songs with Unicode characters, but this doesn't seem to be a problem, because on Mac everything works perfect and the problem doesn't only happen in files that have Unicode characters, but also in those that don't.
Theoretically, RB should replace the string "/users/rodrigovolta/music/Music Files" with "C:\users\rodrigovolta\music\Music Files" and everything works perfectly, but it doesn't. Something "gets lost" in the relocation process that I don't know what it is.
I don't want to have to pay to buy third-party software to do something RB should do efficiently!
I can't depend on Mac for the rest of my life as it is a 2012 notebook and it is very expensive to buy a new Macbook here in my country. So I need to migrate to a PC.
Does anyone have a solution for this case?
Post is closed for comments.
9)- I clicked on "auto-relocate".
That was the mistake. If everything was in the same folder structure, you should have done a batch relocation following the steps here.
I would wipe the database, restore it again, then do the batch relocation.
If auto-relocate doesn't work, what is this function for, if when we need it, we have to do everything manually? It doesn't make sense to me! If all file location traces are saved in the database and we just need to change the parent path, why doesn't it do it automatically?
Auto-relocate is great if you made Swiss-cheese of your collection by moving multiple songs to different paths, but as you moved everything within the same scope (all folders are the same), you should do the manual batch relocation instead.
So, as a rule, when I migrate my entire library from Mac to PC and vice versa, I have to do everything manually according to the video, correct?
In the video it looks easy, since all your songs in the example are spread out in a single folder. My structure is much more complex than that. If all my songs were in one folder, it would be fast. But it's not my case.
I made the migration to the External HDD and it took me more than 1 hour in this activity. And I will have to repeat it when importing from External HDD to PC!
Well, for me it's a redundant job and I'll choose to use a third-party software like Lexicon DJ to do this activity in an automated way. If everything works perfect, for me it will be better. Otherwise, I do it manually.
So long as you put the music into the same relative space on the new computer, or it's in batches (say 4 different parent folders), you can relocate up to that mane times and it'll be done (eg. 4 times for 4 different folder moves).
Bad file management is something you should tackle.