Author Topic: Need some advice on moving my entire library and its settings (its complicated)  (Read 1855 times)

bradmmm

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  • Posts: 18
Hey guys. I know how to move my library normally, but this time I'm doing something a bit different...

So at the moment, I have a 2TB internal drive with nothing but my MusicBee library on it. I've also got it installed to the root of that drive. I also have another 200gb of music that is on a separate drive, not in my library yet. I have about 50% of the music in my Inbox folder as well if that makes any difference, I'm slowly editing the metadata of each album, a few a day.

Anyway... so I got a brand new 4TB drive the other day. It's currently in an external enclosure, but what I would like to do is to move the entire library and the software/software settings to the 4TB drive and then take it out of the enclosure, remove the 2TB drive from inside my case, replace it with the 4TB drive and then put the 2TB drive in the enclosure.

Will I have to do anything special in this scenario? I'm assuming that it's going to involve more than just cut/paste the contents from the 2TB to the 4TB? If it helps, my setup is like this - Musicbee (E:)/Musicbee/ and that's where the software is installed. I also have a seperate folder in here for my music files (mostly FLAC hence the massive storage space taken up by music), so that goes /E/Musicbee/! My Music !/ and here I have the Inbox and Library folders. Musicbee is set up to auto-organise my library, so I put all new music in the Inbox folder and when I edit the metadata via MusicBee, I add it to my library and then it auto organises it to the Library folder.

If someone can guide me it would be much appreciated  :-*

Thank you for reading!

tl;dr I want to move my current install and music files that are on my 2TB internal drive to my 4TB external and then switch the drives so that the 2TB is external and the 4TB is internal.

redwing

  • Guest
The most important thing is always move music files using MB not to lose your metadata saved only in your database and the file links in playlists. If you auto-organize, you can adjust the naming template with the new drive letter and if not auto-organize, use Folder (move) command after selecting files.

To move library files folder, use the command in library settings.

After installing MB on your new drive, if you hold shift key when launching MB, you can choose the library you have moved.

Also don't forget to copy all settings files in AppData folder (except internal cache folder) and other add-ons to your new installation.

Before doing all this, make sure backup your current MB installation and library folder since unexpected things always happen.

frankz

  • Sr. Member
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  • Posts: 3834
The much easier way would be just to, outside MusicBee in the OS, copy all the files to the new drive with the same directory structure, shut down, take out the old drive, put the new drive in its place, give the new drive the same now-abandoned drive letter as the old drive, and then open MusicBee, which doesn't know that anything changed because E is still E and all the music is in the same place it was, and begin listening to your music.

Then connect up the old drive format it and give it a new letter and use it for whatever.

Unless your OS is also on this drive, then you'll need to use something like Acronis or EaseUS to clone the E drive to the new drive and then a partition manager to expand it to the new size.

But people replace data drives with new drives every day. It doesn't require you to reconfigure every program you use as long as you do it as a straight replacement and keep the drive letter and directory structures the same.
Last Edit: October 29, 2017, 02:32:02 PM by frankz