Recovering iTunes (help - I'm an idiot)

[Bobbybeaver]

I'm sorry if this is not the correct forum & please don't hurl any abuse at me but...

My laptop was recently killed by a pint of water, and as well as all of my photos, over the years I have paid for much of my music from iTunes (no comments).

Once my new laptop has arrived, is there a way to transfer my music back on from my iPod or iPhone or is all of my music lost forever?

I tried to back everything up on to an external hard drive before it died completely, but am not yet sure if I was successful. I backed up some of my music/photos to discs a few years ago..

The laptop is a really old Dell - I suppose it may be possible to extract the internal hard drive?

I really am rubbish at anything to do with Computers & have never used one of these forums (this one looks too technical for a novice like me). I'm a very silly girl!

Thanks in advance if anybody can assist me...

Louise

 

[berry120]

Heya - no worries we all have our moments! This question doesn't come close to some of the dumb ones I've seen so I wouldn't worry!

Unfortunately itunes doesn't provide a way to re-download music you've already paid for, if it was the one track then a kind email met with a generous employee may possibly offer you a free download - but for this sort of scale I don't think there's much of a chance on taking that route.

If the backup has worked, then yes it's perfectly possible to transfer your music across - if you backed up your entire itunes library, you may just be able to drop it into place when you install itunes again (and then give itunes the relevant library file.) If it's just a collection of songs, then again no worries - just go to preferences, click on the advanced tab and select "copy imported music to itunes directory" (it's probably not exactly that wording, but similar.) Then go to import folder, select the folder all your music is in and it should just copy it all across.

 

[Bobbybeaver]

Thanks for your help - I'm going to order a new laptop this weekend and see what I can salvage from the external hard drive, I have also ordered a hard drive enclosure to see if I can extract anything from the old laptops hard drive. I have never taken a hard drive out before, so this should be interesting!

Have definitely learnt my lesson about backing thiings up though - and paying for my music!

Many thanks again - I may be back on here again soon ;-)

Louise

 

[sp0oK]

Don't worry, its generally pretty simple with Dell laptops I've seen in the past. Usually just a couple of screws and the whole drive assembly slides out on a sled.

 

[Bobbybeaver]

Thanks - I'm still waiting for the enclosure, but will give it a bash. A couple of people have offered to help if I get stuck - thank goodness!