I have a new vaio laptop with vista. My old vaio had xp pro.

What I want to do is transfer all of my data from itunes to the new computer so that it imports the music and artwork info.

I have an external hard drive that the music is on. I will not be moving the files anywhere. I want them to stay on the external. That is how it has been in the past and I have to keep it that way.

I have close to 500 gb of music in my library. I do not want to have to load it all in again manually, which would take about 15 days. I want to figure out how to transfer everything but the actual music files.

I tried the backup option in itunes, but I would need 587 cds to back it all up.

And please for the love of god do not suggest any ipod solutions or point me towards them. I do not own one anymore.


I also copied the itunes folder from the old comp and tried importing the itunes library xml file to the new laptop. No dice.

So since the actual music will not be moving, how do I accomplish this?