Q: My computer had a virus so I saved everything on an external hard drive, including all my iTunes music. I then had it wiped clean of everything including Vista. Now I have my computer back and Vista was reinstalled. Everything is running fine, but my problem is I have no idea how to put all my music back into iTunes. I still have my music saved on the external hardrive as well as on my 80 GB iPod classic but I want to change my playlists and add more music to my iPod now. How do I do this?
– Janelle
A: Assuming that you backed everything up onto the external hard drive with its original file and directory structure intact, then all you should need to do is simply find the “iTunes” folder from your “Music” folder on the external hard drive and copy this entire folder back to the corresponding “Music” folder on your C: drive. The iTunes folder under “Music” contains your iTunes library database and all of your actual media files, and your home folder’s “Music” folder is where iTunes itself will look for your iTunes library by default.
For more information check out our tutorial on Transferring your iTunes Library