Transfer iPhone and iTunes data from old harddrive

[methos65]

Hello.
I use Win XP SP3. Recently my harddrive went "bad" and stopped booting up. I bought a new drive, installed the OS and iTunes and set the old one as a slave. I can see all the data on the old drive but after much searching on the 'net, I'm still confused as to exactly how to 1) transfer the iPhone backups for me and my wife so we can sync with the new drive and 2) transfer all our music over.

We don't care about playlists and play history. We're fine with syncing music to our phones from scratch. We just don't want to lose some of our iTunes store music purchases/downloads.

I was wondering...could we sync our phones to the new drive without losing our apps and other data? If that's the case, then the resolution is easy. Sync both phones and move the music over from the old drive.

Any help/guidance is appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[methos65]

Ok. I finally figured it out. After installing iTunes on the new drive, and backing up my iPhone on the new installation (not sync...backup) it's as simple as replacing the iTunes folder on the new drive with the iTunes folder from my old hard drive. There were a few exceptions of some things that were referenced in other folders (a couple ringtones and songs) and it didn't sync a few songs it couldn't find. But all other phone data synced beautifully.

 

[acosmichippo]

For future reference, this thread addresses most of your issues: http://forums.everythingicafe.com/threads/syncing-your-ipod-iphone-to-a-new-itunes-library-look-here-first.37178/

 

[Europa]

Glad to hear you got it figured out. I have link with directions, but I didn't notice this thread yesterday.

EDIT: Yep, that's the link in the above post.