J River Media Center 19

Do you know how to copy files on to a USB flash drive or an SD card like many cameras use? Do you have a USB cable that you can attach to both computers and copy the files from one to the other?

Maybe you have a friend or family member that could help you. Maybe a grandchild if you are older and not tech savvy.

Put all the music files on a separate outboard HD and name the drive "Music."

You direct JRiver to use file name "Music" as the file source. This outboard drive can be unplugged from your current computer and plugged into another computer as if it were flash drive. Options are FireWire, USB and Thunderbolt to link the two.

I used two Hitachi Desk Star 4 TB drives in a Oyen Digital twin bay outboard housing. Mac or Win see this as a single 8 TB drive. If you require less space the answer is the same, just smaller or fewer drives.

Once the music is on this outboard drive it can work with JRiver or other playback software and can be attached to any computer that reads the files.

I chose FLAC since it's Win friendly and works great with my Mac Mini with JRiver.

You need to copy the files over and also copy over a backup of the library so you do not have to do your setup all over again.

If both computers are on the same network, you can just copy the music files (flac, wav, mps, etc.) from one computer to the other, e.g. using Windows Explorer on a Windows system. From the new computer, just look under Network in Explorer to find the other computer. Just copy the whole music file from the old computer to the new one. You will have to allow sharing on the directory the files are being copied from on the old computer. The copy may take some time depending on how many files your have, but it is very straightforward. If you can plug them both into your router the copy will be much faster than over WiFi. If possible put them in a folder of the same name as on the original computer

Alternatively, you can transfer the files from the original computer to a USB disk drive and move that drive to the new computer. Again, if you can use the same path name (device, folder) it will make the setup easier.

To move your J RIver library to a new computer, do a backup from within J River (File - Library - Back Up). Put that file in a directory you can find. Then copy that file to you new computer, and do a Library Restore from within J River. That will copy all you tags, settings etc. to the new computer. If you can use he same directory for the music files on your new computer as on your old one, everything should just work. You can move the backup file to the new computer over the network or with a USB drive, just like you did the music files.

If you have a different directory on the new computer you can use Tools - Library Tools - Rename, Move & Copy - Find and Replace to change the path. If you do the Find and Replace, I would suggest trying it on an album or two first, before doing the whole library.

Any questions, please ask. I do it fairly often.

Thanks, you have been very helpful.

This has changed in 19.

"If you have a different directory on the new computer you can use Tools - Library Tools - Rename, Move & Copy - Find and Replace to change the path. If you do the Find and Replace, I would suggest trying it on an album or two first, before doing the whole library."

It's similar but you can't do a Find & Replace on Filename field any longer; just make sure you use Update Location (as opposed to Copy, Rename, etc.)

cheers!