There's also iTunes Match for your Music and iTunes in the Cloud for your purchased content. Other than that, an external HD or TimeMachine will have to do. Most of the tagging is saved as metadata in the files themselves, so that will be retained even after copying to an external drive and back. Some info, however, such as play counts, ratings, and the media type (e.g. if you've tagged mp3 files as audiobooks), is not stored in the file themselves. This info is stored in an iTunes database, I believe in the "iTunes Library.rtl" file. So as long as you save this file on your external disc as well, you should be fine.
I will, however, qualify all this by saying I've always found backing up and moving iTunes Library's to be a pain in the backside, and the one time I tried to do just that it didn't work well at all, though it was a long time ago before I knew what I know now. One of the most annoying things was that all my audiobooks became music again, and I had to go back through them all and re-tag them as audiobooks. So hopefully a certified iTunes expert like Esther or Tim will jump in and provide a better and more authoritative explanation. There's also plenty of Macworld and TidBits articles on this topic, so Google should be able to help you out as well. Cheers, Nic On 23 Dec 2013, at 6:42 am, Kliphton ------- <[email protected]> wrote: > 1. if you purchased apps in the Mac App Store, then you have nothing to worry > about, you can just redownload them when your restore is finished. > 2. If you have 3rd party apps, save your activations and most recent version > of them on a usb hard or thumb drive. > 3. as for your iTunes library. You should save it to an external hard > drive. That way you can copy the content back to your mac once the clean > install is done. > Hope this helps. > > Kliphton > ~iMessage&Email~ [email protected] > ~Twitter,Instagram,Foursquare&Skype~ kliphton72 > (Text only) 914-820-2298 > (Personal blog-Read at your own risk) http://kliphskorner.wordpress.com > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Dec 22, 2013, at 9:17 AM, "Alex Hall" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hello all, >> Ever since Mavericks, I have had the following problems which others don't >> seem to have: >> 1. Speech is choppy and pauses randomly. This is not all the time, but often >> enough to be annoying. >> 2. Apps take up to thirty seconds to launch. >> 3. The system just feels sluggish overall. >> >> Am I alone in these? If so, would a clean install help matters? What can I >> do to help the restoration process after the install? I have both Crashplan >> and a local Time Machine backup, so I can get my personal files back. My >> question is more about apps and settings. For instance, how could I restore >> my iTunes library, which I spent days manually tagging, or the >> customizations I've made in apps like Key Remap, or my saved bookmarks in >> Safari, and so forth? I know that the Mac does not use a Windows-style >> registry, so restoring will not be as tedious as it would be on Windows, but >> I've never done this before. If I should give it a try, what should I know >> before I begin? >> >> >> Have a great day, >> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) >> [email protected] >> >> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
