PC Doctor October 13, 2017

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Dear PC Doctor:

My daughter just went off to college and has her first computer. When she ordered her laptop, she never thought to check if it came with CD/DVD drive; it didn’t! She had hoped to load all of her music (that she has collected on CDs) into her iTunes on the new computer. She had loaded all her CDs onto the family computer but didn’t back up her iTunes to her phone or to iCloud. We are in different locations and won’t see one another for awhile. Is there an easy way to give her access to her music?

Thank you,

Mom

Dear Mom:

If your daughter has never created a digital music collection on an old computer (you said this was her first) by importing music from CDs into iTunes, she may need to purchase an external CD player that plugs into the new computer’s USB port. They should be available at any electronics store or big box retailer. Then, she can bring her computer home on her next visit and load all the CDs onto the new computer.

Alternatively, if you did have an old family computer onto which she loaded her CDs into iTunes or added music purchased digitally, you can copy all her music files to an external hard drive and then she can plug that into her new computer and copy the songs into her new iTunes.

However, it sounds like you won’t see one another for a while, and so these methods may not be convenient. Here’s something you can do while you’re both still in different locations. It requires you both having a Google account, which you can create for free.

Sign into your Google account. On your drive, create a separate folder for music files. Find out which music your daughter wants. Drag and drop those music files into the folder on your Google drive. Share the folder with your daughter. She can then import those music files to iTunes on her new computer as long as she has internet access. Remember, this is only legal because she paid for the initial purchases of the CDs or digital music files. It wouldn’t be legal to give these songs to someone else.

Until next time,
Happy computing!

PC Doctor