Hold my hand for migrating to portable

[drewmacdonald]

I am a longtime MM user about to embark on a long-held dream to move my Media Monkey music library (now on my PC hard drive) to a portable SSD that I can plug into my laptop and move back and forth from whatever PC I care to use. My main fear is losing my playlists, user-created tags and other info that doesn't live on the file metadata. I've spent years curating this library and my computer incompetence has burned me before.

I have scoured the MMW forums as well as the general online hivemind trying to make sure I do this right. However, because some of the online advice turned out to be outdated and/or outright contradictory, I'm seeking a final review of my plans before I pull the trigger. Can somebody confirm my plan of action?

I've been using a standard nonportable PC hard drive version of MMW, Version 5 (2024.2.2.3222) under a lifetime Gold license. The music files themselves are fed from an older, slower external drive I intend to get rid of. I have laboriously copied my entire (massive) music collection from the old drive onto the new SSD, maintaining the identical Windows folder structure. At the moment, the new drive has nothing else on it other than the music files and an empty folder I made called ""MM Portable" (se below). I then Rescanned my current PC tracks via the Folders tree to ensure e the database was up to date before I get started, and then confirmed my playlists and user-created tags are indeed intact.

Now here are the steps I am planning to take:

1) find the MM5.DB file on my PC and copy it onto the SSD into the MM Portable folder.

2) Unmount the SSD from my PC and plug it into my laptop.

2) From the laptop, go to the MM site and download MM5 directly onto the SSD, into the same MM Portable folder I created earlier.

3) Run the MM5 installer, being careful to choose the Portable option.

4) Open this MM5 copy for the first time. Activate my Gold license. Run Add/Rescan to link the SSD music files into the new MM library. (I know this will take a bit of time, but the new drive and ports are much faster.)

5) And then --I fervently hope-- I will have a fresh new copy of my Music Library, with my playlists and user-created tags all intact and linked to the correct music files. I'll be able to move that drive from machine to machine without conflict.

6) Once I confirm the portable MM is working just fine on the laptop, I will unmount the old slow drive from my PC and uninstall that copy of MM to avoid conflict when I remount the SSD onto my PC.

Anybody see any red flags? Some older forum entries suggest I should also move or edit other MM files (MediaMonkey.ini, persistent.json, MetadataCache) but apparently that is no longer required with a Gold MM5 setup? Same with identifying a drive letter and manually identifying file paths--supposedly that isn't necessary anymore because that will happen automatically during the Rescan? I'm just not clear on this, hence this post.

Thanks in advance for any reassurance you can offer. I'm anxious to get started. Thanks all.

Drew

[Lowlander]

No to step 4, no rescanning. You need re-assign drive instead.

See: https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index. ... w_computer

[drewmacdonald]

And that is why I came here. I'm away from home tonight, but will get at this early this week. Thank you, Lowlander.

[drewmacdonald]

I'm sorry to report that exactly what I feared has come to pass.

As described in Steps 1 to 3 above, I connected my laptop to my new SSD, which contained all my music folders and the copy of the MM5.DB file from my PC. The drive was recognized and assigned a letter of D: I downloaded a new copy of MMW onto that same SSD. I ran the installer in Portable mode. I opened MM and registered my Gold license.

Then, in accordance with your hotlinked advice for Manually Re-assign Drive , I found the new D: drive in the Media Tree (via Entire Library > Location, not the suggested Collection > Location; I use Media Monkey exclusively for music and have never configured any Collections).

I right-clicked on the drive icon and selected Media Properties. In that window, I changed the Label to T9 (the drive's name) and confirmed the Location as D:

I was encouraged to see the new MM had all my subfolders correctly listed under the Location node.

But nothing got relinked. My playlists and user-created tags were gone. All of them. Also, none of the tracks would actually play. They were greyed out and identified as inaccessible.

Then MM crashed, accompanied by an Application Error window citing "External exception C0000006."

I restarted the program, but it soon crashed again. This one was a stream read error.

I tried to restart again, but got an Application Error saying it was unable to start correctly. (0xc0000006)

So I gave up and started this post. Right now, I'm back where I started. The MM version that has my playlists is trapped on my PC, being fed from my old slow external drive. My new fast drive has copies of all my music files, but without playlists and without (so far) a working copy of the MM software to listen to them with.

And since I've been writing this, a new window popped up saying "This file does not have an app associated with it for performing this action. Please install an app, or if one is already installed, create an association in the Default Apps Settings Page." I have not idea what this is referring to, since I am not trying to perform any actions. This same window has since appeared four times, stacking on top of each other.

I'm open to other suggestions to portabilize my collection, but if I have to give up that idea and stick with the PC only , I would at least like to feed my desktop MM from the new fast drive. Please point to a reliable method of connecting those SSD files to my existing playlists. In the meantime, I will (try to) delete any trace of these failed MM installs from the SSD before reconnecting it to my desktop, to avoid any conflicts with my correctly-working desktop MM. (Windows uninstaller does not see the program on the SSD; presumably because it's a portable installation?)


Drew

[Lowlander]

If you're playlists are gone, you probably didn't use the correct database file from your old install.

If Playlists are empty, you probably deleted files from the Library.

So:
1. Do your Portable Install (already done)
2. Copy the correct MediaMonkey database file to the correct location in the portable install.
3. Run the Portable Install and verify Playlists are as you expect, if not, you got the wrong database file (files should show on Playlists, but won't play yet).
4a. Use re-assign drive to set from the current drive to the new drive (if paths on drive remain the same)
4b. If not use Locate Moved/Missing Files instead.
5. Files should now work, playlists should work

[drewmacdonald]

I got the MM5.DB from the exact location laid out in your linked instructions, and I placed it (replaced it to be precise) in exactly the location specified. And as far as I can determine, I deleted no files from the Library at any time.

Nonetheless, I tried the process again, and it again failed to result in a portable MM with the same files and same playlists that I could move from machine to machine.

But so be it. I need to get back to my life, so I am abandoning this effort. Thank you nonetheless. I can live without portability, especially since my Media Monkey Android already lets me access a decent chunk of my music collection when I'm away from my desktop.

[Lowlander]

Last Modified should give a clue if it's the right database.