I was getting myself all geared up to write a new iTunes related HowTo article for Download Squad about how to move your iTunes music and library data to a new machine. Apparently this is quite simple if you let iTunes manage your music library, but not so much for those of us that choose to wrest control of our library from iTunes and manage it ourselves.

I found myself reading through various articles online regarding how to do this, and was finding that the information was so scattered it would be worth writing up a HowTo myself. But then I found HowTo: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (when you don't let iTunes manage your music library) over on HiFi Blog. It turns out they've already written the post I was planning, and it's extremely well done. If this is a question that has been haunting you, click through to find out how it's done. It worked great for me (with iTunes 7.0.2.16, no less).