tunes - how to back 'em up?

[Airin]

So I'm loading up my itunes in anticipation to getting my ipod mini. I bought a bit of stuff off of itunes and downloaded some albums from Bittorent. So now I am thinking that as my virtual library grows, how am I gonna back it up. I like the idea of not having cd's lying around any more....but what if the computer does a 'nasty'...yikes, gonzo are all my hard gathered tunes!

[enjoisoad]

i use a portable harddrive (40gig)

other options include

-burn to cd's
-compress files then burn to cd's
-zip drive


and i'm tired but i'm sure there are other ways.

[skateORdie]

i burn my itunes music library to dvds. cds work well too. you need to locate your music folder, go to preferences and importing, there it will tell you where they are located. open that folder and drop the album folders into a burn program. another option is to copy the music folder to another hard drive if you have two. i like burning to backup music then if anything happens you can always put the music back.

[enjoisoad]

yea lemee strees compressing them tho. because thier backups you should just make it so u can store as many as possible per portable unit.

[WesE]

Airin, are you getting an iPod to use while skating? If you listen to it while skating, it will be problematic and eventually die from HD failure.

There is a new flash player coming from Apple in June. Nobody knows if it will just be an iShuffle with higher capacity or if it will be the iPod Mini with flash-memory replacing the HD, or even something else. You might want to hold off till then.

Anyways, to address your question: All solutions mentioned here have been good. I might be using an older version of iTunes than you but putting them on a CD should still be easy and go something like this:
1. Make sure you have "mp3" selected as your encoding choice (in your Preferences or whatever it's called on your version).
2. Make a playlist of all the music you want on the CD.
3. Make that playlist active and then press the "Burn" button.
4. Follow instructions (insert CD, give it a name, press the Burn button again, etc).
5. That's it. If you have "Play music while encoding" (or something like that) selected, make sure you stop the music before you eject the CD, otherwise it might crash (it does that on my version 2.0.4 of iTunes).

[idiotsavant]

another option is to switch your ipod to disk mode -- and copy your itunes library onto your ipod in that mode as well. it works just like a hard drive in disk mode. that way, if your computer goes crazy, you can always copy into onto another one. i did this when i moved and got a new comp.

downside to this, however, is that it requires twice as much memory. so, if you're using more than half your memory for songs, it prob won't work.

i always recommend keeping your cds, just in case.

[Kevin_Spencer]

for a "referance library"i say just do dvd burns. you get about 50 albums per dvd, and if using a dual layer disc that becomes 100 albums.

if you buy dvd's in bulk of 100 they work out to be about $1-2


simple math. harddrives are about a buck a gig, dvd's are about $0.30 a gig.

but if you want convenience and something more active, it would be alot faster and more efficent to just use a HD. besure to grab something atleast 160gigs though.


orrr you can wait for the blu-ray 54gig burners and discs to come out next year hopefully! hot damn!