How To: Back up your music using iTunes 7
iTunes 7 has really breathed some new life into that venerable jukebox software. One of the most useful new features is 'Back Up to Disc,' which is located under the 'File' menu of iTunes. This feature allows you to back up all your tracks to either CD or DVD.Sounds great, right? But is it easy? Yes, yes it is. Read on for a detailed step by step tutorial.
Once you click the 'Back up to disk..' option you get this window:

Notice that this offers you a few options:
- Back up your entire Library
- Back up only iTunes Store purchases
- Back up only items added or changed since last backup

Since I have about 3 gigs of iTunes Store purchases I inserted a DVD and got this:

Anyone who has burned a CD/DVD in iTunes will know these screens. Once everything checked out, it was on to initializing:

My disc successfully initialized, so the data was written to it:

Hey, that's my music! Finally, after about 15 minutes everything was in order and the burning began:

I was a little taken back by the hour estimate, but it only took about 10 minutes to burn. iTunes dutifully informed me that my backup was complete, ejected the disc, and even let me know how to restore (by inserting the disc into my computer). Worry not if your collection is larger than a single DVD or CD, iTunes will create a series of discs for you.

A backup isn't any good if you can't restore from it. Luckily, Apple knows this and the restore process is shockingly easy. Once you insert an iTunes backup disc into your computer a pop up window asks you if you want to restore from this backup. Notice it tells you when the backup was made.

The restore disc also shows up in the source menu in iTunes, as seen to the right. The disc is automatically named 'Backup' and then the date and time. This is a very nice touch, Apple. Is there anything they can't do?Finally, I was concerned that the 'restore disc' that iTunes produces would have some strange proprietary format that would only allow it to work with iTunes. The disc appeared on my desktop, so I took a look inside it to see what I could see.

As you can see, iTunes backs up your files in the familiar 'iTunes' directory structure. The best part is that there is no magic Apple format at work here, you can browse the files with the Finder as easy as you please. I salute you for this, Apple.
There you have it, a nice, simple way to back up your iTunes music. Now you don't have an excuse for not have an up to date back up.
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iTunes 7 has really breathed some new life into that venerable jukebox software. One of the most useful new features is 'Back Up to Disc,'...
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Is there a way to know in advance how many CD's or DVD's you would need for your backup? I tried creating a smart playlist with all the songs added or modified since the last backup, but iTune's own Backup feature evidently counts the files differently. Thus, for 8,49GB of files - as shown in my smart playlist - I had to use 2 DVD's, then two CD's and the backup process was not yet over. And last time I used one DVD and then on another one only about 10MB were burned. :-(
December 11 2006 at 7:05 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI want to back up my iTunes to a LACIE external drive. How do I do that? Will you email the answer to me, please.
Thanks,
CA
So has anyone confirmed whether or not this retains song rating, last played, and total count info? Also, what about those digital booklets that certain iTunes purchases come with but don't copy over to ipods?
October 26 2006 at 1:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyDo you need a DVD burner to do this?
October 23 2006 at 4:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyFYI...
Backup 3.1 will backup your iTunes to CD or HD.
Choose custom, Click the upper + for Quick Picks, choose iTunes Library, iTunes playlists and iTunes purchased music.
Add your target to the lower half and you're done.
Haven't tried it yet so I can't say if it's as slick as from within iTunes.
I inserted a blank DVD and nothing happened. Do I need a DVD burner in order to back up my music to a DVD?
October 21 2006 at 11:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHi,
I'm using iTunes version 7.01 and I just made a dozen backup DVD's. However, when I insert the first backup DVD into the drive to restore the files I don't get a "Would you like to restore from this backup disk menu/ Overwrite existing files" menu. What gives? Instead, I receive a refreshed listing of what is on a paticular DVD, but that is it. So how does one do a restore across all 12 DVDs? If one does not get that menu?
I'm Using Windows XP Pro SP2
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Greg
Does anyone know if the backup feature in iTunes does disc verification?
Thanks,
Vic
I back up my itunes library and it didn't take that long. The problem is that when I put the disk in I am getting an error that it cannot read the file. Nothing is coming up about being able to restore. Any suggestions?
September 27 2006 at 1:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe backup feature is still a bit too flaky for my liking. I've got approx 150Gb of music; iTunes took an hour just to prepare the backup, and by my calculation it would have taken about 35 DVDs and 7 hours to complete (that's a lot of sitting around disc-changing)!
In the end it didn't work as half-way through disc #5 it prompted me to insert a blank disc, and no end of disc changing would resume the writing.
In situations like this an external disk backup is the only solution.
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