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.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
9-12-2006 @ 7:55PM
Eric Allen said...
What about if your collection is larger than a single DVD? Can it burn a series of discs?
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9-12-2006 @ 7:56PM
Scott McNulty said...
Yes, yes it can. I should point that out in the post.
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9-12-2006 @ 8:10PM
Augie De Blieck Jr. said...
From the article: "Worry not if your collection is larger than a single DVD or CD, iTunes will create a series of discs for you."
I just downloaded the new Barenaked Ladies double album from the iTunes Store. After it finished, instead of the usual reminder to back up my purchased music, iTunes asked me if I wanted to back it up to disc. I threw in a DVD-RW, and away we went. Pretty cool!
It's in progress right now, so I don't know if I'll need a second disc or not. I don't think I've bought enough to fill up past a 4 Gig DVD. . .
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9-12-2006 @ 8:10PM
Steven Travers said...
Good post, but I think many, many people would need more than a dozen or two DVDs. A better bet would be www.mp3tunes.com -- automatic backup of alllll your music, no matter how large your library, for just $40 per year. And browse and stream your entire library from any web connection, such as from work. Sold.
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9-12-2006 @ 8:20PM
Cocomo said...
Worked out how to do multiple libraries yet?
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9-12-2006 @ 8:21PM
Thayne Miller said...
does this backup movies and tv shows too, or just your music?
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9-12-2006 @ 8:35PM
Scott McNulty said...
It backs up everything, Thanye, movies and tv shows included.
Cocomo, I don't have multiple libraries, so I have no pointers for that. :(
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9-12-2006 @ 8:37PM
D.J. said...
My initial, and continuing gripe is a lack of options with this feature. While the addition of a backup option is incredibly awesome, there or those of us *points to self* that actually have an external drive as a dedicated backup device. I'd love the option to choose not to backup to CD, but instead to be able to auto-backup to that external drive when I have it connected. Perhaps beggers can't be choosers, but I dunno.. given the wizardry of the "backup to disc" option, it dosen't seem as though it'd be too tough to implement an auto-backup to an external drive.
Crap.. that was it... those were my last two cents. How am I gonnta get that iTV Tube Air Port Flying Magic Movie Machine now?
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9-12-2006 @ 8:41PM
gizo said...
Or, the option to 'backup to external device'. That would be sweet.
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9-12-2006 @ 8:48PM
Bassam said...
Can you choose what to backup, or is it all or nothing?
I have a ton of podcasts and video podcasts that I prefer not to back up, since they alone accound for like 2.5 GB of data. It'd be great of we could make exclusions for backup.
Also, does it remember comments, star ratings, and number of times played?
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9-12-2006 @ 8:52PM
Andrew Childress said...
Can you Digg it?
http://digg.com/apple/Walkthrough_iTunes_7_s_big_new_features
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9-12-2006 @ 9:01PM
Stephen Macklin said...
Can you use your backup set to transfer your iTunes files to another computer or is it tied to the system that created it?
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9-12-2006 @ 9:29PM
LEA said...
I just upgraded to iTunes 7.0 and all my library is damage. We are talking about songs I have on CDs, from iTunes store, podcast .... everything ... it is like the volume is super-high, super fast, barely understandable.
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9-12-2006 @ 10:22PM
LEA said...
OK .. so it is not iTunes but a quicktime setting that has a conflict (not previously) with my current setup. I will be doing a backup of my library now!
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9-12-2006 @ 10:31PM
eugene said...
This is indeed hot..
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9-12-2006 @ 10:35PM
Victor Agreda Jr said...
KV 551 eh? You, sir, are a party animal ;)
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9-12-2006 @ 11:33PM
Brian said...
I am curious too if this includes a backup of the library file as well, anyone tried this out?
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9-12-2006 @ 11:38PM
G. Curt Fiedler said...
Ummm.... waste of time. Who wants to sit around and insert CDs all day to back up their 30GB library?
This backup feature would be TRULY useful if it could back up to an attached external device like a hard drive, and do incremental backups.
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9-13-2006 @ 12:15AM
Michael said...
Apple's Backup already has a setting to back up all purchased iTunes content to a hard drive, which is a better option for hard drive back-ups anyway because you can automate it.
Maybe in a year or so we will be getting blue-ray data drives at a reasonable price to actually back up on one optical disc.
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9-13-2006 @ 12:22AM
narco said...
What about when you backup your entire library to DVD, but then in a couple months you have an additional 4 gigs worth of music to backup. Will it backup all the new items? Will it tell you when you have a new DVD worth of backup material so that you can burn a new disc? If not, it should.
Fishes,
narco.
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