iPod Re-installing OSX Tiger, how to deautorize and authorize?

Aj2488 said:

I'm going to be reinstalling Tiger on my MBP in a day or two and need to know how this works so I do not lose any of my iTunes music. If I move all of my music to an external harddrive after deauthorizinng my iTunes account first, can I then authorize the music on the same MBP after reinstalling the OS (and transferring the music back via the external HD obviously)?

Is there a simpler way to do this? I can't afford to lose one of my 5 machines to play the music on.

Thanks for any help, I hope this all makes sense.

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That should work. I reinstalled Leopard on my old mini when I turned it into an HTPC and forgot to de-authorize iTunes. When I logged into the iTunes store after finishing the rebuild it was still authorized. So on Macs at least it seems to pick the iTunes ID directly from the hardware (serial number maybe?) so that the same machine will get the same iTunes ID after reinstalling the OS. Not that I recommend doing it that way, but at least you don't have to email apple and ask them to de-authorize all of your machines to clear out the one that is no longer around (which you can only do once per year).

I don't think the order in which you transfer/de-authorize/authorize matters, the DRM for your account is embedded into the music files.

You can copy/transfer and then de-authorize, or vice versa. Once you authorize again, I am pretty sure you will be able to play your music again.