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airfang

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 12, 2007
169
0
Should I burn CD/DVDs to backup your music and TV shows from iTunes?

Or should I simply drag the itune music folder to external harddrives?

What's the difference between the two?
 
I do both. iTunes has a nice CD/DVD backup feature that tracks what you've backed up. So every so often, you can put in a blank disc and iTunes will back up any music you've added since the last backup.

And, of course, I back up my whole drive onto an external, so my whole library gets an extra backup there.

I recommend both, but at the very least, do the CD/DVD backup. It's cheap and easy.
 
If you use iTunes to backup your tracks on CD/DVD media, keep in mind that iTunes doesn't verify the discs after burning them, so you'll have to check manually that the content is readable to ensure all your data is safe.

If you want to be 100% sure, use a disc burning application that verifies the content after it has been burned, like Roxio Toast.
 
say all I want is to backup all the music from this MacBook Pro which is gonna be given to my old man, and restore them on a new machine that I am gonna buy when I come back to the States..

which way is more convenient?
 
say all I want is to backup all the music from this MacBook Pro which is gonna be given to my old man, and restore them on a new machine that I am gonna buy when I come back to the States..

which way is more convenient?

Depends on how large the library is. If it's 4GB or less, just create a burn folder and drag your iTunes library folder onto it, then burn it all on a DVD. That's probably the easiest way.
 
Depends on how large the library is. If it's 4GB or less, just create a burn folder and drag your iTunes library folder onto it, then burn it all on a DVD. That's probably the easiest way.

hmmm, just drag it onto an external harddrive wont be easier?
 
While on the topic.....

Where are movies stored that I have purchased through the ITMS? I want to back them up but I don't know where they are.
 
hmmm, just drag it onto an external harddrive wont be easier?

Yeah, forgot he had external drives.

Still, having a DVD backup isn't a bad idea, but it's not needed for what he's wanting to do right now.
 
Yeah, forgot he had external drives.

Still, having a DVD backup isn't a bad idea, but it's not needed for what he's wanting to do right now.

I would go for the DVDs. If your drive is of recent vintage and your media is decent, then I wouldn't worry about errors--especially for a backup.
 
I use a free program called ibackup I use my USB hard drive to backup up just about everything. But you can select just to backup your itunes library. Also, if you use this program, it retains the play counts and other stuff that can get lost!
 
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