iTunes Files to back up

[atiwhs10]

Afternoon.

I'm utterly, utterly ignorant on this so if the questions are a little basic, sorry.

I'm running Leopard, have the latest iTunes and have an 250GB external hard drive and I wanted to back up all of my music.

Originally I just dragged and dropped the whole "Music" folder onto the ex. HD. (Finder window>Music>iTunes>iTunes Media>Music).

But within the iTunes folder was five other items named as, Album Artwork, iTunes Library (which says it's an iTunes database file), iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb and iTunes Music Library.xml. And I've since put them all onto the ex. HD.

My question is are those four files (Album Artwork speaks for itself I suppose) something that should definitely be backed up as a necessity?

And just to follow up on that when I add more music in the future should I just drag and drop the specific new album(s) on or do I need to add those four files again?

Not put as well as I'd like but hopefully someone understands.

 

[spinnerlys]

If you want to keep your ratings, playlists and artwork, copy the iTunes folder, it should be less than 1GB anyway.

Once you copy it back and start to use it, iTunes will see the music on the external drive unless you have changed that too.

http://hintsforums.macworld.com/archive/index.php/t-83269.html

 

[mstrze]

In the days pre-Time Machine, I always pulled over the entire contents of the iTunes Library folder which contains everything you need.

In your case, it would be the full contents of the:

Finder window>Music>iTunes>

folder


If you have no videos, the additional size will not affect you too much as spinnerlys says...and you'll keep all the iTunes functionality.

 

[atiwhs10]

Thanks for your replies.

In the days pre-Time Machine, I always pulled over the entire contents of the iTunes Library folder which contains everything you need.

What did you do every time you downloaded a new album onto iTunes, just locate it and drag it over?

 

[mstrze]

Thanks for your replies.
What did you do every time you downloaded a new album onto iTunes, just locate it and drag it over?

I probably updated every months or so...just dragged the folder over again.

You should really look into using Time Machine....even if it's just to back up that one folder (iTunes). Makes things much easier. I don't even think about it now and I have backups made every hour of my complete system.