proper backup of my iTunes songs and imported CD's

[McPaul]

Alright, so apple let me redownload all of my lost iTunes (I had some computer problems last summer before I bought my external hard drive) and I've imported all my CD's, and am now wanting to back them up. Problem is, somehow I set the external hard drive as my main library source. So all of my files are now on the external hard drive and not on the computer.

Is there any special way I should backup my files .... TO my computer? so whenever I play a song, it plays it from the main computer?

or should I just drag the itunes library as is directly to the computer's hard drive?

I hope the question makes sense. Thanks.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

You should consolidate your library back to the main drive. The safest way is to follow this article to the letter.

 

[McPaul]

Excellent! Thank you. I did read about consolidating, but it gave that warning everytime I clicked on it so I feared something bad would happen.



so now when I buy more songs from iTunes, what would be the easiest way to back them up also to the external hard drive (Western Digital "My Book") everytime I buy something new? is there an automatic feature that does this? I know that whenever I buy albums there is a backup window that appears, but that only lets me backup to disk, if I recall correctly, and not hard drive.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

so now when I buy more songs from iTunes, what would be the easiest way to back them up also to the external hard drive (Western Digital "My Book") everytime I buy something new? is there an automatic feature that does this? I know that whenever I buy albums there is a backup window that appears, but that only lets me backup to disk, if I recall correctly, and not hard drive.

I don't buy that much from iTMS, so I don't have that "problem", but I do back up to an external: I use SuperDuper! to clone my MacBook's internal HD - including my iTunes library and folder - to an external disk. If you spend $27.95 to unlock SuperDuper! it will let you do incremental backups where only the last changes needs to be copied to the external (after that first, long, long cloning). The advantage is that this method also gives me a bootable backup of my system, so if my internal HD breaks down - which it actually did just before Christmas - then I can restore everything (and even boot from the clone to work on my files if I need to).

iTunes will only backup to CD/DVDs, as far as I know, unless you just use good old fashion drag'n'drop to drag your new purchases from the iTunes window to the external disk...

 

[ste6168]

Yeah, I just back my library up to dvds, itunes has a feature that lets you only back up new additions which is great (that way you dont have to look through and find what you have bought since last backup) for you though its kind of different as you want to backup to an external... IMO, this is not acceptable becuase HD's have the potential to crash anytime really. I keep my songs and videos on an external to keep the internal free. When i want to take music with me and the powerbook, I play it from my pod.

 

[Richard Flynn]

Is there any special way I should backup my files .... TO my computer? so whenever I play a song, it plays it from the main computer?

or should I just drag the itunes library as is directly to the computer's hard drive?

I hope the question makes sense. Thanks.

If I understand you correctly, your main library is on your external drive. When you import new songs from a CD, do they go onto the external drive, bypassing your internal drive?

If that's the case, it's pretty easy to deal with, especially since iTunes 7 allowed for multiple iTunes libraries (like iPhoto). First, if you've got the space and to be super sure, just duplicate your 'iTunes' folder on your external drive. Now, move the iTunes folder (in the Finder) from the external drive back onto your internal drive. If you want it standardized, move it to ~/Music/iTunes. Within that iTunes folder there should at least be an 'iTunes Music' folder, an 'iTunes Library.xml' file and an 'iTunes Library' file (strictly .itl but it probably won't show the extension).

If there is already an empty iTunes folder in your ~/Music directory (perhaps with the two 'iTunes Library' files and an EMPTY 'iTunes Music' folder), you can safely delete that folder before moving the iTunes folder from your external drive. If there is content in the library on the internal drive, then you need to look at consolidation as others have mentioned.

When you've moved the iTunes folder into ~/Music, start iTunes while holding down Alt (UK keyboard) / Option (US keyboard). Carry on holding that down while iTunes loads, and you should be presented with a box giving you the option of choosing your iTunes library. Navigate to ~/Music/iTunes, choose the 'iTunes library' file (not the .xml file) and iTunes should load, with all the content as it was on your external drive, but this time being accessed from your internal drive! To double check, do a 'Get Info' on a few items and check the path of the music files.