backing up itunes music

[sammick]

Do you know how to back up itunes in case the hard drive crashes? I know the
music would still be on the ipod, but itunes won't let you share the contents
of different folders (legitimately). Officially you can only replace what's
already on the ipod. This matter scares me. We have 2000 pieces of music
recorded....

[Bancho]

Backup a copy of your music folder and you should be in good shape. I keep a backup on an external drive.

[KingOfSomewhereHot]

option 1 : drag your iTunes folder (probably in your Home > Music folder). to an external HD.

option 2 : use the Backup utility from Apple (maybe you have to be a .mac member to get that)... you can back it up to another HD, CD's, DVD's.

option 3 : I'm sure there are other utilities that would do this as well.

[Towel]

Is your iPod less than half full? If so, you can make it do double-duty as an external HD. Drag your iTunes Music folder to the iPod *in the Finder*. Anything you put on the iPod in the Finder can't be played as music on the iPod, but can be freely copied to other drives and/or computers. So you'd essentially be keeping two copies of your music on the iPod: one to listen to, and one as a data backup. Obviously, you can back up anything else you like to your iPod, as well.

Just keep in mind that all of your backups (with all of your sensitive data) are in a highly-portable, highly-sought-after device. Regular old external HDs not only have much high capacity, but are rather less likely to be stolen.

[sammick]

Thank you all for your help.