How to Backup Your Itunes Library with an External Hard Drive

If you bought your music legally then good for you. If you did it on iTunes and not on Amazon then you got DRM (Digital Rights Management) encrypted files and they can be a pain in the butt to get to play on other computers.

So, what happens if by some fraction of a chance, lets just say, hypothetically, you might, loose your ipod, or maybe . . . buy a new computer in the next few years. How are you going to get all that music over to your new computer?

Well in this article I will show you how to do just that using basic hard drive recovery methods. We are going to use an external device to transport your iTunes library.

Things You'll Need

• Your computer with your iTunes collection.
• An external hard drive.

Instructions

1. Connect your external hard drive.

2. Go to Documents & Settings -> My Music and copy the entire iTunes folder. This will also contain the library itl and xml files.

3. Now go into you external Hard Drive, and create a new folder that says something like "iTunes Backup". Open that folder, and past your copied iTunes folder into it. This might take a while depending how much music you have.

4. You have now backed up your iTunes library. You are now free to move it to another computer, and import it into another copy of iTunes.

Tips & Warnings

• iTunes offers a wizard for burning "Data CDs". This might be more practicle if a) you have a burner and b) you can fit your collection on a 700MB disk.

• Be sure to copy the ENTIRE folder, You need those library xml files. Simply right click on the folder itself and hit COPY.

• Hard drive recovery can take a while, also be sure to get a hard drive big enough.

Resources

• The Help Key