Section 94. Back Up Your Music to CD or DVD


94. Back Up Your Music to CD or DVD

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

35 Create a Smart Playlist

52 Create an Audio CD from a Playlist

53 Customize CD Burning Options


SEE ALSO

96 Restore Your Music from Backup

97 Restore Your Music Library Database from a Backup Copy


One of the most straightforward ways to back up your music is using iTunes itself and choosing to burn a series of data CDs or DVDs of a selected playlist ; all you have to do is make a playlist of all the music in your library and then make sure that you have enough blank CDs or DVDs to hold all the files.

TIP

A recordable CD holds 650 or 700 MB of data; a recordable DVD holds 4.7 GB. Use the readout at the bottom of iTunes' Library view to see how big your music collection is and calculate how many blank discs you'll need to have handy.


You'll want to perform this backup task on a regular basis, at least once a monthand particularly after you go on a buying spree and add a lot of new tunes to your library. Although backing up your music library might eat up a lot of blank discsand cost you several dollars and a lot of time and clutter each time you do itno doubt you'll agree that the value of restoring a thousand dollars' worth of purchased music from your careful backups is abundantly worth the initial hassle.

NOTE

Backing up your song files (and other materials downloaded from the iTunes Music Store , such as digital booklets and music videos ) preserves all the info tags embedded in the files themselves but doesn't save external song data such as equalizer settings, start and end times, and the Date Added, My Rating, Last Played , and Play Count fields. It also doesn't save your playlists. To preserve this information, you must back up your iTunes Music Library file, as shown in step 5 of this task. Refer to 97 Restore Your Music Library Database from a Backup Copy for information on restoring your iTunes database file and the irreplaceable information in it.


1.
Open the Burning Preferences

Open the iTunes Preferences window (choose iTunes, Preferences on the Mac or Edit, Preferences in Windows). Click the Burning tab to display the options for burning discs.

Verify that your CD or DVD burner is recognized by iTunes as explained in 53 Customize CD Burning Options .

94. Back Up Your Music to CD or DVD


2.
Choose to Burn a Data CD or DVD

Enable the Data CD or DVD radio button. This option creates discs that contain all the files in the playlists you burn, not just MP3 files (as occurs if you select the MP3 CD option); the Data CD or DVD option burns copies of protected AAC files, QuickTime movies, Apple Lossless files, and everything else iTunes recognizes, and is intended primarily for backup purposes.

Click OK to close the Preferences window.

3.
Create a Smart Playlist Matching All Songs

As described in 35 Create a Smart Playlist , create a Smart Playlist with criteria chosen such that the playlist contains all the files in your iTunes Library . One easy way to do this is to disable the Match the following condition check box , enable the Limit to check box, and set the limit to a size larger than the total size of your iTunes Library . Choose an appropriate selected by setting, such as album or artist (this option helps you sort your burned CDs or DVDs in sequence).

Click OK to create the playlist; give it a suitable name such as Everything .

4.
Burn the Playlist to CDs or DVDs

Select the playlist in the Source pane of the iTunes' window and click the Burn Disc button in the upper-right corner of the window. In the same manner as described in 52 Create an Audio CD from a Playlist , iTunes automatically detects that the playlist is longer than can fit on a single disc, and asks whether you want to burn the entire playlist to multiple data discs or to cancel the burn process and trim the playlist down to fit on a single disc.

If you choose to burn the playlist to multiple discs, iTunes burns as many tracks as will fit onto the first disc, and then prompts you to insert another blank disc to continue. This process continues until all the tracks in the playlist have been burned onto discs. Be sure to label the discs appropriately so that you don't forget their sequence!

NOTE

The discs you burn are laid out with every file in a single flat folder at the top level of the disc, instead of organized into hierarchical folders as in the iTunes Music folder on your computer. This arrangement makes it possible for some players to read them sequentially. However, it's unlikely that such players will read DVDs, and none will play protected AAC files.

TIP

You might want to print a track listing of the playlist and mark which discs contain which set of songs; this list can be very helpful when you want to restore selected songs from the backup set. See 55 Print a CD Jewel Case Insert with Album Art for more information about printing track listings.

5.
Back Up Your iTunes Music Library File

Your music is now all backed up safelybut only your music files themselves, with their internal info tags; your playlists and external database information such as the Last Played and Play Count fields and your star ratings are not preserved. If you experience a hardware failure and have to restore your music, you won't get all your accumulated personalized data back if you stop now. To preserve this information, you must back up your iTunes Music Library file, found inside the iTunes folder inside My Music (in Windows) or in the Music folder (on the Mac).

NOTE

Refer to 96 Restore Your Music from Backup for information about restoring your music files and to 97 Restore Your Music Library Database from a Backup Copy for restoring your personalized information from a preserved iTunes Music Library file.


Insert a writable CD into your computer's CD drive. Choose to open a writable CD window for copying files to be burned. This option varies according to your operating system: In Windows, it's Open writable CD folder using Windows Explorer; on the Mac, it's Open Finder . (You might have to double-click the disc's icon to open its window.)

In a second Windows Explorer or Finder window, navigate into the iTunes folder in your My Music or Music folder. Select the iTunes 4 Music Library.itl and iTunes 4 Music Library.xml files and drag them into the writable CD window. When the files are copied , burn the CD by choosing File, Write these files to CD (in Windows) or by clicking the Burn button below the window's title bar or in the sidebar (on the Mac). The database files are burned to the disc. Eject the disc, label it, and store it along with your backup discs of the music files.

NOTES

The iTunes 4 Music Library.itl and iTunes 4 Music Library.xml files contain identical information and are updated simultaneously with every change you make. Technically, you need only one of these two files to restore your iTunes Library fully, but the files are quite small and there's no harm in preserving both. In Windows, you might have to turn off the Hide file extensions for known file types option (choose Tools, Folder Options and then click the View tab) to distinguish between the two files.

On the Mac, the iTunes 4 Music Library.itl file appears simply as iTunes 4 Music Library .




iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 152
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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