Itunes & Cd-rw/ Dvd-rom Drives, Yeh kya ho raha hain bhai...??? Options

[Talaikya]

Hi, Sorry to intrude. I presume there could be a simpler way of doing all this, if you have a software called 'Ipod access for windows'. With this you could connect any IPOD to any PC/Laptop, copy all the songs to Itunes, copy all the playlists, back up to your Itunes folder etc.

You are not intruding. Good to see others participating.

Ditto!!

Ok that's a whole lot of fodder for action, will look into all of it before I finally decide the route to take. However, if merely pointing the s/w to the external HDD and then in turn "Consolidating Library" to the Lappy works then that's my 1st choice, because no - all of my library isn't on the iPod, even though it's still under the 30GB size. (I should've waited for the 80GB eh? )

My older PC will be wiped clean only once the new system is in place.

iTunes is cool eh??

[deewani]

Nidhi had a fantastic idea there, I don't even consider that b/c of the size of my library. If your library will fit on the 30 gig, try that.

[Talaikya]

Ummmm goodness, you guys must be drowning in music... or better still... swimming!!

I would have considered Nidhi's idea, but for the fact I don't want the entire library on the iPod. It's just 30 GB, so I don't want to clutter it with multiple copies, unorganised and avoidable music.

Still if all else gets too messy, that will be the first option.

[HumTum]

Nidhi had a fantastic idea there, I don't even consider that b/c of the size of my library. If your library will fit on the 30 gig, try that.

I was indeed going to ask about this. It is indeed a catch 22 situation.

[deewani]

T, how about treading water? Lol, neither drowning nor swimming, right in between because it does not get entered into the library until I've listened to it and tagged it, and I don't mean jhalak, I mean really listen, lol, and that's where the iPod comes in. Always ahead in listening, behind in tagging.

HT you asking the size? LOL, the clues are on the pages of HF. Suffice it to say it won't fit on my 80GB.

[HumTum]

No sis, I am talking about wanting to take a backup of a huge sized library.

I am facing a similar problem - large no. of files in the library.

[deewani]

No sis, I am talking about wanting to take a backup of a huge sized library.

I am facing a similar problem - large no. of files in the library.

Well the back up in itself is really simple, what's the catch 22 situation? It went over my head. The more difficult part is retaining library settings depending on what software you use to organize the files on your pc, we were trying to maintain our precious playlists. External HD's have dropped much in price, sale prices often reach the 25 cents a GB mark here. DVDs come out to about 25 cents a piece too on a good sale, so that's about 6 cents a GB to back up but more tedious for larger collections.

[deewani]

iTunes 7.7 came out few days ago to support the new iPhones. Some folks are having trouble with the install hanging (thankfully not me). So if you want to be safe and make sure you don't lose your playlists and their settings, do a simple backup before updating (this back up feature was introduced with iTunes 7.0).

In iTunes, go to File --> Back Up To Disc, and you'll see this picture




Since I use an external drive to backup my music, I don't want to burn that to CD or DVD, so I just chose option number 2: "Back up only iTunes Store purchases" - this will work even if you have not bought anything from the iTunes Store. You will need only a CD in that case, if you've bought music, movies, tv shows, and games, you will likely need one or two DVDs, depending on the amount.

What this does is create a backup restore disc for your library and playlists, so even if your computer crashes, you can restore iTunes just the way you had set it up, along with the playlists that are so dear, just copy the music back to the same directories as before, launch iTunes, and insert the disc to start the backup process - I've used this several times over the last year, works like a charm.