[GetGo]

I am making alot of changes to my mp3's in iTunes., you know changing tag names of songs artist and so on. I would like to back this file up. What file is it? I go into my music then iTunes but there is a file called Library and iTunes music. Which one of these hold all the changes I made to the tags?

[Peter]

You would be smart to back up the entire iTunes folder. The iTunes Library is your data file. iTunes Music holds the actual music files.

[gyroscope4]

the tag information for each song is stored in the mp3 file for each song. so you'll have to back up the whole itunes folder.

[Happycat]

My entire iTunes folder is too big for a CD-RW. Can I back-up just purchased music or other designated categories?

[ftaok]

In reply to:

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My entire iTunes folder is too big for a CD-RW. Can I back-up just purchased music or other designated categories?

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Yes you can.
The easiest way to back up your purchased music is to burn the "Purchased Music" smart playlist as a Data CD.
You can also set up smart playlists (or regular ones as well) and burn those too.

[Happycat]

Thanks for the fast response. But I think I'm doing something wrong. I tried doing what I think you advised and was surprised to find that my 160 purchased songs, which take up 643.7 MB, would not fit on my 700 MB CD-RW. As I recall, the dialogue box said I could fit only 17 songs on the CD. Could that be right?
What I did: go into iTunes, highlight the Purchased Music folder, go to File, chose Burn Playlist to Disk, and followed directions after that. The CD-RW was brand new.
Any further advice would be much appreciated.

[Duke_Thomas]

Well, if you can fit only 17 songs, you're trying to burn the list as an audio CD. Ftaok said data CD. In Preferences, under Burning, select the disc format as Data CD.

[sjbartnik]

You probably have iTunes set to burn an audio CD. Go into your iTunes Preferences, go to the Burning tab, and set it to "data CD."
That way it will back up the raw files and not convert them to audio CD format first (which is why you would only be able to fit 17-20 on a CD).
BTW, iTunes does have the capability to spread a playlist across multiple CDs. So if you wanted to back up your entire library, you could just create a playlist with all songs, then burn it (as a data CD). iTunes will notify you that the playlist will not fit on one CD and will ask you if you wish to spread the playlist across multiple CDs. Say yes, and iTunes will burn a CD, then prompt you to insert more CDs as needed.

[Happycat]

Thanks. As you could tell I was new to all this, and now you have me on track. Following your advice, I've just backed up my purchased music as a data CD onto a CD-RW. A few follow-on questions:
iTunes Help, in the section on creating audio CDs, says you can burn songs purchased from the Music Store only ten times. The Help section on backing up a data CD does not mention the 10-times limit. Does that limit also apply to backing up as a data CD? My plan was to back up the purchased music playlist maybe once a month in case I ever lost the purchased music on the computer. If I can backup the data only 10 times, then I will need to distinguish newer purchases. Can the purchased music playlist be arranged by date of purchase? Finally and most fundamentally, can I import from the data CD back into iTunes should I have to do so? Is anything lost in the process?

[ftaok]

Regarding the 10 burn limit.
You are restricted to burning a playlist 10 times. Once you hit 10, you have to change the playlist. It could be as simple as shuffling the order.
I'm not sure if burning a data CD constitutes a "burn" against the 10.
But in any case, you'd be OK, since you would only back up when you've purchased more songs. Therefore, your playlist would have changed.
Personally, I'd only do incremental back-ups. Make a smart playlist and filter for .m4p files after a certain date (i.e. last back-up date).