HELP!!! Backing Up ITunes To External Hardrive

[Ipod757]

Please I need some feedback! I have 23 gigs of music and I just bought a 500 gig external hardrive. I want to copy/back up my iTunes music because I cherish it and it's hard work looking for songs. I kno iTunes has the cd/DVD back up option but with an external hardrive I was wondering could I copy (as in make copies of the songs to the ex. Hardrive) my songs to the external hardrive as back up and still have ALL the original songs on my original computer. So instead of me havin the songs on the external hardrive and having to plug it in everytime I want to update my songs and so on,just have it and (cd/DVD) as back up just in case

[Jesse Hollington]

Hi and welcome to iLounge.

This is actually about as simple as just copying your entire "iTunes" folder to the external hard drive. You can use third-party backup software to do this or you can just drag-and-drop it all over via Windows Explorer.

Assuming your iTunes Media folder is in its default location and you've copied all of your music into that folder when you added it to iTunes, the "iTunes" folder will contain everything you need to backup. If your music and other media files are outside your iTunes folder then you'll need to find those and back them up separately. Alternatively, you can "Consolidate" your media files into the iTunes Media folder so that they're all in one place and easy to backup.

For further detailed reading on the subject, check out our articles on Transferring your iTunes Library and Backing up your iTunes Library.

[Ipod757]

Thanks. And will I still have the original files on the computer ,even tho they were copies to the external hardrive ... Meaning I don't have to plug in my ex. Just to update my ipod

[Jesse Hollington]

As long as you back them up outside of iTunes, yes. The steps described in the "Trnasferring" article regarding changing the media folder path to the external hard drive and using the "Consolidate" function are only if you plan to move your iTunes library to the external hard drive. Even then, the original files remain on your computer, but iTunes will update all of the paths to the new location.