Backing Up Your IPod Music Library

If you're like me, your IPOD and or iTunes collection of music can become your life. All of your favorite songs in one spot, sometimes hundreds or thousands of MP3's to keep track of. And, if you're like me you become obssessed with making sure that music stays safe. I have had the misfortune of using my IPOD on a MAC then plugging it into a PC, and losing all contents on the iPOD by clicking the wrong "pop-up" choice. But there are some good ways to backup your collection, whether you use a Macintosh or PC.

Here's how to keep your iPOD/iTunes music alive:

1 - Use a program to copy songs off your ipod.
Try "CopyPod" if you have a PC, and "Senuti" if you are a MAC user. These are 2 programs which will output the songs off your ipod to your computer. Copypod is free to try for 14 days, then requires you buy to register. It will detect an IPOD plugged into your computer and list out all songs, then allowing you to choose all the songs, certain playlist, search by artist. From there you can ask CopyPod to back up all the songs off your iPOD to a folder on your computer. It also allows you to import all songs off your iPOD into your itunes library if you'd prefer.

Senuti is the MAC user's alternative. It has a less organized output of the music off an IPOD but for free you cant complain much. Both of these programs are great for pulling the songs off your iPOD and storing them in a folder for backup to a hard drive, CD-R or DVD-R.

2-Back up your itunes library folder as often as you like.
It's a good idea to take and copy that iTunes music folder which is usually found in your "My Documents" and then "My Music" folder on your computer. You may want to be extra careful and have 1 copy of the itunes folder on your personal computer and then on a backup external harddrive, and on some DVD-R's. That keeps your music available in 4 places (computer, iPod, external drive & DVD-R) This ensures, if your IPOD goes down ,or your computer crashes, that your music is still safe somewhere and you would lose very little in terms of songs. Or if you prefer, and use Copypod for example, you could choose to backup all songs on your IPOD to a folder (on your computer or a external drive, etc) every so often. CopyPod has the nice feature of creating a special ".xml" file with your songs that you can use to reimport them all into itunes and recover your playlists as well.

So before a disaster strikes your personal computer or iPod device, you probably want to try the above tips. if you want to keep your tunes, even admist any unexpected technological difficulties..