iTunes Back Up to Disc

October 22, 2006 / Filed under: iTunes, Storage

iTunes 7 new menu option, Back Up to Disc, works really well:

Screen shot of iTunes application

I was able to backup my entire music collection (currently 4889 songs, 23.44 GB) to six DVD-R's. With the price of DVD-R's being so cheap, this was a very easy decision.

iTunes makes the process as smooth as possible, considering it had to "break up" my music library to store on multiple discs. iTunes simply prompted me for each consecutive disc, as it completed burning the previous. All I had to do, each time, was pop-in a new disc, and it took care of everything.

Overall, the process took a few hours, but I blame that partially on my old Mac - it's a bit slower than normal.

Now I just need to do the same thing for my photos.

Comments/Mentions

# Dave G at 2/8/2007 9:01 am cst

I am having a major problem backing up my itunes. iTunes won't continue burning the backup disks after the first disk is done. It prompts me to put in another disk, but after it says it's checking media... it just kicks the blank disk and I am dead in the water. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? I am using top end Memorex 8.5 gig DL DVD disks and I'm ready to pull my hair out when I waste a perfectly good disk after the burn stops with one disk.

# Matthom at 2/8/2007 11:45 am cst

I've had issues with blank DVD's before - sometimes they can't be read, and OS X just kicks it out, like you mentioned. This didn't happen when I was backing up my iTunes library though, thankfully.

I don't know why this happens, because the DVD is straight out of the package - brand new.

# Paul at 4/6/2007 1:32 pm cst

Too bad iTunes won't restore the music on the backup discs.

I have iTunes 7, and I backed up to DVDs. In Windows Explorer, I can see the songs in the folders, but iTunes won't import them back into iTunes.

Its ridiculous.

# Matthom at 4/7/2007 12:53 am cst

Paul, you're just choosing File > Add to Library? It seems iTunes should be able to load songs from any connected media or disk. I wonder why it is having trouble with DVD's...

# Anthony at 4/7/2007 5:29 pm cst

I'm having the same problem. It looks like a lot of people are having this problem with iTunes 7. I Haven't found a solution yet.

# David Lyon at 5/11/2007 2:28 am cst

My problem with i-Tunes backup is that it is only looking at my CDRW drive and won't look at my DVD RW drive - I can't seem to point it ot the correct one - any ideas

David

# meme at 7/27/2007 2:11 pm cst

David, try going into preferences, advanced and selecting your second (DVDRW) drive.

# Mark Pipkin at 6/16/2009 10:59 pm cst

I was having the same problem. I have Slysoft AnyDVD software installed that automatically scans any disk that is put into the machine. I turn this off and Itunes accepts more than one disk

# aaron at 10/29/2009 9:07 am cst

I was having the same problem. I have Slysoft AnyDVD software installed that automatically scans any disk that is put into the machine. I turn this off and Itunes accepts more than one disk Blockquote

Thanks, Mark! That did it for me, too.