Itunes backup

[Vagabond]

Having a bit of a mare trying to backup my itunes to an external hard-drive. Most of the songs have not been purchased via itunes but downloaded from other sites. I've looked on the net to research but I can only find info on how to backup itunes bought songs. I've tried consolidating and sending to a seperate folder but to no avail, it only sends purchased songs. If anyone knows how to do it of knows of any software that will do it for you it would be greatly appreciated. I'm using windows not a Mac.

 

[freudian slip]

I copied the whole itunes folder from the computer hard drive onto an external one with no problems. I just copy and pasted.

It also means that others can rip your i tunes music for themselves.

 

[dozyscopie1]

I have backed up mine onto 2 seperate hard drives just incase. I too had hardly any purchases from itunes but about 40gb of music ripped from cd's. I have my itunes stored on my D drive in my music folder. Just copied and pasted it. I know it was initially stored in my C drive. When I installed iTunes on my new laptop I set it up for D drive. Don't know if yours is the same but the music should just transfer over from said C/D drive. Pretty vague I know but if you try copying it over from the iTunes directly it only recognises the bought ones, if you can find where you music is actually stored you should be able to copy from there. If you right click on the iTunes icon then click on properties, then shortcut it should tell you the location in the target box. I am a computer biff though so what I have told you could be complete bollox but it worked for me. Hope it helps, your right to back it up,I would go spare if I lost all my music.