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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music Apps
I have a lot of music on my computer, of which most I have copied from my CDs. I've also bought several CDs from the iTunes music store. I'm sure this is probably the case for most of you. Anyway, to get to the point, I've been in the process of backing up my music for the second time. The first time I backed everything up via the finder to CDs, which was perfectly fine. However this time around I wanted a better way of doing so because I wanted iTunes to recognize the CD itself instead of it being only viewable in the Finder. I know of two options for CDs through iTunes:

The easiest way in which you tell iTunes to copy your music and you just insert one CD at a time. This is perfectly fine, however it's not the most organized way that I like. The slower way, but much more organized, is to create playlists and burn those to MP3/Data CDs.

Herein lies the warning. If you haven't bought any music from the iTunes music store, you can use the MP3 option for burning. However, if you have bought music from the store, you will want to use the Data option. I nearly found out the hard way if I hadn't had my original backups from when I first burnt them to a CD via the Finder.

The reason why I'm mentioning it is that iTunes doesn't give you a warning or any indication that it didn't burn those bought tracks. The only way to know is to view the CD and compare it with your playlist and notice that there is a size difference. I was on my 41st CD before I noticed. Luckily I hadn't gotten all the way into my bought music collection, and only had to redo 10 albums. Just a heads up for those that may not have known this.
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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music | 17 comments | Create New Account
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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: frankxiv on May 10, '04 12:14:29PM

When I read your hint I thought it was wrong because I have burned my entire playlist before. So I went into iTunes to check myself and it turns out you are right because they have changed the way iTunes works in the most recent version.

In previous versions of iTunes when you tried to burn a playlist that was longer than would fit on an audio CD it automatically asked you if you wanted to burn it as an MP3 CD. And if there were any purchased songs in the playlist it wouldn't offer the option of an MP3 CD, instead it would only ask if you wanted to burn a Data CD.

Very interesting the way they have changed it. I'm not sure which way I like better.

Later, Frank



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: azxplorer on May 10, '04 02:08:23PM

I'm not sure I do understand the issue here. I just got done burning my entire iTunes library onto 2 DVD data disk's. All of my music appears to be there and complete. The music store files are in aac format.

Azx



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: Fofer on May 10, '04 03:25:09PM

That's because you burned to DVD, simply as "Data."

There's a format called "MP3 CD" -- you can fit hundreds of songs on a CD-R, and play them natively in some CD Players that support MP3 playback. It's basically an ISO9600 disk with the MP3 files in a flat folder structure. That said, since these MP3 CD players wouldn't be able to playback the AAC or AACp files, iTunes is now smart enough to omit them.

Moral of the story is that Apple is trying to accommodate the old and the new. If all you want to do is backup your files (MP3, AAC and AACp) then use the "data" option, CD or DVD.



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: Fofer on May 10, '04 03:28:20PM

(and by "data option" I mean, burn the files/folders in the Finder... manually.) Aw crap, this means that iTunes can't break it up for you automatically by size of destination format. (7 GB of music onto 10 CD-R's or 2 DVD-R's, etc.)

Oh well, I guess that's what an external HD backup is for. ;)



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: CaptCosmic on May 10, '04 03:54:46PM

Try creating a new Smart Playlist and tell it to select 650MB worth of songs by Album. This playlist will contain the first CD worth of music, so name it CD1 or something similar.

Now, create a second Smart Playlist, but set the criteria to Playlist not CD1. Tell this playlist to select 650MB worth of songs by Albums. You should get a second playlist that picks up right where the first left off.

Additional CDs can be created using the same method with a criteria that the song not be in any prior playlist. Not the most efficient method, but it achieves the goal.

For DVDs, change the Size to 4.7GB.

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Capt Cosmic



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: Dale Sorel on May 10, '04 04:41:25PM

A disc made using the MP3 method will also play in most DVD players.



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: osxpounder on May 10, '04 11:35:53PM

It's more like 4.23GB for me.

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osxpounder



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image and segment music folder
Authored by: jasont on May 10, '04 07:52:38PM

There should be someway to do something like this (if this hint hasn't been posted somewhere else):

make an image of your music folder (disk copy expert mode, toast, disk utility...etc)...

Then run split (I got this part from the project gutenberg dvd parts readme so you may need to change it also here we're using iso which we probably don't want).

something like
split --bytes=4700m --suffix-length=4 music.iso music.iso.

(you may need to go down to less than 4.7M or use a different format (ex a few more zeros and k or even b) depending on your media)

So now you should have all your autogenerated 'parts' which you burn to dvd and then when you get them back to your restore drive you do something like

cat music.iso.???? > music.iso

and you get back your big huge folder.

It's not as fast as the playlist solution and it relies on you having some drive space and some time(although this could probably be worked somehow imaging and segmenting at the same time)...but it does automatically calc data size for you based on media.

I haven't tried this one yet.



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image and segment music folder
Authored by: Graff on May 11, '04 03:35:44AM

You can do this through hdiutil, which comes with a standard install of Mac OS X. I'm assuming that you are using at least Mac OS X 10.2 here.

If you want to make a set of CDs or DVDs then run these commands to make the set. You would then take the resulting image files and burn them using Disk Utility or some other CD burning software.

Here are the commands to make a CD set, it assumes that 650 megabytes will be small enough to fit on a CD. Remember that a CD will hold less than its printed size due to differences in how the bytes are counted and what the filesystem takes up:

hdiutil create -ov -srcfolder /Users/username/Music/iTunes -volname 'Music Backup' /tmp/musicbackup.dmg
mkdir ~/Desktop/music\ backup
hdiutil segment -o ~/Desktop/music\ backup/musicbackup -segmentSize 650m /tmp/musicbackup.dmg
rm /tmp/musicbackup.dmg

Here are the commands to make a DVD set, it assumes that 4.2 gigabytes will be small enough to fit on a DVD:

hdiutil create -ov -srcfolder /Users/username/Music/iTunes -volname 'Music Backup' /tmp/musicbackup.dmg
mkdir ~/Desktop/music\ backup
hdiutil segment -o ~/Desktop/music\ backup/musicbackup -segmentSize 4300m /tmp/musicbackup.dmg
rm /tmp/musicbackup.dmg

The size for the DVD set is 4300 megabytes because a gigabyte is 1024 megabytes so 4.2 GiB = 4300.8 MiB.

It can take a while to create the master image in the first command. On my PowerMac G5 dual 2 gHz a music library of approximately 8.4 gigs took about 15 minutes for the first command.



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How I back up iTunes music
Authored by: cllcomputers on May 10, '04 04:20:48PM

Whenever I back up my computer and rebuild it, I usually take my hole music folder right out of home, and burn most of it on a DVD, and take the two or three artists and put it on a second DVD with the rest of my data (because my music collection is slightly larger than a single DVD), and copy the iTunes prefs out of ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist and throw that on the second DVD as well.

When I go to restore my data, I just replace my default prefs file with the one I backed up, and copy all my music and the three artist's folders back in their place, all before starting iTunes. I am very careful not to start iTunes during this process or it will get confused, and the process will get confusing to you.

I have an iPod, and I try not to use that to back up my data because when I plug it in it starts iTunes (I know how to disable it) and didn't want it starting.

That's how I backup my data. Also, I deauthorize my computer before I leave my old installation if you use(d) iTMS, so that way I can save an authorization for when I need it. Everything - including my encrypted AACs are backed up, and after restoring, all I have to do is just play one AACp and it will ask for Authorization, authorize, and all you music will be good. If for any weird reason you have two Apple IDs for iTMS (you shouldn't), make sure you authorize a song from each account. (And de-authorize from both before you left your old installation.) Also, make sure you reauthorize before the next time you plug in your iPod, or iTunes will take your purchased music OFF YOUR iPOD and won't go back on 'till you authorize.

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CLL
www.cllcomputers.com
forums.cllcomputers.com



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: kagudesu on May 10, '04 08:33:09PM

Usa Apple's Backup (if you are a .Mac member). It allows you to backup your iTunes Library and/or iTunes Purchased Music to a CD/DVD or and extenal drive.

You can also just export an iTunes Playlist to your iDisk.

Looks like you can also Restore, too. But I have not yet tried this.



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Know Your Data Format
Authored by: ygor on May 10, '04 01:10:56PM

I find it amusing that you go on about iTMS music not coming out on an MP3 burn.

The music is in AAC format, not MP3. That was the whole point of iTMS -- files that are tougher to pirate. iTunes will not automatically transcode tracks as part of the process of creating an MP3 disc.

iTunes is reasonably well documented as to what it wil and will not do. Just read the directions, folks.



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RE: Know Your Data Format
Authored by: daybrother on May 10, '04 03:04:59PM

I find it annoying that you feel compelled to post "Read the directions" on a hints site. The point of this site, since you don't seem to understand, is to highlight changes and hidden hints rather than go through the often hard to search Apple Knowledge base. Many mac users were not aware of changes to iTunes since last "reading the directions". If you have nothing but a condescending attitude to contribute why not express that on /..



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Know Your Data Format? How about reasonably intelligent applications?
Authored by: phearlez on May 10, '04 04:19:06PM

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect iTunes, when I pick a menu option titled "Burn PLAYLIST to Disc" (emphasis mine), to inform me that, in fact, it is NOT going to burn the playlist to disc, it's going to burn SOME of the playlist to disc.

That's not me not knowing my data format, that's an application failing [and yes, it's a failure even if I tell it to do something it cannot possibly do] without a warning or notification.

Think of it another way: if I select 100 files, 2 of which are read-only, and order the computer to delete them, it will inform me it was unable to delete them. I don't think you would suggest it would be reasonable for there to be no notification just because they're RO and I should have known my file status!



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Backing up your bought music
Authored by: jpbjpbjpbjpb on May 11, '04 11:17:54AM

I recently got my iTunes Music Library file corrupted, and while I was able to re-import all my tracks, it lost track of which ones were purchased and which were my own rips from CDs.

To find out which songs in your library are purchased so you can back them up, create a Smart Playlist and set it to search for songs where Kind = "Protected AAC".



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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: Thom on May 11, '04 04:45:25PM
Or, you could say a prayer, and then try singing a few HYMNs of praise...

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A warning about iTunes, backups, and bought music
Authored by: Thom on May 11, '04 04:48:57PM
Or, you could say a prayer, and then try singing a few HYMNs of praise...

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