The single most common question we get from our readers is how to recover their content from their iPod back onto their computer. These questions are usually precipitated by users suddenly discovering that their iTunes library has become corrupted or erased or that their computer has suddenly died on them, taking their iTunes library and all of their media content with it.
Although we’ve covered the process of recovering your content from your iPod extensively in our tutorial on Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer, the reality is that this remains a somewhat cumbersome and imperfect recovery process. Further, many users today have iTunes libraries that are considerably larger than the capacity of their iPod or iOS device and if you have not been syncing your entire library to your device you’re not going to get all of your content back, since of course you can’t recover what isn’t there.
If your music library consists of content ripped from your own CDs, you can always go back to those as a source, but this will not only be a time-consuming process of re-importing all of your content, but you will also have lost any metadata about those tracks such as ratings, play counts, and playlist entries.
As for content you may have purchased from the iTunes Store? With the introduction of iTunes in the Cloud in June 2011 and its more recent international expansion, in most countries you can now re-download music, apps and booksthat you have previously purchased, and U.S. iTunes Store users can also re-download their previously purchased TV shows. The service does not yet, however, include other types of media content such as movies, audiobooks and podcasts. For that content you’d pretty much be relying on Apple’s good graces to allow you to re-download it—an exception that they will sometimes make, but definitely not part of their normal policy.
It’s also important to keep in mind that iTunes in the Cloud only allows you to re-download content if it is still available on the iTunes Store; if you have older content that has been removed from sale, which does happen, you’ll be out of luck getting that content back. Re-downloaded items from iTunes in the Cloud will also not contain any of your customized metadata or info such as ratings, play counts and playlist entries.
If you’re an iTunes Match subscriber this can provide another alternative to getting your music back, since every song in your library gets either matched or uploaded to Apple’s iCloud servers, and this even has the advantage of including your playlists and metadata. Keep in mind, however, that iTunes Match is only for music—it doesn’t even include things like audiobooks, podcasts even your own non-purchased music videos, much less movies and TV shows. Further, your own songs that are matched become 256kbps AAC files—a format that may be an upgrade for some and a downgrade for others; for matched tracks you don’t get your actual original files back from the iTunes Match service. If you store higher bit-rate or lossless tracks, this is not going to be an acceptable solution.
The bottom line is that Apple still tells you flat out the first time you use the iTunes Store that you are responsible to back up your iTunes purchases yourself. While services such as iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match
As with anything in the world of computers, you are always best to maintain a proactive backup strategy for your iTunes library. This way, when Murphy’s Law takes effect and the worst happens to your content, you can simply restore it from backup and be up and running again in no time. The good news is that this process is not as onerous as it may seem at first.
The Older iTunes Method: Back Up to Disc (iTunes 7 through iTunes 10.3 only)
iTunes 7 introduced a built-in backup feature that allows you to backup your iTunes library to recordable CD or DVD media. Although users have always been able to burn data discs manually with iTunes to backup their content, the built-in backup feature handles this process more seamlessly for you, spanning discs as necessary and most importantly backing up your playlists, rating and play count information in the process as well.
To initiate a backup to CD/DVD in iTunes, simply choose File, Library, Back Up to Disc from the iTunes menu.
Note that if you’re still using iTunes 7, this option will be found directly on the File menu, rather than under the Library sub-menu.
After selecting this option, an introductory screen appears briefly explaining the process and asking you what you would like to back up.
The first consideration is whether you want to back up your entire iTunes library, or only those items purchased from the iTunes Store. Since many users may have imported their non-iTunes-Store content from their own audio CDs, this provides the option of creating a smaller backup of only the critical purchased items. Despite this, however, we strongly recommend backing up everything, since it will make the recovery process much easier in the long run.
The option is also provided to only back up those items which have changed since the last backup. This allows for smaller “incremental” backups that you can run on a semi-regular basis, generally when you’ve added enough new content to your iTunes library to justify running another backup.
Once you’ve made your selection simply click “Backup” and iTunes will prompt you to insert a blank CD or DVD disc if you have not already done so.
Cleverly, rather than worrying about asking you what type and size of medium you plan to use, iTunes simply looks at what you put in the drive and gives you an estimate of how many discs will be required based on that.
Should you find this number to be a bit higher than you expected, you can always cancel the backup process at this point and try again using a higher-capacity medium such as DVD-R or DVD-R DL.
Note that iTunes won’t split up individual files when backing up your library, so if you are trying to backup to CD media and you have any one item in your iTunes library that is larger than the size of a CD, such as Movies or TV Shows, iTunes will notify you of this and require that you backup to larger DVD media instead.
Once you click OK, iTunes begins backing up your library. This backup includes all of your content: music, music videos, audiobooks, podcasts, movies, TV shows, and even Click Wheel iPod Games and iOS apps. Library metadata such as playlists, ratings, and play counts are also backed up as part of this process. As iTunes fills each disc, it prompts you to insert the next one.
When finished, you’ll have a complete set of discs that represent your entire iTunes library. As iTunes indicates when your backup completes, restoring from these discs is simply a matter of inserting them into your computer.
iTunes will detect a backup disc, and immediately offer you the opportunity to restore from it.
Note that you can also insert an individual backup disc and restore individual files or tracks from it. The backup disc will appear in your iTunes Devices listing, and you can browse the content of it and drag-and-drop individual tracks directly into your library.
Limitations of the iTunes Back Up to Disc Feature
Although iTunes’ built-in backup feature is a handy way for users with small libraries to create quick and easy backups, it’s not without its limitations that you should be aware of.
The first and most obvious limitation is the size of your library. The highest-capacity recordable media commonly available are Dual-Layer DVD-R discs at approximately 8.5 GB per disc. For users with small libraries, only a few discs may be required, but for users capable of filling a 160GB iPod classic, there is going to be a lot of disc-shuffling involved, and higher-capacity DVD-R DL media can be expensive.
It’s also important to note that only some of your metadata is preserved. Specifically, ratings, play counts, and playlists are backed up and restored by iTunes, but last played times, skip count, and last skipped time are not. Technically, this other information is stored in the backup, but for whatever reason iTunes does not restore this information. Further, when dragging content in manually from your back up discs, only the rating is restored, not the play count. Also the “Date Added” for any restored content will be the date you actually restored it. As with last played dates, the original date added information appears to be in the backup XML file, but is not restored by iTunes. Although play counts are backed up and restored for fully played items, bookmarks and status for partially-played items like podcasts, TV shows and audiobooks is not.
It’s also worth noting that playlists cannot be recovered manually through drag-and-drop. These are only available when performing a complete restore of your entire library from disc. Also, if you have listed Internet Radio stations in your playlists, this information is not backed up or restored.
Podcasts and iTunes U content will be restored, but you will need to resubscribe to each podcast/iTunes U series by clicking the “Subscribe” button which appears at the top of each one in your Podcast/iTunes U listings.
Album artwork is only backed up if it has been embedded within the file itself. iTunes operates under the assumption that automatically downloaded artwork can be automatically downloaded again. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, as artwork can only be downloaded automatically for items that are present on the iTunes Store. Not only are items sometimes removed from the iTunes Store, but the tags on your music must match the tags in the iTunes Store catalog for this to work, and it’s not uncommon for either you or iTunes to change these tags since you last downloaded album artwork.
When doing a disaster-recovery restore of your entire iTunes library from an iTunes-created backup set, you are in essence creating a whole new library, and then restoring your content into it. The most significant issue with this is that your iPod, iOS or Apple TV devices will see this as a different library and want to erase and re-sync all of your content. You shouldn’t lose anything in this process, since it should all have been restored from your backups, but you will be prompted to “Erase and Sync” the first time you connect your device and it may take more time to perform this initial sync.
Using Third-Party Backup Tools
For users with larger iTunes libraries, the built-in backup procedure offered by iTunes is going to be inefficient at best and in some cases completely unrealistic.
Fortunately, your iTunes library is comprised of nothing more than a database and a collection of files, and can be backed up by any number of third-party backup utilities just like any other data on your computer.
Ideally, for users with sizeable libraries, we strongly recommend using an external hard drive or network storage location that is at least large enough to contain your entire library, accounting for future growth. This will be far more efficient than trying to shuffle through a few dozen CD or DVD discs each time you want to back up your library. External USB flash memory devices and hard drives have become very inexpensive in recent years, and in the longer term are likely to be a more cost-effective solution than optical media anyway, particularly since you can use the same storage for multiple backups.
Using an external storage device also puts in a much better position to incrementally back up your iTunes library to a single complete backup, rather than dealing with multiple sets of media. Further, since you’re making an exact copy of your entire, existing library database, you’re not subject to the rather inconsistent limitations of iTunes’ own backup service. Of course, if you’re running iTunes 10.4 or later, you’re also pretty much stuck with rolling your own backup solution anyway.
There are many different third-party backup applications available, and going into each of these is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, what we will do is discuss the files and folders you need to ensure that you back up using whichever back up software you prefer, as well as some strategies for handling regular incremental backups of your iTunes library.
How the iTunes Folder is Organized
For most users, your entire iTunes library is contained in a folder named “iTunes” located within your home Music folder. On Windows XP this is named “My Music” while on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Mac OS X it’s simply named “Music.”
This folder is specific to your own user profile on your computer. If you have multiple user accounts on your computer and log in as another user, you will be creating a new iTunes library in that particular user’s own Music folder.
By default this folder contains not only your iTunes library database but also all of your iTunes media content. A sub-folder, named “iTunes Media” stores your music as well as music videos, audiobooks, podcasts, movies and TV shows. The location of this folder can be confirmed or changed in iTunes’ Advanced preferences:
More information on changing this location is discussed in our tutorial on Transferring your iTunes Library
See Transferring your iTunes Library for more information on this and converting to the new iTunes Media format.
The following are some other files and folders of interest that you will find in your main iTunes folder:
iTunes Library.itl (file)—This is your actual iTunes library database. It is a self-contained file with almost all of the information about your iTunes library, including your playlists, your track metadata, ratings, play counts, file locations and much more. This file is absolutely critical to back up as part of any iTunes backup strategy, as it is basically the key to your entire iTunes world.
iTunes Music Library.xml (file)—This is an XML-based version of the main iTunes library database. Although iTunes updates this file, it is not actually read by iTunes itself except in rare situations where the main database is corrupted and needs to be rebuilt. The primary purpose for this file is to allow third-party applications to easily read information stored in the iTunes database itself.
iTunes Library Genius.itdb (file)—This is a database of the Genius information for iTunes 8 and later. This file is not critical, as it can be easily recreated by re-running the Genius setup, but there’s usually little reason to not back it up. Although this file can get rather large, it’s still small compared to your actual media content.
iTunes Library Extras.itdb (file)—This is a SQLite database containing information related to CD’s that you have previously imported and looked up on the CDDB service as well as iTunes Match tracking information. Like the Genius database, this is not critical, but it’s also usually pretty small and there’s also little reason to not back it up. If you’re an iTunes Match subscriber it’s a good idea to back this up as without it you will need to re-run the entire lengthy iTunes Match process after restoring your library.
Album Artwork (folder)—This contains a cache of all album artwork, both that which has been downloaded from the iTunes Store as well as artwork from the tags within your actual files. For automatically downloaded artwork, this is the only place it is stored, although you can theoretically re-download the artwork again from the iTunes Store. Ideally, however, you should include this folder in your backups, although again it is not critical.
Previous iTunes Libraries (folder)—When you update iTunes to a newer version and there are database structural changes involved, a backup of your pre-upgrade database is kept in this folder with the date appended to the file name. Over time you may have several older versions of your iTunes database stored in here. These files are relatively small, but if you’re concerned about space you can delete them as they are just backups and not actually used by iTunes.
If you’ve come from a version of iTunes prior to iTunes 9 there may be two other folders present here as well:
iPod Games (folder)—This contains any Click Wheel iPod Games that you have purchased from the iTunes Store.
Mobile Applications (folder)—This folder contains any iOS applications that you have purchased from the iTunes Store.
If you began your library with iTunes 9 or later, or specifically converted your library to the new iTunes Media folder structure, then these folders will instead be located in your “iTunes Media” folder alongside the rest of your media content. See Transferring your iTunes Library for more information on converting to the new iTunes Media folder layout.
Backing up the iTunes Library Database
With the above in mind, the simplest solution for backing up the iTunes library database is to simply back up the iTunes folder and everything in it. This will include not only the main iTunes library database and its supporting database files, but also any Click Wheel iPod Games, iOS apps, and downloaded and cached album artwork.
This will ensure you have a backup of your iTunes library database and related files, but whether or not it includes your media content will depend on how and where you have chosen to store it.
Determining where your media content is actually stored
One very important thing to keep in mind when planning an all-encompassing backup strategy is where your media content actually lives. For the average iTunes user it will likely all be in the iTunes Media or iTunes Music folder under your iTunes folder, but this is not always the case.
Obviously, knowing where your files actually are is important to being able to back them up. Within iTunes’ Advanced Preferences, there is a checkbox labelled Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library. This setting controls whether tracks you import into iTunes are copied into your iTunes Media folder or whether they are referenced from their original locations.
Depending on the version of iTunes that you first used to set up your library, this option may have been enabled by default if you were using iTunes on a Mac, and may have been disabled by default if you were using iTunes on Windows.
If this option is unchecked, then there’s a good chance that any content you’ve imported into iTunes has been left in its original location on your computer. If you have deliberately left this option off because you wanted to pre-organize your content into your own folder structure before importing it this is not a big problem since you know where that content is and can simply back up that set of folders in addition to your iTunes folder.
However, if you didn’t realize that this setting was disabled and have simply been importing content from various locations with this setting OFF, then you will very likely have your media content scattered around your computer’s hard drive, and it may be difficult to track it all down to back it up.
In this second case, your best option is to consolidate your content into the iTunes Media folder so that it all lives within a single folder and can be backed up from there. Note that this folder can be the default iTunes Media folder or any other folder you specify. Our tutorial on Transferring your iTunes Library describes how to use iTunes’ built-in library consolidation feature to accomplish this.
The bottom line is that you should ensure that all of your iTunes media content is stored in a known location so that you can easily point your backup software at it and be assured that it’s all going to be included.
Incremental Backups
For users with a large iTunes library, full backups may take a relatively long time. In this situation it may not be practical to perform full backups on a regular basis.
Fortunately, most backup software provides the ability to perform “incremental” backups, essentially backing up only those files that have changed since the last backup. In general terms, there are two ways that you can handle an incremental backup strategy with your iTunes library.
The first method is to simply run an incremental “update” backup to a single iTunes backup folder, essentially mirroring your existing iTunes library to that folder during each backup. This has the advantage of reducing the amount of space required to store your backups; since you’re only keeping a single full copy of your iTunes library, you only need as much space as your iTunes library normally takes up on your computer. Further, restoring from a single iTunes backup folder is also much easier—you basically just need to copy all of the data back in the other direction during a restore.
Note that if you choose to use this method, you should ensure that your backup software performs a proper “mirror” update in that it should not only add and update any files that have changed, but also remove files from your backup that have been deleted from your iTunes library.
