I'm very new to this iPOD deal so thanks for your patience with these questions.

Currently I have iTunes installed on my desktop computer which contains about 250 full length CD's.
Of these 250 CD's, about 100 of them have been purchased from the iTunes store, & the rest I imported from CD's I own.

A few weeks ago I purchased a iPod Touch (32GB) and synced it with my iTunes. It worked perfectly, and now all my music which was located on my computer's hard drive, is also nicely contained on my shiney new iPod, so this part of it is excellent; I'm very happy.

Now let's say that my Desktop Computer crashed on me, and I lost the contents of the hard drive, including all the contents of iTunes, would the songs on my touch serve as a back-up?
Meaning, could I just install a fresh version of itunes back on my desktop, and transfer over the contents of my ipod touch back to the desktop PC?

I plan to upgrade my desktop computer to windows 7 when it's released by doing a complete wipe, so I was hoping as long as I have my iPod Touch synced before hand, then I can just reload everything back to my desktop itunes after the fresh instal of Windows 7, will this work the way I'm hoping it does?

Thanks
Habs

 

No, I don't think it will...

I would go out and buy an external hard drive and save them to that, just incase you have a crash. I have all of my music, documents, and photos stored on my computer and I back them up onto an external hard drive as well.

 

Nope. For some reason Apple doesn't allow the transfer of files from iPod to computer.
However, once you have opened your new, empty iTunes, you can click on the "Store" tab and select "Available Downloads". This should download everything you purchased from the iTunes Store back to a certain time. With the CDs, you will either have to re-burn all of them back onto iTunes, or (the super easy route), you will can backup all your music to an external hard drive and/or online backup. And then just copy all your music back to the "iTunes Music" on your computer, open iTunes, go to "File", "Add Folder to Library" and just select the entire "iTunes Music" folder.

My suggestion is research how to use a "Briefcase" (combo between a .zip file and folder). You can basically sync certain folders between a computer and hard drive.

Hope it works out for you. Sorry for the long description.

 

Download a program named podlift off download.com. It will allow you to move music from your Ipod to your computer. I've used the program with great results when I got a new computer.

 

Do you know if this will work for Microsoft's Zune as well?

 

I dont think it will. I'm pretty sure the software was written just for the Ipod. If you go to download.com and search around, I'm sure you could find a similar program thats for the Zune, you might just have to try a couple of programs until you get one that works for you, like I had to do before I started using Podlift.

 

Thanks for the helpfl replies everyone.

A thought occurred to me just now as I was sitting here trying to sort out my options.

My new PC has a built-in Blu-Ray Disc burner, so couldn't I theoretically back up my entire iTunes library to a single Blu-Ray Disc?

iTunes library is 27.72GB in size, these blank BD can hold this much right?
Or worse case scenario I just use 2 discs to back everything up.

Would this work?