Itunes & Cd-rw/ Dvd-rom Drives, Yeh kya ho raha hain bhai...??? Options

[Talaikya]

I have been working with iTunes, trying to name my tracks etc for a CD. In the last 30 mins it's just stopped playing the CD twice. Once it caused my system to freeze, the second time both my CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives got disconnected when the CD stopped playing. What's happening?? Any clues?? Mahn and I am in love with iTunes...

[Talaikya]

Hmmmm so here's the question Deewz mah Guruji and so many others' too I am sure...

iTunes is on a system that doesn't have disk writing capabilities - so no back ups are possible.

I have a back up (by pointing iTunes to it periodically) on an external Hard Drive

We did touch this topic earlier.... will that back up have the play lists et al or just the music files?

Because... I am gonna switch to a new system (inheriting hubby's old lappy (old car too!). Does this mean, w/o the disk writing capabilities, I will lose all mah playlists??

Planning to make the switch by pointing the new system to backup in the external HDD.

Any recommendations/ advice?

[deewani]

Eek the G word!

Anwyays, lol, hmm that is a predicament. Ok when you say you have a backup on external Hard Drive, does that mean the songs located physically on that Hard Drive are also in your iTunes library? In other words when you right click a song and Get Info and look at the Summary page - under the Where - is that the letter of your external HD in the path? If that is the case, if your entire iTunes library points to files on your external HD then that could be OK.

You can simply back up your entire iTunes folder located in C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\My Documents\My Music\iTunes. If you have done that, then you have a backup of 2 important files, one is the iTunes Library.itl and the other is the iTunes Music Library.xml. These files also contain your library and playlist information! You can then follow these instructions to re-create your library:
How to re-create your iTunes Library
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93313

You don't need disc writing capabilities, that's one of the easiest ways to make and restore your backup, but this way works as well.

There's always manual ways of backing up playlists but that is time consuming:
How To Backup and Restore Playlists
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93763
Complete guide to Backing up iPod and iTunes music
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/...d-itunes-music/

To help you further though I need to know exactly where the music files are located physically, if they are all on the external disc, then this should work, provided that when you start using the "new" laptop, and you install iTunes, the laptop assigns the same drive letter to the external HD.