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...i was wondering what happens - or what can be done - with all the songs on one's computer when the computer crashes. i have like, almost 25 gigs of songs/playlists/movies/etc on my itunes, and my computer has been acting kinda funny lately. i'm thinking i'll probably be replacing it within a year or so, and i was wondering what people do to back up or make sure all of their itunes contents are safe. do they just sort of, disappear with a crashed computer? thanks in advance for any help.
You need to locate everything on the disk and make sure you copy those contents on to something safe.
get an external hard drive and go to wherever you have itunes storing your music. copy the ENTIRE itunes folder. this will include all the music, videos etc. you have the copy the entire folder and make sure that the itunes xml file is there. thats what stores the playlists. this way if you change computers, or yours crashes, once you get it up and running, you just copy and paste your library back, and tell itunes where to find it.
Plus if you have everything on your iPod or iPhone you can drag everything onto your new computer. As long as hidden items appear in folders on windows, go to "my computer" and you'll see the folder.
can anyone recommend a decent external hard drive, or are they all pretty much the same
If you have a DVDRW, you can back up your info to DVD's. I just did that to add music to my new MAC. Somewhere in iTunes, it gives you the option to backup music and playlist.