Just like backing up photos and other data, backing up your music and their licenses is important.

If your computer crashes and you don’t have a backup of the My Music folder, you lose everything you previously copied or downloaded. You lose all of your licenses too. Chances are you have some sort of backup now, though, perhaps some songs copied to your iPod or other portable music player, and maybe some CDs you’ve burned to listen to in your car. However, you might not have a full backup or a backup of your licenses. It’s best to take the time to do that now, just in case.

As with backing up pictures, you can burn your music files to a CD or Zip disk by dragging and dropping (just keep track of the size of the files), copy them to an external hard drive, or use the Windows Backup utility to copy to your own hard drive, a network drive, or other source. However, backing up licenses is a little different, and you have to know the trick.

Take a look first at the easiest way to back up your music, by copying the data to an external hard disk:

1. Open the My Music folder. It may be on the C: drive in the My

Documents folder, or it may be on another partition in a folder

you’ve created. Figure 7-18 shows a sample folder.

2. Click Edit | Select All.

3. In the File And Folder Tasks pane, choose Copy The Selected Items.

4. In the Copy Items dialog box, browse to the location in which to

copy the files. Click Copy.

There are other options, of course, and they are detailed earlier in this

chapter in the “Keep Picture-Perfect Pictures” section. From inside the

My Music folder, in the Music Tasks pane, you can select Copy To Audio CD, for instance, and you can select multiple files to copy multiple items. You can also use the Windows Backup utility. If you choose to back up to a CD, though, be extra vigilant. Music files can be quite large. To see just how large, hover the mouse over any folder or song in the My Music folder. The information about the size will appear. Remember, CDs generally only hold 70MB, so when you are selecting songs to burn, make sure to stay under that limit. You can also see a file or folder’s size by right-clicking and choosing Properties. The Arlo Guthrie Properties dialog box. Notice this single folder is 31.9MB. Once your music is backed up, you’ll want to back up your licenses. Licenses are what allow you to play music you’ve purchased and downloaded. To back up your licenses, which will often fit on

a floppy disk:

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1. Open Windows Media Player 10 from Start | All

Programs | Accessories | Entertainment | Windows

Media Player.

2. Right-click Library, point to Tools, and

click Manage Licenses. The Manage

Licenses dialog box opens.

.

3. Click Change to browse to the area in

which to save the backup. This can be

a network drive, your own hard drive,

or even a floppy drive. (If you save to

your own hard drive, though, remember

to burn that to a CD or other removable

media.) Click OK when done.

4. Click Back Up Now. Click OK when finished.

If your system has the capability, backing up using DVDs is a better option than CDs because DVDs hold much more data.