I’m one of those sad people who had used the “Back Up to Disc” feature in iTunes to keep incremental DVD backups of my music and other media. But I just went to do a backup and the feature is missing. Obviously, Apple wants everyone to go to the cloud, but are there still alternatives?
The “Back Up to Disc” option disappeared from the iTunes menus in July 2011 with the release of iTunes 10.4. Apple’s online backup offerings, including iTunes in the Cloud and the subscription-based iTunes Match service, may suit some people. But if you prefer to keep your files closer to home, you can still back up your iTunes library locally in a number of ways.
One method is to use a backup program and an external hard drive (or discs) to regularly back up the computer’s iTunes folder; this folder is where all the music, media and data files are kept. Recent versions of Windows and Mac OS X include backup utilities like Windows 7 Backup and Restore, or Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 and later. Third-party backup programs may be more flexible. The Top Ten Reviews site has reviews of PC backup software and Mac OS X programs.
The iLounge site, devoted to Apple’s iOS devices, has a thorough article on backing up the iTunes library. Apple also has its own article that explains how to back up a copy of the iTunes library to an external drive using iTunes itself.