Easily Backup iTunes Library to External Hard Drive or iCloud

You could find millions of brilliant songs and movies in iTunes Store. Your favorite singers and actors release their works every year and you don’t want to miss any of them. Therefore, you have accumulated many files on PC. Some of them could be directly played, but some are just cache files. You need to organize files on PC and backup iTunes library, so you could play them without Internet next time and could easily transfer files from PC to iPhone.

You could check iTunes library before backing up it. Open iTunes > click Edit > select Preferences > select Advanced. The default iTunes media folder location is C:\Users\YourUserName\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media. You could go to this folder to check how many songs and movies have been saved. They could be directly copied to another location like external hard drive. However, this folder doesn’t include all the songs and movies in iTunes library now. Follow this passage to backup full library.

• Method 1. How to backup and restore iTunes library on computer?

• Method 2. How to backup iTunes library to iCloud?

• Method 3. How to backup music library on iPhone?

Method 1. How to backup and restore iTunes library on computer?

To backup the entire iTunes library, you need to download all of them to computer and make sure they are in one folder. You could restore iTunes library from that backup in the future.

Backup iTunes library to external hard drive on Windows 10

Step 1: Open iTunes. Click Account to sign in your Apple ID. You should sign in the right ID, or you could not find your purchased items.

Step 2: Click Account again and select Purchased. If you are using Family Sharing, it would be replaced with Family Purchased and it means you could download more items.

Step 3. Select Music or Film in the upper-left corner. Find the songs and movies and click the download button to download them all.

Step 4. Click Files, select Library, and then select Consolidate Files. This step would copy the media files which are not in the default location to the folder to make sure you could get the entire iTunes library in one folder.

Step 5. Connect external hard drive to computer and copy the folder from C:\Users\YourUserName\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media to external hard drive.

Note: It is suggested to copy the folder of iTunes not just media files because you would find it very useful when restoring iTunes library.

Restore iTunes library from backup in external hard drive

Step 1. Quit iTunes.

Step 2. Open external hard drive and copy the whole folder of iTunes to any location on computer.

Step 3. Press Shift Key and open iTunes at the same time. iTunes would then tell you to import iTunes library.

Step 4. Click Choose Library and locate the folder on computer. You could find a file named “iTunes Library.itl”. Open it to restore the entire iTunes library.

Method 2. How to backup iTunes library to iCloud?

If you have enough space on iCloud, you could save the downloaded iTunes library to iCloud Drive. Usually, you just have 5GB of free iCloud storage, but films might take more space. You need to change iCloud storage plan if necessary. Follow the steps to backup iTunes library to iCloud:

Step 1. Download iTunes library and Consolidate Files to make sure every item is in one folder.

Step 2. Go to iCloud and sign in your Apple ID. Select iCloud Drive.

Step 3. Drag the whole folder of iTunes to the window or click the Upload Button to save iTunes library to iCloud Drive.

Tips: If you wish to restore iTunes library, just download the folder to computer and then restore iTunes library following the first method.

Method 3. How to backup music library on iPhone?

Your iPhone could store a lot of songs purchased from iTunes Store, but they could not be easily shared. If you AirDrop a song from your playlist, the target device would only receive a link to purchase that song. Besides, your music tracks should be saved to computer. When you got a new iPhone, you could transfer data from old iPhone to new iPhone without downloading them again.

FoneTool is the tool you need now. It could backup the entire music library to computer and help you transfer files from PC to iPhone. It would be very helpful if you want to the easiest way to backup music library and transfer music tracks. You could backup films on iPhone at the same time if you want.

• View music library on iPhone and backup the entire music library or the favorite ones to PC

• Transfer all the songs at an amazing speed

• Transfer songs from iPhone backup to another device including iPad or iPod Touch

• Support iPhone 4s/5/5s/6/6s/6 plus/6s plus/SE/7/7 plus/8/8 plus/X/11/12/13/14

Step 1. Download FoneTool and connect iPhone to PC

You need to connect iPhone to computer with USB cable and tap “Trust” on iPhone, or your iPhone would not be recognized by computer.

Step 2. View and select songs and videos from music library

Go to Phone Backup, and choose Selective Backup. and then click the icon of music to preview all the songs on iPhone. If you want to transfer videos along with the songs, you could also click the icon of videos to select videos. After selecting all the songs and videos, click OK to return.

Step 3. Start Backup

Click Start Backup on the home screen to save all the music and videos to computer in seconds.

Tips:
● You could locate the files by clicking the pin icon in Backup Management so you could enjoy them on computer.
● If you need to restore music library to another device, just connect the target device to computer, select the backup task in Backup Management, and then click Restore. You could also selectively restore music from that backup.

Conclusion

Your iTunes library on PC needs to be organized. You could use iTunes to put all the resources to one folder and backup iTunes library into external hard drive. iTunes makes it easy to manage your songs and videos, but you could have an easier way to do that.

FoneTool would let you have more flexible choices when you backup music library from iPhone to computer and transfer songs to your new iPhone or another device. Isn’t it a good try? If this passage solves your problem, you could share it to help more people.