backup up album art with iTunes (MPFreaker)

I googled and searched and couldnt find what I needed on this...

I have around 40Gb of music, most of which is not mainstream (ie. iTunes found the album art for about 10% of it). I made a few attempts to add stuff manually and with various search apps, but it was too big a job.

Finally I caved and paid for 20 dollars for MPFreaker, which did an excellent job - I would say it boosted the total up to around 80% of the collection by automatic adding, then I found the rest with it's manual search feature.

Chuffed!

Anyway, my question:

Normally when I back up my music I just back up the iTunes music library folder. But I noticed there is an additional folder called 'album art'. What do I need to back up and how to ensure that when I move to a new computer or do a re-install, I won't lose all my hard-won album art??

I guess some of it will be on the mp3 metadata (in the library) and some of it is in the 'album art' folder, depending on where it came from? Can I simply drag and drop the whole collection of iTunes folders?

I'd be very grateful for any advice; I would hate to have to learn the hard way, I am so pleased with my shiny set of album art.

 

Recently I did a clean install and I restored my iTunes library to its former state, including playlists, ratings, album art, etc. All I did was open iTunes, then go to File > Back up to disk..., that will take care of your problem.

When you fire up iTunes on your new computer or new install, just insert your first dvd, and iTunes will ask you if you want to restore blabla. If you want to use an external hdd, then I wouldn't know what to recommend you since I haven't used that method to backup files on a mac yet.

 

Thanks 00Fez, but I don't want to back up to optical media (10 DVDs!! Not to mention the wear on my SuperDrive), I use an External HDD.

I just found this site: http://playlistmag.com/secrets/2006/05/juneplaylist/index.php

Where one of the methods is as follows. Sounds ok but doesnt explicitly tell you how to restore. I guess you just dump the whole thing back in your music folder??

2. Archive and copy

If you’re looking for a simple (but not extremely efficient) method, you can use the Finder to back up your collection to an external hard drive or a DVD. To save space, compress your library first. Control-click on your iTunes folder (by default it’s stored in your Music folder) and select Create Archive Of “iTunes.” This will create a zipped archive that includes your iTunes Music Library.xml file—essential for restoring your ratings, play counts, and other customizations—and that you can drag and drop to an external drive or burn to DVD (if your collection is small enough). But if you’re really serious about your collection, you’ll want to take stronger steps to protect it on a regular basis. Check out the next few methods.​

 

I would just import it from your external hdd, and iTunes will copy it to it's default music folder. File > Import. If you backup your entire music folder you should be fine. From what I've read, the album art is embedded in the audio file, but I would backup the whole thing just to be sure.