Backing up Playlist (Or the Entire Music Library) on a Second Hard Drive

I know there are many solutions for this subject online, but neither suits my needs. I have already read many tutorials on how to backup your entire music library using your ipod as a hard drive, but I have a different matter. I have all my music stored on my second hard drive (witch has a capacity 80 Gigabytes), the size of the music folder is about 49 Gigabytes; my ipod has a capacity of 30 Gigabytes, and my first drive (where Windows runs has a capacity of 20 Gigabytes.) On my current library I have all my playlists the way I like them. My problem is that I constantly need to re-install Windows for testing matters, so I would like to keep all my playlists, my ratings, and my play counts when I reinstall windows. I can not use my ipod as a hard drive, because all my music won’t fit. I have also read that it is necessary to have the option (Keep my Itunes music folder organized), but I am not able to do that also, because of the lack of space on my 1st hard drive. What would be my best option to backup my library?
Thanks in advance,
Dirk Breeuwer
[email protected]

Dirk Breeuwer,
It sounds like you may have your songs stored on the external hard drive, and linked to the library on the internal hard drive. Is that correct?
You can move your iTunes Library folder to the external drive, and then tell iTunes to keep the library organized. This article discusses creating a different library, and how to switch between them. (This is a feature that was added as part of iTunes 7)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
The initial configuration of that option may take a while, but once setup would be the easiest way to accomplish keeping the library intact through reinstall of Windows with the songs stored on a second hard drive.
Personally I would try this if you have sufficient space on the second hard drive free for all the music:
1. Copy the iTunes folder from My Documents to the external hard drive
2. Hold down shift when launching iTunes as directed in the article above
3. Select that iTunes folder on the external hard drive.
4. If you music doesn't have !'s next to it when you try to play songs you know are on the external hard drive, then go to Advanced->Consolidate library.
5. Consolidating library will copy all the songs into the iTunes folder on the external hard drive, as long as the links were not broke by copying the library to the external hard drive.
Hope this helps,
Nathan C.

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