iTunes idiot needs some help



Hi,

Although I've owned an iPod for quite a while now I'm in need of some help. Up until now I've stored approximately 400 WAV files on my iPod. I recently bought two Western Digital 160gb external hard drives and I'm copying 400 CD's on to the hard drives using iTunes, importing the songs as WAV files (I bought all these CD's BTW).

I'd like to rip all of my music on to my iPod. To fit all this music onto a 20gb iPod will require compression, any recommendations as to which compression format to use would be appreciated. Priority is sound quality (I really hate the sound of MP3's) but by the same token I'll need to fit a lot of music on it. I'm very interested in your opinion and will certainly appreciate any advice.

I want to keep the WAV files on the hard drive(s) as is, allowing me to make compilations or copies of my CD's as required. The thing I can't figure out for the life of me: I have the WAV files on my hard drive and want to use some sort of compression to load them on the iPod while I maintain the original WAV files on the hard drive. There must be a way to grab the WAV files off my hard drive and using iTunes compress the files, store the compressed music in a directory on the drive, and then load my iPod with the compressed files. All the while keeping the original WAV files in WAV format on the drive. I'm running XP with the latest iTunes software. Thanks in advance to any iTunes aficionados who can lend a helping hand. Best Regards, Jeff
jeffloistarca
To amplify a bit on Nik's comments. iTunes keeps all the ripped music in a folder called Library. You can keep this on your boot drive inside your machine on an external drive. In iTunes Preferences/Advanced you then "point" the application at the Library. Also check "Keep Organized" and "Copy Files to Music Folder when adding". When you do a backup of your external drive, just back up the Library.

Be worth five minutes to review the documentation just to make sure you have the nomenclature.
For all you rippin Itunes folks out there>

I highly recommend you use a RAID hard drive for all your music. It is too valuable to loose and very time consuming to replace.

Jon
Why RAID? I have all of my music on the internal hard drive AND I have a copy on an external hard drive PLUS the original cd's. Highly unlikely that both drives will fail at the exact same moment. Even if they do, unless my house burns to the ground, I've got the cd's as back-ups.