Compressing Music Files For Backup

[Brian Izzo]

I am about to do a clean install of windows xp home
edition and have 70gb of music on a D: drive. I want to
back up the music to cd's. It would take about ten cd's.
Can I compress the files first to copy them and then
restore them to my computer later?

 

[Ian & Lorraine]

If you compress music files, they will lose quality PERMANENTLY, to one
degree or another. If the quality of the music is important to you, I'd
recommend buying a ten-pack of blanks, which doesn't cost much these days,
and then burning them as "DATA" discs. After your clean install of XP, you
can just open those discs with Windows Explorer and drag the files back on
to your hard drive.

Regards,
Ian.

 

[Brian Izzo]

Appriciate the info. Thank you very much for your
reply. Brian

 

[Galley]

I am about to do a clean install of windows xp home
edition and have 70gb of music on a D: drive. I want to
back up the music to cd's. It would take about ten cd's.
Can I compress the files first to copy them and then
restore them to my computer later?

If they are on a separate drive, or separate partition, then you do not have to
back them up, as only your C:\ drive will be re-formatted. Of course, it's
always a good idea to backup your MP3s onto CD-R. Actually, you would need 100
CD-Rs.