well i dont want hundreds of dollars to go to waste if my pc crashes :/

if you mean are you able to transfer from iPod to computer, then yes. Have a look at these and see which one suits you best.

YamiPod - http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/home/
EphPod - http://www.ephpod.com/ (my personal recommendation)
SharePod - http://www.sturm.net.nz/website.php?...&Page=SharePod

Ephpod is my personal favourite, but some prefer sharepod. I haven't really used Yami, however, I have heard good reports about it.

no i want to back up my music like you would back up your c drive

In MP3 format, burn to CD's, what exactly do you mean?

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Just burn it all to disk as data and it'll be fine. then to use it again you can just copy and paste or copy right from the disk.

If you have anything like an external hard drive you can always send it all to one of those for safe keeping as well.

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I have a separate HDD just for mp3 and other important files, so in case the main HDD crashes I don't have to worry much.

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will it all fit though, I have well over 5,000 songs

Then that will take many discs. I keep all my songs at 128 bitrate, so that's about 1200 songs for one DVD.

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if you have any hard drive laying around,you can buy an external encloser for a small amount and make an external hard drive for storage. Then you can keep all you stuff on there and place it somewhere when not in use.

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if you have a dvd burner you can burn them onto dvd which shouldnt take more than 3 Dvd's i have an old 40 GB mp3 player from RCA that i back all of my music up on i have 28 GB of music on that thing which is pretty crazy........

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