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I'm preparing for a long overdue reinstall of Windows XP. I use iTunes to downoad oodles of podcasts; I have many episodes which I've not yet downloaded and won't until I've completed the reinstall. That is, their download status is still set to "Get".

My question is: How can I backup the status of my individual podcast episodes?

I know how to backup/export the subscriptions (OPML) and the already downloaded files of course. Does iTunes have a file (XML? .config? ...) or some metadata that I can hook into so that I don't have to re-download everything once my reinstall is done?

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

after you reinstall itunes, just copy your entire backed up itunes folder into your my music folder and write over the new itunes backup folder created by your new installation.

then after you launch itunes, your library will be as it was before.

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I just completed the reinstall and sure enough, simply copying this backed up iTunes folder restored the download status and subscription info for ALL podcasts. Thanks everyone! –  kevininspace Aug 30 '09 at 19:40
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I think itunes stores everything under its folder in my music so as long as you take the whole folder (including any hidden files) you should be ok.

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Yes, there are two files here: an "iTunes Library.itl" which appears to be in some binary format, and "iTunes Music Library.xml". The xml file has a complete list of the already downloaded files (Yay!). But does this mean that by copying this to my new iTunes folder that whatever is not listed in the xml will show up as "undownloaded"? –  kevininspace Aug 27 '09 at 15:18
I'm not certain but as far as I know if you copy that whole folder to a new install itunes should have exactly the same status as it has now. –  Col Aug 28 '09 at 7:28
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