Backing up Itunes

I have around 1000 songs on itunes/amazonmp3, whats a good size of external memory to use to back up music? Also is it pretty simple to back up your hard drive? (I've never done it before)

Go with a simple Western Digital External Harddrive. Mine is 500GB and I just plugged it right in and back up my entire laptop [[which I suggest most]]. If you are in college, sign up for Amazon as a student receive free shipping. If you need anymore information feel free to message me on here and i'll be glad to help you out.

How did you go about about backing your entire laptop? Is that just a clickable option when you plug it in?

Oh, are you running on a Mac or PC?

if you're running Mac OS X 10.6 [[I'm sure you can do it with previous versions, but 10.6 is all I've worked with]] then there is a program called Time Machine. Get an external hard drive [[I'd work with Western Digital but if you have the funds go with LaCie]] and plug it in. Then open up Time Machine and follow the instructions it gives you. From there you can schedule backups, how often to do it and so on. 
 
If you're running Windows  7 there is a program or option [[probably on the control panel]] called Back Up and Restore. Use that the same way I mentioned before. Plug in the hard drive and then follow the instructions. 
 
If you're running Windows Vista then it's the same thing as Windows 7. Go to the control panel and click on Backup and Restore Center. 
 
Hope this helps!

I only use my iPod as backup, seeing as it has all the music files on it.

Well if you do that then you're doubling the amount of files on your iPod. You have the ones you can play and the ones you can access in a seperate folder. If you have the space, go for it. Otherwise I'd invest in an external hard drive and save yourself time and grief should your computer crash

I would say buy one of those small backup drives, say something in the range of 340GB to like 640GB.  You really don't seem like you need even close to 1TB of drive space. And then all you have to do is plug the drive into the USB port, drag your iTunes folder to that drive and then I would suggest renaming the backed up copy on the external hard drive to something like "Music backup 2011-02-06" or something like that just to put a timestamp on your backups if you do have redundancies and then you know what to delete at a later date. 
 
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+-+Canvio+320GB+External+Hard+Drive+-+Raven+Black/9941318.p?id=1218198433470&skuId=9941318 
 
 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136753

Well the reason i want to back up is i feel like my ipod classic is on its last leg and i'm thinking about getting a new laptop soon so in both instances i would lose my music files

Back up your entire computer to an external harddrive so you can then import all those files onto the new laptop

"I only use my iPod as backup, seeing as it has all the music files on it. "

1000 songs? Just get a thumbdrive at that point.