How to back up content that you purchased from the Zune Marketplace

This article discusses why you should back up content that you purchased from the Zune Marketplace and how to back up the content. This includes content that is encoded with Digital Rights Management (DRM) and DRM-free (un-encoded) content, such as MP3s.

Both DRM-encoded and DRM-free content are available for purchase from the Zune Marketplace. After you purchase content from the Zune Marketplace, it is important to back up this content to protect your investment in case the content that you purchased is accidentally lost and you cannot restore it from the Zune Marketplace. You can back up the content by burning it to a CD or to a DVD.

These are examples of content that can be burned to a CD or to a DVD:

• DRM-protected .wma music
• DRM-free .mp3 music
• DRM-free music and video podcasts

These are examples of content that cannot be burned to a CD or to a DVD:

• DRM-protected .wmv videos (TV and music videos)
• Zune Pass subscription content

For more information about how to burn content to a CD or to a DVD by using the Zune software, visit the following Web site to view the Zune user's guide:

How to back up the content on your Zune device

To back up the content from your Zune device to your computer, follow these steps:

1. Connect the Zune device to the computer.
2. If the Zune software does not automatically start, start the Zune software.
3. In the Zune software, click device.
4. Select the content category that you want to sync. (For example, select music.)
5. Right-click the item or the category that you want to reverse sync, and then click Copy to my collection.
6. After the sync process is completed, disconnect the Zune device from the computer

After you follow these steps, the content from the Zune device is available in the Zune collection on your computer.

How to back up your collection to a CD or a DVD

You can burn songs, albums, podcasts, and playlists to audio CDs. Personal videos and pictures get burned to data discs. (Data discs are typically compatible with computers only and probably won't play in your DVD player.) Videos downloaded from the Zune Marketplace cannot be backed up to CD or to DVD.

To back up to a CD or DVD, follow these steps:

1. Put a blank audio CD or data CD/DVD in the CD or DVD drive on your computer.
2. In the Zune software, click Settings, and then click Burn. Make your selections under Disc format and Burn speed.
3. Click OK.
4. Drag the items that you want to burn to the disc icon.
5. Click the disc icon, and then click Start Burn.

For more information about the Zune Marketplace, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: