Jeez, poor free-lunch-boy. I didn't know you didn't already have an Empeg.

Here's how the Empeg and Emplode work as far as archiving:

1) The empeg has to get its .MP3 files from somewhere. They have to already be stored on your hard disk before you upload them. In my case, I have a 4gb Empeg, and I have also dedicated a separate 4gb drive on my computer for storing only MP3s. That's my archive.

If you have less hard disk space on your PC than on your Empeg, you could theoretically upload the stuff in batches, deleting it from your computer after each upload, then ripping new MP3s to the hard disk and uploading those. But if you delete them from your computer's hard disk, you won't have backups if your Empeg's drive goes south. Adding an archive function to the Empeg would not change this, of course. That's not what the original poster was talking about. He was referring to...

2) The playlists are not stored on your computer. The playlists only exist on the Empeg's hard drive. The Emplode software is basically just a terminal front-end. all it does is upload files and manage the playlists stored on the Empeg. The person who started this thread was lamenting this fact. He has spent a lot of time getting his playlists ready, and is worried that he'll lose that data someday. He would like to see a way for Emplode to back up the playlists on the computer. That's what he's talking about.

Personally, I don't need to have my playlists archived. If my Empeg's hard disk dies, I'd simply re-upload my files, then spend an evening re-creating the playlists. My songs are already organized on my computer's hard disk in the same heirarchy as the empeg's playlists are (artist/album). My re-organization would be a purely mechanical process of dragging and dropping the songs into playlists in a specific order. The only work I'd lose is the choices I made when selecting my custom "Low Key" and "High Energy" playlists.

I'm guessing that the person who started this thread either: a) doesn't have his MP3's organized well on his hard disk and is counting on his playlists in the Empeg to organize them, or b) has put a lot of thought into making many custom playlists that are more complicated than the ones most folks would do. Either way, it's a valid concern.