Thank you for that Christina. I dont normally use DOS because in general I dont know what I'm doing, but I'll try this before long. Might as well try for a better grip on the subject!
For now Waynes suggestion (another one that I should have thought of for myself) seems to solve my immediate concerns. Straight forward copying from My Music to a data disc retains all the information in a manner that the Windows software can read. Best of all, its very quick. So I just make a small group of backup discs for the PC, and any audio discs I want for portable players, an application where writing the contents on the back is fine by me. Sorted. Thanks to you both.