Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, Internet Tools, iTunes
Backing up iTunes
Just like every machine with moving parts, the hard drive that holds your iTunes library will eventually stop working. Read that line again - I didn't say might stop working, but will stop. It's going to happen, so be prepared.Mark Nichols at zanshin recently wrote about his own experience of swapping and burning CDs and DVDs to back up iTunes purchases (something we blogged about awhile ago). That got me thinking about strategies for iTunes backups.
Time Machine and SuperDuper make it easy to execute local backups at regular intervals, but that's only half the battle. A good off-site backup of your mission-critical files (and I don't know about you, but for me, music is definitely considered mission-critical) is essential. You can go with services like Mozy or CrashPlan.
Personally, I've been very happy with Bandwagon. For only $12US per month, they provide the means to backup to either Amazon S3 or your own FTP server.
So, what's your solution? Please share in the comments, and save Mark another day of swapping discs in and out of his optical drive.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Sid said 5:13PM on 5-27-2008
I think of my iPod as my backup. I haven't tested this. Am I wrong?
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Justin said 5:58PM on 5-27-2008
mozy works here. In addition to my nearly 160GB iTunes library I can back up my 5GB Documents Folder and 10GB of recorded home movies from my Movies folder for less than $5/mo.
Ian said 7:03PM on 5-27-2008
I have to second Mozy. As far as online backup goes, they're tough to beat ($5/mo for *unlimited* space). The only downside I see from Mozy is that online backup isn't for everyone - I have a relatively fast 768Mbit/s upstream connection, and it takes forever to do the initial copy. It's best for those with, say, Fios, with their blazing upstream speeds.
Peter said 8:46PM on 5-27-2008
Ian - I had the same hope as you, but after switching to 5/2 FiOS I learned that uploads are capped at 1.0 Mb/sec.
I'm currently using their free service and I couldn't get a straight answer from Mozy support if the speed would be faster if I was paying, but I got the impression the answer was no.
Matthew Dornquast said 10:38AM on 5-28-2008
CrashPlan has no caps and tons of capacity. Better still, back up to another machine you own and avoid monthly fees altogether! You can seed the initial backup of say 500GB, then move it off-site and continue automatically!
Jeremy Brooks said 5:15PM on 5-27-2008
I use a simple shell script. It uses rsync to back up my iTunes content and library files to another drive that I keep at work.
You can find the script here: http://www.whirljack.net/jeremybrooks/2008/01/10/simple-fast-itunes-backup/
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NutMac said 5:24PM on 5-27-2008
rsync is a horrible backup tool. It won't backup symbolic links, resource forks, etc. for instance. Horrible if you need to backup Quicken data.
Jeremy Brooks said 5:39PM on 5-27-2008
NutMac:
rsync can handle symlinks in different ways, you just have to tell it what you want it to do. man rsync.
Gianni said 5:15PM on 5-27-2008
I use Unison to back up almost my entire user folder. I have it setup with 2 servers, 1 on my local network and 1 remote. The local one backs up everything (iTunes, Movies, Documents, &c...) and the remote server backs up just the essentials (Work Projects, Web Receipts, Docuemnts, &c...). It's powerful, free, and secure. I completely recommend Unison: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ . There is also a sweet OS X GUI for it: http://www.cs.haifa.ac.il/~shuly/unison/
Check it out!
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iband said 5:18PM on 5-27-2008
1. SuperDuper back-up to external every morning (backs up my 2nd/3rd internal HD (RAID) in MacPro that are set as a RAID to an external drive -- the RAID drive has four folders: Music, Photos, Movies, Documents).
2. SuperDuper back-up my start-up drive (1st internal HD in MacPro to partition on 4th internal HD -- only once every other week (the other partition is Win XP (not backed-up) -- theory: if there is a problem with the boot drive, it may take a few days to figure out that there is a problem...only backing up the boot drive every other week gives me time to figure out there's a problem and restore from the back-up prior to the problem
3. Time Machine - backs up RAID drive (Music, Photos, Movies, Documents)
4. Every week to two weeks, I bring home from work a portable drive to back-up my RAID drive (Music, Photos, Movies, Documents) -- knowing that I have everything off site gives me peace of mind that if something happened at the house, I'd have all but a week or so safe at the office.
Over the top? Nope. Just safe. Most of my friends don't even back-up!!
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Ryan said 5:19PM on 5-27-2008
Last I thought bandwagon did not work on leopard. Am I wrong in saying that? Not to mention they do not offer any more customers and their blog has not been updated since last year.
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NutMac said 5:21PM on 5-27-2008
Regarding Bandwagon, the idea of paying monthly for software seems wrong to me.
Although online (off-site) backup is ideal (protects you against disaster and theft), cost can get rather high if you have lots of data. At $4.95/month per Mac for unlimited capacity, Mozy Unlimited seems to be the cheapest out there. Another point to keep in mind is that it can take a LONG time to backup and restore over online backup. In most cases, you won't be able to backup or restore more than 10 GB per day.
So best: do both local backup (external hard disk, tape, optical) and online. If online back is too expensive for your wallet, at least backup crucial data (Mozy Pro gives you 2 GB for free).
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Republicofthoronia said 5:25PM on 5-27-2008
I've always just backed up to DVD's. I do it every couple months. 60GB music=13DVD's and takes little to no time. My house was robbed about a year ago and they took the external hard drive along with my laptop... so kapoot to that idea. I don't want to trust an external server any more than I'd trust my own computer. Hard copies=okay in my book.
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dylan said 5:28PM on 5-27-2008
I use time capsule to back up the HD in my laptop (100GB) and the HD in my mom's iMac (250GB) and that does its thing. Media files (which I tend to find most important to me) are also backed up on a regular (but not automatic) basis to the external HD attached to my PS3.
It would be SPECTACULAR if there was a way to attach a 1TB external drive to the USB port on the 1TB Time Capsule and be sort of a software raid. Does anyone know of any way to do this?
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CongoJoe said 5:29PM on 5-27-2008
I used to use carbon copy cloner but now i generally let time machine do its magic. I've already had a drive fail since using it and it restored everything brilliantly.
It backs up over the air to an xserve raid, I back the xserve up with Veritas via a windows box to LTO4.
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RazorD said 5:29PM on 5-27-2008
Mozy for me, all the way! all my machines use it, both windows and mac. $10 a month for both my machines for unlimited backup. Couldn't recommend it any higher!
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Richard said 5:37PM on 5-27-2008
I use mp3 tunes.com to back up my music. I have a really large library and it took about a MONTH to back everything up. But now, my music is available everywhere. It only costs $40/year, with is pretty cheap. It won't play DRM's music, which I have about 1,000 of, but, it will back them up and restore them to your pc or mac.
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colin.flanders said 5:43PM on 5-27-2008
i use a separate hdd to hold all music seeing how over a 100 gigs of music would be to much on my machine and running all my music directly from my portable hdd
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Alva said 5:44PM on 5-27-2008
JungleDisk
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Rubbinz said 5:45PM on 5-27-2008
I've been using iBackup for about 2 years now for iTunes backup. Good stuff, and free.
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