Mac Leopard, iTunes, apple lossless best backup

I'm not sure if it'll work, but within iTunes there is a "back up to disk" command - not sure it will work to an external disk though - worth a try as you'd likely be backing up all the data since iTunes is doing the backing up. I know it works to burn a set of DVD backups. Have you considered a RAID? If not, here's a relatively economical solution, but it would make the drives you've already purchased, well, er, redundant (sorry). It uses internal drives - you'd have to pull them out of the housings, which I'd guess you probably don't want to do. I don't know that I'd be comfortable with TimeMachine's reliability at this point. Early on there were lots of reports in the Apple forums about folks losing data via TimeMachine. Mac's already come out with at least one update for 10.5 already. I don't know if that addressed any of the problems folks were having. Anyway, I'd wait to make sure they sort out all the kinks there. You may want to check out this thread though the poster's problems have more to do with WAV files, and sounds like you are using AppleLossless, which don't have the same properties (metadata can go with the AL files AFAIK). Not sure why your backup is going slowly though...you should be able to drag and drop one hard drive onto a second and, via a fast interface like Firewire or USB 2.0 it should go relatively quickly. USB 1.0 might take a while. I copied a 300gig drive via USB 1 and it took several hours. Copy the drive and disconnect the original drive and make sure the music and metadata all shows up in iTunes. It's a good idea to copy your itunes folder as well as it has all data that is the structure of your library. That file is much smaller than your actual music files. Back it up whenever you add music to your library (as well as the actual music). Some folks store their music natively, within the overall iTunes folder in the subfolder "itunes music". If you store on external drives your actual music is on the external drive, and the stuff that holds it all together is in that iTunes folder. You can rebuild the library if you loose the iTunes foler, but it's bit of a PITA and takes a bit of time. Per the thread I refered to above; I know enough about this stuff to be dangerous. Regardless, hope that helps.

Marco

PS TimeMachine technically is acting to some degree, just like a RAID.

What's wrong with Time Machine?

I actually created an automator script that opens iTunes and copies all stuff not copied before to a backup folder.

I have also found time machine to work just fine.

- Chris
Computer Audiophile | Turn Down The Silence

http://www.computeraudiophile.com

What's wrong with Time Machine?

Just check out a few of the discussions here. Nothing is "wrong" with TimeMachine as a concept. But if you go to the Apple discussion forums you will come across a whole lot of reports from early on where folks had lost data from relying on it. There has also been problems with Disk Utility formating FAT32 drives at that time. Again, Mac has come up with an update since then, so it may all be sorted out at this point. If TimeMachine is working, that's fine. I don't know if it can be set to back up an external (non-boot) drive with your music files on it. Certainly if you've put them on your boot drive it will back them up, but I don't do that. As I understand it, it backs up your boot (startup) drive that has Leopard on it. I've been using it successfully thus far on my g5 tower, but I've yet to have to rely upon the backup. My suggestion was to give it time to prove itself out. It's a great feature, don't get me wrong.

"I'm not sure if it'll work, but within iTunes there is a "back up to disk" command - not sure it will work to an external disk though"

This is only for backing up to DISC not DISK. I wish it worked for both.

- Chris
Computer Audiophile | Turn Down The Silence

http://www.computeraudiophile.com