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I Tunes Backup

After loading about 500 CD'S I started to think about a way to back up My music. I have my music on a external hard drive now, [ a Mac Mini system ] I see most of you have either a second hard drive or a raid system for backup . I also thought about that way to go but went another way and picked up a external DVD burner and make backup DVD duel layer disk's . I think this is a little simpler for me to do than set up a raid system i know it may be a pain to load all the data back on to a new hard disk when it fails but. I want to know if anybody else is doing this or do you just have several hard drives or a raid set up. Any thoughts on backing up your music for now I own all the CD'S I ripped to the hard drive but that may change [ download , library , friends CD'S ] thanks for your thoughts Marc
lake513
macdadtexas
1,794 posts
 
I bought a Drobo and Drobo Share which is basically infinite storage with self-contained back up. I have pathed my iTunes there, and it currently has 4TB drives in it. That gives me 3.2 TB of storage, and backs it all up. If any of the drives fails, Drobo tells you to replace it, and you just plug in a new one. I don't back anything up past this, because it backs it all up internally. Really a great invention.
puerto
372 posts
 
I use a Cavalry 1TB external HD ( mirror back-up system). It wasn't cheap, about $450, but all of my iTunes library is backed-up on it and sitting on the shelf. Since the entire library is also in iTunes on the iMac internal HD there is no need to keep the Cavalry hooked-up. Once the library exceeds the iMac internal HD it will be necessary to make choices as to what stays in the iMac and what is listened to only when pulling it from the Cavalry. My library is about 525 CDs strong and growing. Since getting the Cavalry I no longer burn back-up copies of CDs.
vegasears
1,173 posts
 
I use a Western Digital - My Book Studio Edition II 2TB External USB 2.0/FireWire/eSATA Hard Drive with my Mac Mini. It has two, 1 TB drives and it's is mirrored like Puerto's. It's Mac compatible and has easy to follow set up instructions.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=410

etep29
20 posts
 
Don't count on DVDs, especially dual layer dvds. In my experience, (i owned a prepress service business, archiving gigs of data every day for clients) average off the shelf DVDs had a pretty high failure rate, around 18% when stored in jewel cases in a climate controlled environment for 1 year. Dual layer were worse. I did find however that archival DVDs (single layer Mitsui gold to be specific) stored as above have had a 100% data retention rate thus far. At more than a dollar a pop when bought in bulk they're not cheap, but a decent option. Still as stated by others, an external hard drive is your simplest if not least expensive option.
synthfreek's avatar
synthfreek
627 posts
 
What's so hard about using Time Machine? You don't have to know ANYTHING about RAID, NAS or anything...you just plug in the extra drive and it'll guide you through it all.
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