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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
synthfreek's avatar
synthfreek
627 posts
 
I don't know where to start with this. The Drobo does not even include hard drives and it costs $400. You still have to install the hard drive(s) of your choosing so why mention "Not if the external drive fails"? You'd be choosing brands/makes/models of hard drives just like you would if you bought an external hard drive without a Drobo. Let me say this again for anyone not familiar with Time Machine. This is how easy it is. The very first time you plug in your hard drive to a usb or firewire jack a dialog box will come out asking if you would like to use this drive as a backup drive. You click yes AND THAT IS ALL YOU EVER HAVE TO DO. There is no messing around with software or anything. You can go into preferences and choose the time of backup and what folders/directories you'd like to backup if you don't want to backup the entire machine but that's about it. And it's FREE. It comes with your Mac. The Drobo may look nice but it seems completely unnecessary.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html
synthfreek's avatar
synthfreek
627 posts
 
I just want to clarify one thing. I have been referring to using 2 external hard drives. One for extra music storage and one strictly as a backup drive. $400 total or possibly less if less storage space is required.
rabco
49 posts
 
I use a 1TB Time Capsule.
I have it hardwired, rather than using it wirelessly.
Backs up my music library, and everything else, for that matter.
Works seamlessly.
macdadtexas
1,794 posts
 
Synthfreak, I own a Mac and I am well versed in Timemachine, Drobo is not backup, but redundant storage. It's not cheap initially, but in the long run as external drives fail, as every one I have had over the years has, it is MUCH cheaper. SATA drives, which DROBO takes, are extremely cheap and continue to fall in price with every larger capacities. As an example, if you put in (4) 1TB drives you will get approx 3.2 TB of storage space, and all of it is backed up on itself and secure. If 2 or 3 of the drives were to fail at once, you still have all of your data. If all 4 of your drives were to fail at once, there is something majorly wrong and you have bigger problems than data storage.

If you want to keep your iTunes secure, I know of no better way to do it. Also, if you have a very large collection you don't need to go to a RAID area to mirror 1 TB plus drives, or use the HD on your computer at all. iTunes allows you to easily path the library to the Drobo where it resides for all time without taking up any space on your computer. If any of the drives fail, the Drobo tells you to swich them out, and they are hot swapable.

Once again it's not a backup, it's a way to secure your iTunes, or any data file for that matter, without having to have mirror data files.
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