itunes backup suggestions

How hard is SuperDuper to use?

Synthfreek:

You should backup everything in your iTunes folder and not just the actual music files.

Good advice, but ....

On a Windows box, if you have your iTunes directory set to somewhere other than the default, as I do (E:\iTunes) then the music files are there, but the two files that represent the database are not.

They remain in My Documents\My Music\iTunes.

The two files are iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes Library.itl. You should back these up but you do have options. If all you have is the .xml file, iTunes can rebuild the .itl database file.

If you have neither (have lost them due to a crash) you can rebuild by adding the folder containing the music to the library, but this is sometimes not possible, and you have to add the files - that's super painful, but does work. If it is possible, it will take a long time for iTunes to crunch its way through.

If you have downloaded artwork from iTunes Store you also should have a backup of "Album Artwork".

So when you make a backup of your music files on a PC, copy the My Documents\My Music\iTunes folder that goes with it at the same time.

It's possible that the backup utility inside iTunes does both for you - never tried it. I have experienced corruption of the iTunes DB so I am pretty careful now.

Regards,

SuperDuper is about as easy to use as an application gets. When you launch, it scans for any attached drives. You pick the source drive from a pull-down menu on the left side of the window and a destination drive from the pull-down on the right, click "Copy now," click a confirmation button and the copy starts. A status window opens showing you what's going on and when the copy is done.

The first time you copy a large drive it will take a long time, depending on the size, the speed of the drive and whether you're using USB or Firewire. After the initial full copy only changed or new files will be copied so it takes only a few minutes, depending on how much new music you've ripped.

After you've chosen a source and destination drive the first time, those will come up as the default when you open the application but you can change it if you want to copy a different drive, or copy to a different drive. There are some other options, like having the application repair disk permissions before you start, but the basic operation is extremely easy, and easy to understand.

One of the side benefits of the application is that you can create a bootable clone of the drive in your computer, either in a partition on one of your big drives or on another external drive. It's very reassuring to have an exact copy of your operating system, data and applications on an external drive and be able to boot any compatible computer even if your hard drive fails.

Sfar

That really does sound easy...

So I can backup my external drive as well as the mini with the operating system? or does that not make sense...I just need to worry about the external with all the music. thoughts?

Jtwrace - Yes, you can back up any drive to any backup medium that has the capacity of the original. I use SuperDuper to back up an external drive with all the iTunes music and database on it, and also to clone the internal drive of the MacBook Pro so that I can boot from the clone if I ever need to.