itunes backup suggestions

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.

Sfar-

Looks like I need to get SuperDuper!

This way I can clone my mini and my external drive that has the itunes music. I didn't know that you can clone two different drives onto one. SuperDuper will allow you to select multiple drives to clone or do you clone one then set the other as the normal one to clone? My mini has nothing on it other then the OS. My 1TB drive as all the music on it.

If you're going to copy two different drives to one backup drive you'll need to partition the backup drive so that it appears to be two separate drives. You can do that with the Disk Utility application that comes with the Mac OS.

Before you start using the backup drive use Disk Utility to create two partitions on it, one the same size as the internal drive of the Mini and the other with all the remaining space.

For instance, if you have a 1 TB drive as your backup and your Mini has a 160 Gb internal drive, create one 160 Gb partition on the backup drive to use as a clone of the Mini's internal drive and another partition that uses all the remaining space on the 1 TB drive. Theoretically that will be 840 Gb but in reality it will be somewhat less than that.

When you start up the backup drive it will show up as two separate drives, one the same size as your Mini's internal drive where you can clone the operating system and a second where you can backup your iTunes drive.