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Mac Leopard, iTunes, apple lossless best backup

Hi,
I'm downloading all of my disks to my dedicated music server, all 450 CDs and it is taking forever. My question involves backups. What is the best way to back up _all_ data.

I want to include all the Apple lossless files created for the tracks, playlists and almost as important as the Apple Lossless files, the album artwork I had to assign to about 30% of my CDs.

My layout is:
Macbook w/ 120 GB, -- where the applications and user account
External Drive 1 - Firewire 500gb drive -- all the lossless files
External Drive 2 - Firewire 500 gb drive -- where the backup should be deposited.

Should I just use disc copy for Drive 1 -->> Drive 2 and then manually lay onto Drive 2 the iTunes library files for the user account that created all the files? If so, what directory are all these files located?

Or should I "trust" Time Machine and when Drive 1 fails in the future figure out how to get "all" the data back from the backup drive?

Thanks.
nycjdc

Showing 2 responses by sidssp

sidssp
1,077 posts
 
I think you have asked this question before. Have you tried SilverKeeper from LaCie? It is free and simple. Don't use Time Machine to backup iTunes tracks.
sidssp
1,077 posts
 
Jdillard,

As changes are made to a file, Time Machine wants to keep multiple versions of the file so that you can go back in time to retrieve the old version. As you reorganize tracks in iTunes, iTunes will rename tracks and move tracks from folder to folder causing multiple copies of the same track being backed up by Time Machine. Also, any changes made to embedded meta data (artist, genre, track number, etc...) will cause multiple copies being backup as well. Obviously, this is not a very efficient way of using disk space.

What you really want is a program that will keep your primary iTunes library and the backup library completely in sync. If a file is deleted from primary, it should be deleted from backup. If a file is added to primary, it should be added to backup as well. In other words, you want the backup to be identical to the primary.

In the case the primary crashes, you want to be able to simply replace the primary with the backup (maybe with minor configuration change due to different volume names), restart iTunes and get back to business. You can't do that with Time Machine. With Time Machine, you must get a new drive and restore all your music files from the backup. It may take a whole day if you have 500G of music.
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