[aom3]

Backing up digital information should now be as common as locking your car when you leave. Digital information, can be photos, documents, emails, personal settings, but in this case we are referring to our music collection. Music collection can be a different back up process to others, due to its large size, specific folder structure and the regularity at which you back up.

This guide is aimed at users who want a cost and time effective solution at backing up their music.

The general user usually has around 100GB-200GB of music stored on their computer. An internet back up solution such as dropbox, mozy, carbonite etc.. wouldn't be feasible as internet connection speeds just arn't up to par yet, thus taking you possibly years depending on your connection speed to back up your music. So a cost-effective, usb connected, portable and large storage solution would be great. Since the prices of portable usb storage media has dropped so much, now is the time to invest in one.

I brought my portable hard drive from ebay for under $50 for 300GB. There are lots of hard drive sizes for different needs, e.g. 100GB, 200GB, 500GB+ etc..

and mine looks like this; small, lightweight packs with loads of free gigs:
b922_1.JPG
I have about 3 of these, 1 for music, 1 that I take with me when I travel and 1 that I keep for my parents backup.

Note; large storage usb hard drives usually require 2 free usb ports on your computer to get the power they need.

Using usb hard drives are very easy, just plug them and voila, you can browse your external hard drive via windows explorer.

Backing Up
Most people at this stage would jump straight in and just copy over their whole music collection every time they want to back it up. If your using the default Microsoft windows to do this, this can be very time consuming as windows xp doesn't have a sync check and will just copy the whole lot, so that could mean transferring hundreds of gigs at usb speeds.

For this problem, I recommend using the free version of TeraCopy
1178071395-1.jpg
TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, also providing you with a lot of features.

TeraCopy has an inbuilt feature that can copy only files that are not present on destination folder. So you will basically only copy newer files over. I also use TeraCopy for general copying duties as it beats windows copying hands down.

And thats all to it really, no more risky computing

[Nightfly]

Thank you if there is anybody who needs this info,it's me,after my current loss of files
due to a hard system crash. I will not let that happen again

[Rebel Rebel]

Hi,

Excellent advice. I also have a second backup of my music collection and family photos. I keep this at my brother-in-law's place because, as well as possible disk failure, if my house should burn down or flood (or some similar disaster) then I'd loose both the original and backed up collection as it's stored at the same location. As my music collection is over 300GB off-site back-up is essential for me. Easy enough to rotate the 2 back-ups regularly - and it gives me a good reason to drop over for a beer (as if I ever need a reason for a beer).

Cheers,

[rolly]

as windows xp doesn't have a sync check

What.Windows doesn't have rsync?

I will not let that happen again

I'll be watching you.

[Nightfly]

Originally Posted by rolly

What.Windows doesn't have rsync?


I'll be watching you.

Thanks somebody has gotta......

[Martinman]

Originally Posted by Rebel Rebel

Hi,

Excellent advice. I also have a second backup of my music collection and family photos. I keep this at my brother-in-law's place because, as well as possible disk failure, if my house should burn down or flood (or some similar disaster) then I'd loose both the original and backed up collection as it's stored at the same location.

Cheers,

I concur. I keep everything on a 500 GB backup. (I will admit that Mac's TimeMachine is very slick.) I also keep music and photos on two pocket book drives (duplicated); one lives in a safety deposit box in case of anything happening due to bad luck or bad people. I also keep all document files in a safety deposit box as well.

Every couple of weeks I bring the one home from the bank, update it and return it. I can travel with the one pocket book with my laptop, jump drives etc. Glad to see these getting bigger in GB size but not physical size.

Sir Nightfly, I sincerely hope you are recouping your losses bit by bit and will have them back in due time. This is when I think that bad things shouldn't happen to good people...

Martinman

[Nightfly]

Originally Posted by Martinman

I concur. I keep everything on a 500 GB backup. (I will admit that Mac's TimeMachine is very slick.) I also keep music and photos on two pocket book drives (duplicated); one lives in a safety deposit box in case of anything happening due to bad luck or bad people. I also keep all document files in a safety deposit box as well.

Every couple of weeks I bring the one home from the bank, update it and return it. I can travel with the one pocket book with my laptop, jump drives etc. Glad to see these getting bigger in GB size but not physical size.

Sir Nightfly, I sincerely hope you are recouping your losses bit by bit and will have them back in due time. This is when I think that bad things shouldn't happen to good people...

Martinman

Thank you so much my friend.I am getting my computer life back together again.
Never thought it would happen to the mighty Nightfly.....
But you are never to old to learn life lessons and learn new things and
make changes in your life.

But due to Mp3sale Soundsbox and Emusic I was able to recoup at least a
third to half of my music.Because of the ability to re-download your music.
Something those that are looking for a new site should consider.

You seem to have quite a excellent B/U plan in place,good for you....

Take care,

[Martinman]

But due to Mp3sale Soundsbox and Emusic I was able to recoup at least a
third to half of my music.Because of the ability to re-download your music.
Something those that are looking for a new site should consider.

[Martinman]

Originally Posted by Nightfly

Thank you so much my friend.I am getting my computer life back together again.
Never thought it would happen to the mighty Nightfly.....
But you are never to old to learn life lessons and learn new things and
make changes in your life.

But due to Mp3sale Soundsbox and Emusic I was able to recoup at least a
third to half of my music.Because of the ability to re-download your music.
Something those that are looking for a new site should consider.

You seem to have quite a excellent B/U plan in place,good for you....

Take care,

Hi Nightfly

Glad to see it's slowly coming back and thanks for listing the sites that offer good customer service. If anyone else has had experience with other sites for the same reason, it would be great to add them here. You continue to provide us with excellent info, even in with the adversity of music loss. You're a class act Sir.

Eventually it will come together. In time it'll be bigger and better than it was. As for the old computer, I suggest this after you've exhausted any data retreival:

I developed my backup plan when I lost some photos off of a pocket book drive moving from Oz to Canada and wasn't able to bring the computer. After that, as my collection kept growing, so did my paranoia!

Martinman

[approaching oblivion]

I bought a new computer for Xmas and also bought a new 2 terabyte external to put all my music collection on. After I spent 2 months transfering over and organizing my collection, the external crashed. Luckily most of my 100,000+ mp3 collection was still on some smaller externals with my old computer (that I gave to my son) so I didn't lose anything. I also backup anything I d/l on dvd's.