For those interested, I promised I would report back on my efforts to synchronize MC11 media files and cover art from my master computer to my backup computers. My reason for doing this is explained in my earlier posts above.
I can report, that it works. I used
SureSync (my new favorite file synchronization program). I synchronized the following files/folders on my source computer:
1) C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\J River\Media Center 11\Library\*.*
2) C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\J River\Media Center 11\Library Backups\*.*
3) C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\Data\Cover Art\*.*
4) E:\Classical\*.* [including all subfolders]
5) E:\Pop\*.* [including all subfolders]
6) E:\Soundtracks\*.* [including all subfolders]
with the corresponding destination directories on each backup computer. Note that the drive letter and file paths for items "1", "2" and "3" are identical on all computers. The drive letter for items "4", "5" and "6" are not identical, although the path folder names are identical.
Since the drive letters for the music files (items 4, 5 and 6) were not the same, I had to use Media Center's "Library > Find & Replace" function to replace all instances of "E:" with the appropriate drive letter on the destination computers (i.e., "L:"). It took awhile for 16,369 tags to be changed. Other than that, everything else worked fine. The MC database on the destination computers found all the mp3 and ape files and all the cover art associated with the music files. Had my source and destination computers used the same drive letter for the music files, I wouldn't have had to do a thing to any of the destination computers MC11 databases. A total of 16,369 files (150+ GB) were transferred using SureSync.
One final note. Today, Microsoft release a FREE file synchronization utility called
SyncToy. It's not as feature rich as "SureSync", but it is free and it does work. You can find it here:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Microsoft_SyncToy/1123084172/1