Every now and then I change a lot in my library, and I have dicovered that for a total and anal backup maniac it's rather stupid to have any info at all stored in the files. I have full backups of my library for every change, so I don't think there's much chance of loosing any info. Or is there a possible scenario where I can loose that info?
Are you talking about moving to a library only way of working, in the sense that no tags are ever written to the files and eveything is stored only in the library ?
The losing library info part is harder to protect against as you need to have a system of checks & balances in place. There are 2 types of errors that can happen user error & system error.
For system errors in previous instances of library corruption, either through a crash (bad memory) or power interruptions, i would check a viewscheme that showed me genres, album artist, Albums in the panes and make note of the total files & size. The totals for the above panes indicated at the top of the pane would also be noted.
Further i would quickly scroll across to see if any fields had been blanked out as a result of the crash, usually i would see one field totally empty in which case i would know instantly to restore from backup. I had another viewscheme that has just one pane, for albums to give me an overall album count.
I also have viewschemes to keep track of imported cue albums, i had a nasty surprise when i inadvertantly lost a few hundred imported album cue items, because
fix broken links was checked (default) in the import dialog. All imported cue items are considered missing and are summarily wiped out. I keep about 2 months of library backups ever since.
You also have to limit yourself to tried & tested versions of MC to rule out any bugs from corrupting the library, so daily upgrades are defnitely out.
User errors are harder to protect against, all i can think of is do library updates when well rested and never late at night
Other than that i'd be interested in ideas ppl have to ensuring the library is ok.