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[rsg]

Just wondering what people are doing to securely back up their (possibly large) music files. Once a month, I copy any new files on to an external drive that is kept off site. I can't do a simple full copy, of course, (I only want the material that has been added to MC in the last 30 days), so I have to go in and copy over individual albums. It seems a less than intuitive way to do it. I could delete everything on the external drive and then copy everything over, but doing that for 600 GB of music would take a long time, and that method seems unwieldy anyway, especially via USB 2.

Is there a better way to manage this critical task?

[jmone]

I use Free File Sync (just be careful not to install any adware offered).  Lets you preview any changes then you can sync the differences.

[adphil]

I use Free File Sync (just be careful not to install any adware offered).  Lets you preview any changes then you can sync the differences.

Me too, works like a charm. And on the Mac there doesn't seem to be any adware.

I've got several external disks that each can hold my entire music collection. Every week, I use Free File Sync to make the oldest one of those disks identical to my reference disk. Since you'll only be copying or deleting the differences it won't take much time at all. I also put my disks in different places, one could even be off site at all times.

[Al ex]

Allway Sync. Using this for years now. Makes incremental backups to my NAS a couple of minutes after new files or changed files have been detected...

Gesendet von meinem HUAWEI P8max mit Tapatalk

[imeric]

I use Free File Sync (just be careful not to install any adware offered).  Lets you preview any changes then you can sync the differences.

Same here.  Works like a charm. I also have mirror copies on 2 other PCs in the house plus an external drive I use at work.  Just make sure drive have the same letter and you can also back up restore libraries easily between PCs. I backup my precious and priceless music files + family pictures and videos.

EDIT: Almost forgot the Wife's MAC in the house that also has a copy of the music files I sync with freefilesync and windows PCs.
ANOTHER EDIT!: I also do the sync manually.  This is a good way to ensure I keep a close eye on changes that were made either by Picasa (Pictures) or JRiver.  Yes I still use Picasa for a very simple feature that is not supported in MC: When you import pictures Picasa uses the date the picture was taken to create folders and JRiver uses the Date imported...

[Bizarroterl]

I've been using fastcopy and it has some nice features I like.  I can set up various tasks to do after a copy/move is complete, ie shutdown my PC when done.  Works really well when I'm backing up a full BR rip and don't want to wait for it to complete.

[DJLegba]

Nothing so fancy for me. When I rip a CD or buy a download it goes into a Music folder on an external drive, then gets copied to the MC library drive. Every now and then I move the contents of the Music folder to another external drive, which I keep offline most of the time. So I always have two copies, and I don't have to try to figure out which files are new when I copy to the main backup drive.

[rsg]

So, DJLegba, every time, having deleted the previous version, you copy the whole music collection to the second drive?

[DJLegba]

So, DJLegba, every time, having deleted the previous version, you copy the whole music collection to the second drive?

Moving the new files from the external drive (not the MC library drive) to the backup drive removes them from the external drive. So the external drive never contains the whole music collection - just the files I've acquired since the last backup. I always have two copies of the files - one "active" copy in MC, and one copy that is either on the external drive or the backup drive.

[rsg]

Right, I get it now. Thanks for the tip!

[maxxsid]

I've been using TGRMN ViceVersa for ages and I like it.
Free File Sync looks nice but doesn't work for me since it doesn't allow comparing file names only (it's filename+size or filename+size+time or I am wrong?).
I do edits on the media storage drive and don't want the size/time to be included when comparing files.
--max

[blgentry]

Huh?  Why would you not want the file size to be used?  If it's not, you'll end up with different files on your source disk and your backup disk.  Your edits will be in one place and the unedited files in another.  That's no good for backups.

Brian.

[maxxsid]

Oh.. I use Acronis for real backups. ViceVersa I use for locating and syncing new files.
I have 3 locations where I store my media.

-- My main desktop - all originals are stored there. New files go there first. No edits are made.
-- My backup media storage - I sync originals to there (transfer new files from the desktop with ViceVersa)
-- My media server - files are stored there and used for playback. Files there are photoshoped, tags are edited, etc. Properties (including size and timestamp) are changed but the names stay unchanged.
Despite the changes in properties, ViceVersa still allows to compare and find only newly added files (on the main desktop) to transfer to the media server.

Every drive in my system is backed up once or twice a month with Acronis True Image.

[Trumpetguy]

I use Free File Sync (just be careful not to install any adware offered).  Lets you preview any changes then you can sync the differences.

Same here, manual copy every few days to my NAS. In addition, I use a trustworthy cloud service with nightly automatic sync.

This solution takes care of all music, ripped movies and the entire family's photos.

[8139david]

I use SyncBack Free, every month, to make a miror of each of my main music folders.
(These are on different discs, since my laptop can ony hold part of it.)

[CalJake]

I use Microsoft's SyncToy to do what you describe.  Obviously the first back up took awhile, but now I do incremental back-ups once a week which are very quick.  My music library is on a Synology NAS, so once a month I also use the Synology Hyper Backup to back-up to an external USB drive.  Again, first time took awhile, but now they're incremental and quick.