For reasons I’m still not entirely sure of, despite having become a Switcher (PC to Mac user for those who don’t know) 5 years ago, I have never done a proper backup of my iTunes library.
Overall, I do make regular backups of the two Macs in the house; the creaky but still working 12” iBook and my trusty 15” Powerbook. Both of the machines are backed up through Time Machine and the Powerbook also gets additional backups through SuperDuper and SmartBackup. We have a number of external drives on the network at home (and I’ll post the details of these later) which are also backed up.
I’ve never actually gotten round to making a full backup of my iTunes library however. I have to admit, I use iTunes more to watch video than listen to music through my iPod Touch. As a result, the library is approx 380Gb in size.
So I finally decided to do something about it. At home, we now have two Western Digital Elements 1Tb drives, as well as a 500 and a 320 Gb drive. The first of the 1Tb drives houses the iTunes library primarily, as well as other household files. The 500Gb is for Time Machine and Front Row / Sapphire DVD rips and the 320Gb drive for assorted work and iLife project storage.
Deciding I’d better make at least one copy of the iTunes library, I bought a brand spanking new WD Elements 1Tb drive, which arrived on Friday, was reformatted for Mac yesterday morning and then took the next 10 hours to make a copy!! The poor Powerbook was so hot it looked like it was going to melt.
This was through SmartBackup, the first time I’d used the program in anger so to speak and both of the required drives were connected directly to my Powerbook by USB 2.
If you have important files on your Mac, make a copy of them NOW! And then another copy on a completely seperate drive. And if you’re really serious about it, make another copy on a new drive and give it to a friend to look after.
An alternative is to watch the Backup podcast episode from Don McAllister’s Screencastsonline site for added inspiration - including one of those fabulous Drobo drives!
So in short - make lots of backups of important files before you loose them forever!
