A Simple Backup Strategy

If you buy music and keep it on a hard drive, you need a backup. Whether you're buying digitally and all you have is a bunch of MP3s, or whether you're ripping CDs, you don't want the cost/effort (re-purchasing or re-ripping) of replacing it when your hard drive dies (and it is a when). So here's some notes on backing all your stuff up. While these notes apply to the example of a music collection, you should also add in anything else (eg. photos) that's at risk if your laptop or hard drive dies or is stolen.

My basic strategy is:

1. Keep master music folders on laptop (for iTunes) and NAS (FLAC files)
2. Perform regular backup to external hard drive
3. Stash backups off-site (family or friend's house, storage unit, etc)

I'm not going to cover cloud backup here, because it's probably not financially viable for the file sizes we're talking about (my files run to almost 1TB). Costs will come down, speeds will go up, but for now, dumping to an external drive makes most sense for me.

What To Backup

First you need to know where your files are. It helps if you have everything neatly organised into one or two directories. iTunes users, see my previous post on letting iTunes organise your music folders. I'm going to assume we're talking about a single big folder of music files.

What To Backup To

I use small portable USB hard drives (Western Digital passport), they work fine, they have some basic password protection, but anything with sufficient capacity should do.

When To Backup

As often as possible. Realistically, it's good to get into a routine of backing up every week. How much can you afford to lose if the worst happens?

Backup Scripts / Tools

While you could just do a basic filecopy of everything, this can take time. Better to just do an incremental backup of the changes.

I use Robocopy on the PC to achieve this. My script is very basic - a simple batch file. So create a text file called "backupMusic.bat" that contains this:

robocopy "C:\Users\Me\Music\iTunes" "G:\iTunes" /MIR /V

Tweak for where your files are, add extra lines for other folders you need backed up, but that's basically it. Oh, and do get the source and destination folders the right way round, probably best testing by putting a few files in a directory and backing them up, then making a change and running the backup again. You want to be confident this will work.

To run the backup, you just plug in the external drive, double-click on the .bat file, and watch it do its magic. As only the changes are copied, this should, after the first time you run it, be a very quick process.

Note: because of windows drive assignments, I got lazy and built identical "backupMusicToF.bat", "backupMusicToG.bat" copies.

Recovery

Remember: any backup you can't recover from didn't happen. Test that your strategy works by recovering the files. A simple file copy back off the backup drive should be enough.

How Many Backups

Conventional wisdom is that you want three copies of your data:

1. Local / working - your laptop or NAS
2. On-site backup - USB or network backup in case of hard drive failure
3. Off-site backup - external drive (or cloud storage) in case of fire/meteor or other disaster

The Awesome Uselessness Of CDs On Demand

So I was sitting around the house, buying CDs, or at least trying to buy a CD. Thing is, the band in question ("Denial Machine", it's not really important), a small American band, didn't seem to have actually released their album on CD in the UK. Sure, there was a download available, but no sign of the CD in the usual long-tail internet retailers. So before grudgingly accepting a lower-quality download, I tried Amazon in the states, just to see what the import price might be. And in addition to the usual CD and MP3 sources, they offered a "CD on demand" version. You buy, they burn the lossless files to a disc, print artwork, and ship across the Atlantic. Awesome. Except, it's kind of unnecessary. Got me thinking, "why no lossless download?". After all, there are sites out there offering music in nice high-bitrate CD-quality lossless.

The reasons for stores sticking to offering MP3 (or AAC) downloads are probably something like:

1. Offering downloads in a single format reduces customer confusion
2. MP3 is a popular universal format
3. Niche lossless formats typically require more knowledge or specialised software, which means more customer support
4. Most people, with their combination of ears and equipment, struggle to tell the difference between higher bitrate lossy (MP3) and lossless, so MP3 is fine
5. Lossless versions of files take three times as much space to store, a valid consideration for a store with many thousand albums selling in small numbers

The last point is obviously no longer valid when you have to store the lossless masters for your on-demand printing anyway. Got me thinking "what else stops them cutting out printing a CD?".

What about piracy/DRM? Not an issue, the CD is basically DRM-free WAVs, I'm only going to rip to FLAC and stuff the CD on a shelf, and not share the files around because I'm a nice guy. And anyway, the MP3s are DRM-free.

Offering lossless downloads means you have to start explaining the difference between lossy and lossless. You probably have to price accordingly, which means explaining why your "lower quality and no distribution costs" MP3 version currently costs the same as the CD, or pricing the lossless above the CD for delivery convenience. And your nice simple two-format "CD or download" options become confusing. This is a likely motive. Incidentally, Play.com seem to get by just fine offering downloads in both 256kbps and 320kbps.

Lossless files are big. Means long download times. Again, a possible reason. If you're on dial-up.

Thing is, I know the issues with buying lossless music, I'm OK with the higher prices. I'd really rather buy lossless directly than wait a month for Amazon to burn the lossless files to a disc and ship them (at great cost) so I can re-construct them on my hard drive. Of course, I'd probably be denied the ability to buy a download from a US site that has a store in my country anyway.

In the end, I bought the original CD, on import. It'll take a few weeks, but it's better quality and (postage costs aside) as cheap as buying the lossy download over here.

Look, the DIY approach of just getting your music out there and not relying on a record company to distribute it is great, and more or less necessary. And I understand that most people have accepted that lossy downloads are "good enough". Maybe one day I'll forget how things were in the 1990s and do the same.

CDs on demand are still better than lossy downloads, especially if all the nasty rumours about record companies trying to ditch CDs in favour of downloads are true. But please, everyone, consider just selling us music in 1990s/CD quality bitrate.

iTunes: Beware The "Keep Media Folder Organised" Option

There's a choice to be made when it comes to deciding where your music is stored and who's responsible for managing this - you or iTunes. Unfortunately, unlike most iTunes options, it's difficult to change your mind later, and not understanding or respecting the decision you make about this can lead to disaster (as in a "music being randomly deleted" disaster).

I used to think it was obvious - just let iTunes manage stuff. After a number of arguments with various people on discussion forums, I've realised that there probably isn't a single correct way to do things, it all depends on where iTunes fits as part of your music management strategy.

The Big Red File Organisation Button

So first of all, we're dealing with two iTunes preferences. The settings are in the edit->preferences->advanced dialog under "iTunes media folder location". You'll want to check or uncheck "keep iTunes media folder organised" and "copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library". In most cases, you'll set both to the same checked/unchecked setting (but do read on before deciding).

This dialog also tells you where your files live (if iTunes is managing them). Alternatively, inspect the properties of a track ("get info") if you can't find it.

Letting iTunes Manage Your Music

Unless you really really need to, because your tunes are also managed and used by another application, I'd recommend you let iTunes do the work. If you go and "keep iTunes media folder organised" it'll automatically file music in a single "iTunes Music" folder, sorting tracks into an "artist/album" folder structure, mirroring any tag changes in the file/folder names.

It makes sense, if you're letting iTunes manage what your files are called and where they go, to have iTunes copy any imported tracks into the iTunes music folder - ensure the "copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library" option is ticked.

I use this approach, but then I use iTunes to manage a secondary, portable copy of my library, primarily for feeding my iPod and iPad. The key advantages of this approach are that your file and folder structure represents your library (so you can find your files), and your files get stored in a single location.

You can even use this option to make sense of a messy library, turning "one big folder of MP3s" into a nice organised folder structure (assuming your tags are correct). Do make sure you have a back-up of your original files first though.

Managing Your Music Yourself

Leave the options off and iTunes will leave your files alone. Whatever you change when editing file info in iTunes, the filename, folder and location will remain unaffected. This is absolutely the way to go if you have other applications relying on these files, or if you just don't trust iTunes.

Don't Cross The Streams, That Would Be Bad

Be VERY careful when switching from one approach to the other. If you have the music management option switched off, turning it back on has been known to delete files (maybe they're known to iTunes but not in the iTunes music folder, or they're now squatting illegally in the iTunes library folder), so best to back up your files before radically restructuring your library.

The Big Decision

It's worth realising that letting iTunes manage your files isn't some kind of "nanny mode", and it doesn't hide the details (you can still go explore the files on your hard drive). It's just a question of which option works best for you.

• Letting iTunes manage your files - if you use iTunes as your primary application for browsing, managing and playing your files (or the "portable" versions of your files if you're like me and keep an additional lossless library) then yes, let iTunes manage your files.
• If you play, manage and tag your files in other application(s) and only use iTunes to feed your iPod, and maybe as an occasional music shop and player, then turn this off and don't let iTunes mess with your files.