Help me back up my iTunes to my external hard drive

June 18, 2009 4:49 PM

Help me back up my iTunes to my external hard drive. But only the new ones....

I feel like a tool for asking this because this is something I SHOULD know how to do but am drawing a blank and my google-fu has failed me.

Basically I keep my iTunes library on my laptop and occasionally (every month or so) do a backup of my entire iTunes library to my external harddrive in case my laptop dies (again). But the problem is I have a huge (~65 gigs) library and doing a full copy is about the stupidest idea I have ever had. All I want to do is have the files that aren't already there or that have changed somehow be pushed over.

and before you say "Just sort by 'date modified' and just copy those over", my library is organized by iTunes into folders so that doesn't work.

anyone know of a free app that will look at two folders and sync them?

posted by gwenlister to computers & internet (9 comments total)

rsync
posted by Lemurrhea at 4:57 PM on June 18

I meant to include a link that wasn't a reference manual, dammit.
posted by Lemurrhea at 4:58 PM on June 18

rsync -avP ~/Music/itunes/ /Volumes/$volume_name/

(or its windows equivalent...)
posted by pompomtom at 5:16 PM on June 18

(oops, that should probably be 'rsync -avP ~/Music/itunes /Volumes/$volume_name/'...)
posted by pompomtom at 5:16 PM on June 18

Not sure if you are on Windows or Mac - but if Windows: SyncToy from Microsoft is free, pretty easy to use and does the job. Here is an overview on how to use it.
Now I realize this is the second time this week I have reccomended a Microsoft tool, I am not a shill, honest!
posted by clarkie666 at 5:50 PM on June 18

CarbonCopyCloner does incremental backups, which is what you want. You can set it up to run automatically at a regularly scheduled time.
posted by daser at 7:02 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

I like "Sync Two Folders" - super easy drag'n'drop interface, good options for controlling what's going where. PC & Mac, free.
posted by Aquaman at 8:34 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Thanks for all the suggestions! Thanks!
posted by gwenlister at 4:22 AM on June 19

As others have said, rsync is the way to do that. You may want to consider adding a "--delete" switch to that, too, to delete files on your backup that you don't have in your library anymore (particularly useful with podcasts). My "backup-music" script looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
rsync -avPx --delete /Volumes/second/Music /Volumes/Music\ Backup

(I have my $HOME/Music symlinked to the second hard drive in my MBP, creatively named "second").

The reason for using rsync (or Microsoft's robocopy) is that the tools are smart enough to have a look around before copying, skipping files that are already on the target.
posted by eafarris at 10:10 AM on June 19