Library Backup Tool

[al-zoir]

Re: Library Backup Tool

I am very happy that finally some people is dealing with my big problem, that I have written so many times about. Recently, it's been three times in a week that I lost my MCC, and always I see that it's not the files of the songs that I lose, but the MCC itself with the data, some of what I lose for good. And it is always difficult and mostly impossible to remember titles or other data missing out of uknown or instrumental mp3s. Now, I lay my hope in what I did not actually see yet or test it, but I feel that at least someone is occupied with this, so the solution is there, somewhere in the near future. Pray for this, so many days lost in trying to rebuilt the ruined collection with no data available...

PS I remind my friends here that I deal with big sizes, unfortunately, and still try to... 85.000 mp3s in one collection, HDD of 2TB, which already has a problem, telling me (chkdsk) that almost one third of it is already ruined. I am planning to transport my files to a new HDD of equal, or bigger size (4TB), but I want to assure first the transportation of the full package of data. And of course, afterwards do a format to the HDD I am using now, and use it again.

[EliC]

Re: Library Backup Tool

Well, if someone with more know-how then me wanted to, I think all of this could be done well and freely with

ICE Mirror
ICE ECC
ImgBurn
and the loaders, either robot or manual from here

The trick is automating everything.

[maggior]

Re: Library Backup Tool

This is an interesting topic. Personally I like to archive things onto optical media, currently DVDs.

I have written a set of perl scripts that run on Linux to backup my music library. It uses a Linux DVD burning utility called genisofs. It's automated in that it can track what hasn't been backed up yet and detect changes in things that may have been backed up already.

I used to do this using a disc burning program, but it was quite a painful and time consuming task. I found myself neglecting my backup duties, which isn't good.

My scripts automated the checking of what to back up and building up a "project" (along with md5s for verification) for each DVD to back up to. It will also generate labels for each DVD that can be used as inserts in an album to store the discs.

My script automates the process to a point where the drawer opens, you put a disc in, it burns and verifies it, opens the drawer, you take the disc out and label it, you put another disc in, etc.

The ultimate would be to have a robotic arm to load and unload the discs :-). Though having it reduced to a mindless task was a big step forward for me.


The fashion today seems to be to back everything up to an external USB drive, or a set of them for redundancy. My script was poo-pooed for this reason in other forums for this reason. Personally I perfer to have the files backed up to optical media. Not that optical media doesn't have its problems, but mechanical hard drives have their own issues regarding longevity.

Others have pointed out in this thread that this is more of a data backup issue rather than a disc ripping/music library management issue. I tend to agree, though it would be a neat enhancement to a library management tool like J.River Media Center or Media Monkey. I don't think something like this has a place in dbPowerAmp.

[Teknojnky]

Re: Library Backup Tool

Since I originally posted this, years ago now, I recently thought how this concept should work transparently with any storage media, be it optical or HDD (or even network/cloud) storage.

In other words, stick in any cd/dvd/bluray/hardisk, have it added to the storage pool and start backing up your media/library data.

Imagine such a system based on something like ZFS with dedupe & parity/redundancy all built in...