The Day Today

Since I bought my Macbook primarily for my media, I’ve been thinking about how I want to backup and archive my iTunes library. I’ve come up with a solution that works right for me, and once I’m moved and have set up a network in the new flat I’ll be able to make the finishing touches. This solution gives me a backup locally and remotely in a few simple steps.

First, I have bought a 320GB Western Digital Passport. I have set up an rsync that effectively mirrors my main iTunes library onto the external drive, which covers a “local” backup. I have also set up a seperate iTunes library on the drive, called ‘iTunes Archive’. To this I move the TV shows purchased through iTunes that I’ve watched, which means I can remove them from my main library and frees up space on my Mac.

For remote backup, I have an account with Mozy. Unfortunately Mozy don’t currently offer archiving so once something is removed from my Mac (or PC) it’s also removed from my Mozy backup. To solve this I will set up an rsync from my Mac to my PC that mirrors my iTunes library except the TV Shows and Movies folders, which will be a straight copy (no mirroring). This will mean that the PC will effectively have an archive of all of these items. This archive will then be uploaded to Mozy on the next run. Perfect!

The only concerns I can think of are:

• If I make purchases on my PC rather than my Mac (not likely but possible of course)
• until I have the rsync set up with the PC I have to make sure I have my ‘iTunes Archive’ on my Mac as well as the external drive (not a problem as I’m not too low on space yet).

I’m hoping that Apple announce improvements to iTunes at the upcoming WWDC in June, such as better management of TV Shows and Movies and perhaps a proper iTunes Server solution. By the way I am loving my Macbook Pro, and also really pleased with the WD Passport and can’t recommend either of them enough!