[Housteau]

I just transferred my iTunes Music files to a new hard drive from my failing original one.  It went pretty well considering the condition of my original external drive.  I used iTunes to transfer everything over.  The process stalled once about 1/4 of the way through when the original HD locked up.  When I restarted the process it began back at the beginning and re-transferred those files already done, creating duplicates in the new HD.  Is there a way to transfer iTunes in steps where if I had to do this again I could avoid such duplication and begin where the process had left off?  I tried to manually move a few, but since iTunes did not make those moves, that music could not be found by iTunes in the new HD.  But, everything is now where it needs to be and I just have some file clean up to do.

I have an online back up of everything that is constant and automatic.  I also manually update a copy of my iTunes music to another HD set for FAT32 for my Bryston BDP file player to use.  Since you cannot just simply create manual back ups of your iTunes music and expect iTunes to locate and work with it, what is the best method of keeping a safe back up of ones iTunes collection to be used in the event of a HD failure holding those media files?  I got lucky this time with my original having just enough life left to allow me to do a proper transfer.  It would be foolish to count on luck a second time.

[JohnR]

Hi, you could use Carbon Copy Cloner - ?

[Housteau]

Hi, you could use Carbon Copy Cloner - ?

I am not sure if that would do what I want.  Ideally I would like to have a second HD as an automated clone that I can seamlessly switch over to in the event the original HD would fail once again. 

Currently I have the split file system where the media in on the external HD and the library files are on the computer.  Should I have them combined on my external HD before trying to set this up?

It is common today to have a NAS multi-bay storage unit with multiple HDs as automated back-ups.  If one fails the others just take over and you replace the failed one.  I would like to do something similar for my iTunes, but don't know enough about what needs to be done to make this happen.

[JohnR]

AFAIK, iTunes doesn't offer automatic failover. But you can set up a NAS and have iTunes read from it.

[Housteau]

AFAIK, iTunes doesn't offer automatic failover. But you can set up a NAS and have iTunes read from it.

I was considering a simpler system with just a second HD in parallel with the first that I could manually switch over to and have iTunes recognize, in the event the primary HD would fail.  I am trying to eliminate going through the entire move library method that I just went through.

[GentleBender]

You could use an external drive with RAID 1. With that you could have one drive fail and still be running without having to rebuild the library. Just would need to replace the bad drive with an exact same drive. Are we talking Mac or PC?

[Housteau]

You could use an external drive with RAID 1. With that you could have one drive fail and still be running without having to rebuild the library. Just would need to replace the bad drive with an exact same drive. Are we talking Mac or PC?

I have a Mac Mini.  My new external HD is a G-Force Megadisk by Fantom Drives.  It support Firewire, USB and eSATA.

[Housteau]

You could use an external drive with RAID 1. With that you could have one drive fail and still be running without having to rebuild the library. Just would need to replace the bad drive with an exact same drive. Are we talking Mac or PC?

I have read up on RAID 1 and that looks like a good option using the built in Disk Utility.  From a tutorial I looked it it mentions a similar type HD as a replacement is best, but it does not have to be identical.  That is a good thing as brand models change very quickly and trying to find identical units in the future would not be reasonable.

[GentleBender]

I like keeping a backup drive ready to go when one eventually fails. Sometimes you can get away with similar drives, but not always, YMMV. Here is something affordable http://smile.amazon.com/Book-dual-drive-high-speed-premium-storage/dp/B00KU68A1A/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1442959706&sr=1-2&keywords=raid+1+external+hard+drive. But there are many options out there.

[Housteau]

I like keeping a backup drive ready to go when one eventually fails. Sometimes you can get away with similar drives, but not always, YMMV. Here is something affordable http://smile.amazon.com/Book-dual-drive-high-speed-premium-storage/dp/B00KU68A1A/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1442959706&sr=1-2&keywords=raid+1+external+hard+drive. But there are lanyard options out there.

I think I may pick up two more new ones like I just bought and set them up as a RAID 1 pair.  Then, move my new media location over to it.  That will free up that third HD to add into the RAID system.

Do you keep your library file and artwork folder with your media storage?

[GentleBender]

I haven't used the built-in software RAID on Mac. You see many drives can be used for RAID applications, but that doesn't mean they should. Most desktop and USB drives don't have the correct firmware or controller to handle RAID errors properly and may cause data loss. No solution is perfect, but the RAID drive I linked was only $249 and has two Wd 2TB Red drives with a 2 year warranty and the drives should have a three year warranty.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2087024/how-to-and-why-not-to-combine-external-drives-into-a-raid.html

The decision is yours, but make sure you keep a backup offsite to be safe.

I just have my iTunes library pointed to my NAS, I think the cover art and such are on the local machine. I'm not worried about those things.

[Housteau]

That is some good info.  I will check with the manufacturest first.  In my case the drives would be identical, new and Firewire connected.  That might make the difference.

[Housteau]

This drive you highlighted, it has two drives in one enclosure?  If one of those goes out can it be removed from that enclosure and simply replaced with another?  Is it one of those single drives that you keep as a spare?

[GentleBender]

This drive you highlighted, it has two drives in one enclosure?  If one of those goes out can it be removed from that enclosure and simply replaced with another?  Is it one of those single drives that you keep as a spare?

Yes, you can easily replace the drive without special tools. I would order a spare WD Red 2TB drive if you go with the 4TB (4TB version has two 2TB drives set as a RAID 0). Using it with a Mac requires a reformat (http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=134&lang=en) and installation of their WD Drive Utilities on the Mac Mini to manage the RAID. You can find that here (http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=134&lang=en).

[skolis]

  Ideally I would like to have a second HD as an automated clone that I can seamlessly switch over to in the event the original HD would fail once again. 

It is common today to have a NAS multi-bay storage unit with multiple HDs as automated back-ups.  If one fails the others just take over and you replace the failed one.  I would like to do something similar for my iTunes, but don't know enough about what needs to be done to make this happen.

I believe crashplan will do what you want.  You can use as the "destination" either a hdd or nas.

[Housteau]

Yes, you can easily replace the drive without special tools. I would order a spare WD Red 2TB drive if you go with the 4TB (4TB version has two 2TB drives set as a RAID 0). Using it with a Mac requires a reformat (http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=134&lang=en) and installation of their WD Drive Utilities on the Mac Mini to manage the RAID. You can find that here (http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=134&lang=en).

I like it, but it looks to be USB3 and I want Firewire since my DAC is on USB.

[Housteau]

I believe crashplan will do what you want.  You can use as the "destination" either a hdd or nas.

It looks like a nice back-up program, but I don't think it will do what I need as well as RAID 1 system would.  I may get a perfect back-up of what is existing, but if my media HD fails, that back-up of media would be on a drive that the iTunes library does not point to and so would not be recognized. 

[GentleBender]

This will raise costs a bit, but does have FireWire support. http://smile.amazon.com/NewerTech-Guardian-Interface-Mirrored-Redundancy/dp/B00B5ZBD8M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1443058116&sr=8-2&keywords=firewire+raid+1
FireWire is a dying format unfortunately.

[JohnR]

Hi again, I've read the followups but I'm still thinking that the best solutions are either 1. CCC, or 2. NAS. If I could elaborate:

1. You have your music on a drive. What you want is that if (when) that drive fails, you can simply switch over to another drive and tell iTunes to use that one instead. To do this: use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of your music drive. If the main drive fails, unplug it and plug in the clone. Tell iTunes to use the clone, and then go buy another drive to back up the clone to. You can schedule CCC to make the backups e.g. every night, Or, you could tell it to clone only when "drive is available" which means that you can store the clone elsewhere like in another room, a safe, offsite, whereever.

2. You put your music onto a NAS. While it seems this is a major hassle/expense at first, there are a couple of (IMHO) major advantages. One, the spinning drives don't have to be in the listening room (personally I can't stand hard drive noise any more). Two, NAS and RAID do kinda go hand in hand - a (good) NAS is a dedicated box that is actually designed to run in RAID. Not some bandaid thing. Three, it avoids the whole "drives using the same interface as audio" issue, pretty much permanently.

Hope that helps

J

[GentleBender]

I agree with John. Other than having to check to make sure your backups are good, Carbon Copy Clone would be the cheapest and easiest solution.

The drive I posted earlier is a dedicated RAID enclosure without network support. For a little more you could have a NAS like this (http://smile.amazon.com/Synology-America-DiskStation-Attached-DS215j/dp/B00PTGJ6XC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443084969&sr=8-1&keywords=synology+nas) and just buy the drives, install and go through the setup. It is much more complicated if you are not into computers, but does most of the work for you if you do your homework first. Check to see if your router is compatible, it will do the configuration if it is. I know the Synology units have iTunes server support, but others like Qnap I'm not sure.

But don't forget that you will want to put a battery backup on either unit since losing power could cause BIG problems.