Backing up iTunes regularly/consistently

[LeperousDust]

I've got a LOT of music now, and i've been trying to keep it backed up with SyncToy, which works wonderfully in most cases for my backup needs apart from being unable to map to different drive letters (a name would be nice) at all. Anyway i can get over that by plugging in drives annoyingly in the right order ().

However SyncToy seems to think my MP3's have changed (rightly so) because they have a different accessed time (when i've played them funny enough), thus SyncToy wastes time copying files that aren't needed. How can i either make it look at the "created date" rather than the "accessed date"? Also it copies over loads of useless empty folders itunes keeps making, i've unticked most of them, but i can't tell it to just not ever copy anything from a sub folder...

Is there any other way to keep iTunes safe? I basically want all my music copied somewhere else and the iTunes DB so all my stats are kept up-to-date too

Ideas?

[Daz]

I'd be looking at Robocopy, but I cant tell you off the top of my head what attributes you can check against. You can certainly tell it to leave empty directories though, or even subdirectories entirely - it's pretty flexible, loads of switches.

Scripting > GUI.

[LeperousDust]

Although i'm not an entire fan of scripting (just yet) it makes helluva sense. I'm starting to come your way Daz . Once i get all my nice stuff backed up, i need to format this Vista install, and i'll see about getting an Ubuntu install back on too Over this year i'm going to try my best to migrate to it properly, or at least give it a real good try...

[Mark]

I'd just like to say that I agree with Daz. MS actually did something right for once and shipped robocopy as standard with Vista.

PS - you should use last modification time, not creation time, for backups.

[LeperousDust]

Whats worse is i just found the front end HUI for robocopy, so i'm sorted Sorry old ways, and i can't be bothered reading just yet...

[LeperousDust]

Actually i can't find anything in the documentation to say it can copy just newly created files? It seems its just a hardcore copy script rather than a backup option (i mean i guess it can be used as both, but not really incremental).

[Mark]

Robocopy does all that by default, unless you tell it not to.

[Daz]

/XC :: eXclude Changed files.
/XN :: eXclude Newer files.
/XO :: eXclude Older files.
/XX :: eXclude eXtra files and directories.
/XL :: eXclude Lonely files and directories.

/XC and /XO could do it, maybe just /XC, it's pretty clever off the mark though, it wont copy files again for the sake of it - if it's doing it you need to look at why it's doing it (it'll tell you on screen) and override it.

Not sure what you mean by 'It seems its just a hardcore copy script rather than a backup option'?

[LeperousDust]

Ahhhhh how'd i miss those... I'm doing too many things at once here Right it can't do any harm so i'll give it a go in a second...

[Admiral Huddy]

Have you tried SyncBackSe?