iTunes backup solutions

1 11 2005

iTunes Well I received 49 phone calls last night from my friend who was having problems with their iTunes music. She emptied the trash can without looking at the contents. Then the music wouldn’t play.

I have no clue how she emptied her entire music library. The worst part is she was buying a bunch of songs and videos last night. iTunes doesn’t allow you to redownload anything you’ve purchased (another reason the renting music policy of Napster might be a good model).

Well I sleep thru all of these phone calls (I’m a very heavy sleeper), although it threw me off because I then slept thru my MULTIPLE alarm clock rings from my cell phone as well. I then woke up and thought it was Saturday. Who knows how that happened. Thank goodness I woke up as early as I did, otherwise I would of been REALLY late to work as opposed to 20 minutes late.

Well she brings me her PowerBook and iPod. I look around the PB and the music is ALL gone. There is NOTHING. Not good at all. I’m not to keen on those data backup programs that all seem to cost $89.

Well, I turn on the iPod and it is paused in the middle of a song. Wait a song, SWEET! Well I go to her iTunes purchases and the last items she bought were on the iPod. ::wipes brow:: There is hope yet. Head over to iLounge to find one of the 10,000 programs to get your songs off your iPod (since Apple doesn’t support this in iTunes.)

Well in a while the music will be coming off the iPod ( I hope ). I found a keyboard shortcut (command + option) that has iTunes not auto update the iPod when you plug it in. That could be a disaster.
backup
Well that long story to ask a question. Do you know of any freeware software backup programs for OS X? I found a few but they range from $30-$100. There are lots of mac readers of this site (I can tell from the stats), so is there anything you know of or use? I am having her get an external HD, and it would be nice if there could be something to auto-backup for her.

Thanks for the tips.

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Date : 1 November 2005
Categories : Apple, Tech

4 responses to “iTunes backup solutions”

1 11 2005: The Professor (14:14:17) :

There are utilities that may or may not have much success in doing that - me, I’m an old fashioned kind of guy, and simply used TinkerTool to “show hidden and system files” in the Finder - then dragged the entire “iPod_Control/Music” folder from the iPod into iTunes (making a backup of that folder is probably a good idea at this point). If you want to do specific songs, you would have to search for them, as the iPod Music folder is put together in a non-intuitive way.

Hope it helps.
1 11 2005: DucSloerie (14:40:12) :

I use Backup 3 which came with my .Mac account… works fine for me…
1 11 2005: eyesopen (20:08:05) :

I really like SUPERDUPER…

AND it allows for complete backup of your hard drive –Free “Clone Only” Version– for free. You do have to pay for the version that allows incremental backups. I paid. And it is so worth it. Incremental backups are done very quickly.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
27 01 2006: Josh Gentry (16:59:35) :

I use Bash and rsync on my Linux box. Those tools are probably available on OS X. I’ve also seen instructions for installing rsync on Windows, in combination with the Cygwin DLL.