Copy Lossless files from one Extenal Drive to another External Drive. Please advise.

[soeclectic]

I have 5000 Lossless iTunes on an External Drive. I have a Mac Mini. I want a second backup in case this drive is damaged or dies. Uploading Lossless to the cloud is not practical. I want to copy the files from the existing External Drive to a second External Drive. Or, from the External Drive to DVD disks. iTunes used to have that but they got rid of it. My computing skills are not advanced and I will not understand highly technical or complicated responses. Is it possible to revert back to an older version of iTunes that has the copy to disk ability?

[Zephilim]

I don't know about DVD, but if you want to do a manual copy, avoid using the finder (way too slow). Use the terminal and use "cp -r <source path> <destination path>". Hope this is clear enough.

[kumakuma]

Attach a second external drive of the same size and use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone your current drive to this second drive.

 

Repeat on a regular basis. Use CCC's smart copy feature to copy only the files that have changed since the last backup.

 

Optional but recommended: Attached a third external drive and do the same thing. Keep this third drive at the office, at a friend's house, or in a safety deposit box in case of fire, theft or other calamities.

[soeclectic]

Attach a second external drive of the same size and use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone your current drive to this second drive.

 

Repeat on a regular basis. Use CCC's smart copy feature to copy only the files that have changed since the last backup.

 

Optional but recommended: Attached a third external drive and do the same thing. Keep this third drive at the office, at a friend's house, or in a safety deposit box in case of fire, theft or other calamities.

 

Sounds good but I have no idea how to connect one drive to another through my iMac

[soeclectic]

I have never used the Terminal and don't know how to.

[kumakuma]

Sounds good but I have no idea how to connect one drive to another through my iMac

 

You don't connect the two drives together. You connect both drives to your computer. In CCC, the drive you are copying from is your Source drive and the drive you are backing up to us your Destination drive.

[Zephilim]

Don't be afraid of it, it's not rocket science. To invoke it from Spotlight all you have to do is hit cmd space then start to type terminal and you will see it.

[wwaldmanfan]

You don't connect the two drives together. You connect both drives to your computer. In CCC, the drive you are copying from is your Source drive and the drive you are backing up to us your Destination drive.

 

Kumakuma's advice is fine, but you don't need to buy Carbon Copy Cloner. You can do it for free with the Finder. Just drag and drop the files from the source drive onto the target drive. It may take a few hours, but so what? Do it overnight.

 

Assuming that you are using USB drives. Most external drives have more than one input, so you can also daisy-chain the drives together with USB cables, but this works best if one or more of the drives has an external power supply that you plug into the wall, because USB bus power is weak.

[kumakuma]

Kumakuma's advice is fine, but you don't need to buy Carbon Copy Cloner. You can do it for free with the Finder. Just drag and drop the files from the source drive onto the target drive. It may take a few hours, but so what? Do it overnight.

 

I agree. The Finder should give you the same results although I have had large copies like this fail on numerous occasions and resuming from the point of failure can be tricky. I like CCC because it is a simple solution that gives me peace of mind knowing that the contents of the two drives are identical.

[wwaldmanfan]

I agree. The Finder should give you the same results although I have had large copies like this fail on numerous occasions and resuming from the point of failure can be tricky. I like CCC because it is a simple solution that gives me peace of mind knowing that the contents of the two drives are identical.

 

Wondering if your backup failures could be attributed to lack of external power supplies on the peripherals. I have had such experiences when daisy-chaining HDD's, even with FireWire bus power.

 

Another option for Mac is SuperDuper!, a shareware program that provides full functionality whether you make a contribution or not. I use that to make bootable backups for all my computer partitions onto SD cards.

[kumakuma]

Wondering if your backup failures could be attributed to lack of external power supplies on the peripherals. I have had such experiences when daisy-chaining HDD's, even with FireWire bus power.

Another option for Mac is SuperDuper!, a shareware program that provides full functionality whether you make contribution or not.

 

I don't think it's power related. All of my external drives (five in total) are connected to my desktop Mac through a Firewire hub and are powered.

 

SuperDuper! is also a great option. I use it as well for creating bootable clones of my system disk. I noticed through that the shareware version lacks the Smart Update functionality which limits it's usability significantly and also results in unnecessary wear and tear on the backup drives.

[rn701]

Using the Finder option to copy/paste lossless files you must hold down the 'L' key for the duration of the copy or you could lose some bits.

[wgscott]

rsync -r /Volumes/nameofdisk1/   /Volums/nameofdisk2

[Audio_ELF]

rsync -r /Volumes/nameofdisk1/   /Volums/nameofdisk2

 

you missed an e out of /Volumes/nameofdisk2

[Otherworld74]

I would also suggest backing up your iTunes database (Home folder > Music > iTunes) in case your Mac Mini is damaged or dies. If you already have a Time Machine backup, then you're good.

[wwaldmanfan]

Using the Finder option to copy/paste lossless files you must hold down the 'L' key for the duration of the copy or you could lose some bits.

 

 

Can anyone else confirm this? I have been using Macs for over 20 years and have never heard such a thing.

[Musicophile]

Attach a second external drive of the same size and use Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone your current drive to this second drive.

 

Repeat on a regular basis. Use CCC's smart copy feature to copy only the files that have changed since the last backup.

 

Optional but recommended: Attached a third external drive and do the same thing. Keep this third drive at the office, at a friend's house, or in a safety deposit box in case of fire, theft or other calamities.

 

+1

[mwheelerk]

Sounds good but I have no idea how to connect one drive to another through my iMac

It depends on your drives and Mac. If you have FireWire or Thunderbolt connects you can daisy chain them together to the Mac. This doesn't really benefit you with regards to how you would transfer the files as much as just provides a means to connect to your Mac multiple drives to a single port.

 

Here is a link the might be helpful. It is what I followed when I first started to transfer my library from different drives.

 

Transferring your iTunes Library | iLounge Article

[wgscott]

Can anyone else confirm this? I have been using Macs for over 20 years and have never heard such a thing.

 

I also sing the Gettysburg Address backward to prevent byte-swapping. Lifts veils and stuff.

[Audio_ELF]

Using the Finder option to copy/paste lossless files you must hold down the 'L' key for the duration of the copy or you could lose some bits.

Can anyone else confirm this? I have been using Macs for over 20 years and have never heard such a thing.

 

I've never heard of that either!

[Musicophile]

Can anyone else confirm this? I have been using Macs for over 20 years and have never heard such a thing.

I guess that was meant to be a joke.

 

In any case, CCC does a great job. I agree it's basically just a shell for the rsync command, but I've been using it now for years and have been very happy with the usability (plus it creates bootable drives, if your main hard drive ever fails).

[wgscott]

I'm a huge fan of CCC and also Forklift, both of which are GUIs for rsync (and a lot more, in the case of Forklift).