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iPod Back up music?
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Yes, pray to the gods to remember your music so that it might MAGICALLY reappear on your computer. 
But seriously, just burn data CDs/DVDs of your collection in parts (if it's larger than a single DVD), or get an external hard drive and back up the whole folder (most cost-efficient method).
But seriously, just burn data CDs/DVDs of your collection in parts (if it's larger than a single DVD), or get an external hard drive and back up the whole folder (most cost-efficient method).
If iTunes is set to look after your music files, then backing up should be as simple as dragging the iTunes Music folder to an external device or a network. I really recommend getting an external drive for this.
With iTunes 7, it's possible to recover purchased music from your iPod. Unfortunately, this doesn't work with any other music you may have ripped or otherwise imported. It would probably be easiest to burn your library to a CD or DVD, and there are a few ways you can do this.
In iTunes' preferences, on the Advanced pane under the Burning tab, change the Disc Format to Data CD or DVD. Then, select a Playlist and burn it.
Insert a blank CD or DVD into the computer and drag items from your iTunes library and drop them on the CD on the desktop. When you've reached capacity, burn the CD.
You may also consider purchasing a burning utility, like Disco, which provides the advantage of cataloging the contents of all the CDs that you burn, but require you to use the Finder to choose files to burn. Or, maybe Roxio's Toast Titanium which can provide automatic backups. Unfortunately, Apple's .Mac Backup provides the best differential/incremental backups.
Unfortunately, none of the above methods (except restoring from the iPod or using Backup, if you use it properly) will save your ratings or playlists, so you may also find it necessary to back up the iTunes Library files.
For all of the above methods, burning to a CD can be substituted with another hard drive or by using a disk image file.
In iTunes' preferences, on the Advanced pane under the Burning tab, change the Disc Format to Data CD or DVD. Then, select a Playlist and burn it.
Insert a blank CD or DVD into the computer and drag items from your iTunes library and drop them on the CD on the desktop. When you've reached capacity, burn the CD.
You may also consider purchasing a burning utility, like Disco, which provides the advantage of cataloging the contents of all the CDs that you burn, but require you to use the Finder to choose files to burn. Or, maybe Roxio's Toast Titanium which can provide automatic backups. Unfortunately, Apple's .Mac Backup provides the best differential/incremental backups.
Unfortunately, none of the above methods (except restoring from the iPod or using Backup, if you use it properly) will save your ratings or playlists, so you may also find it necessary to back up the iTunes Library files.
For all of the above methods, burning to a CD can be substituted with another hard drive or by using a disk image file.
The cheapest way is backup on DVDs as long as you have a DVD writer. In iTunes, change "Disc burning" settings to "Data CD", make a playlist containing everything, click on "burn disk", and insert blank DVDs when asked for CDs. You should fit about 1000 songs on each DVD.
^^ Especially for large collections.If iTunes is set to look after your music files, then backing up should be as simple as dragging the iTunes Music folder to an external device or a network. I really recommend getting an external drive for this.
Hard disk or NAS are your best options for a small network on a budget.
Being extra paranoid, depending on the data type I use:
a) External Drives to which I periodically sync all the data
b) NAS or Server - network attached storage. Basically a hard disk on the network. My newer main NAS uses a RAID-5 array, which allows one disk to fail out of 4 but still continue working until I replace the disk. My secondary NAS has a single drive. At other locations I operate Windows Server 2003 machines.
c) Tape backup - I use the Sony AIT-2 USB/Firewire drives which store 80Gb of data uncompressed per cartridge on my desktops.
d) Internet backup - There are many alternatives available for backing up your data over the Internet. I use Sungard VytalVault which is probably too expensive for most of you unless you have stuff you really need to hang onto.
e) Server-to-server mirroring. I have a number of servers in different places which are all in secure locations, so I ping-pong data between them for additional assurance
For music, I use a), b) and c). My music is stored on the HTPC (Home theater PC running Windows Media Center and other playback software), which acts as the main media server for all other machines. Updates to the library (Podcasts, new rips, etc) are handled by the Mac Pro which dumps any new material onto the HTPC. The HTPC rescans the music folders on a regular basis so it's up to date with the additions made by the Mac. Other Mac/PC's then hook into the library either via Bonjour or by the same software as the HTPC uses (which is Windows-only). The entire music library is backed up daily at night onto my secondary NAS, which is now dedicated to this purpose. I periodically sync the music onto an external HDD, and although it takes a while and multiple cartridges but I also backup the entire music library to tape about once every three months or so.
Being extra paranoid, depending on the data type I use:
a) External Drives to which I periodically sync all the data
b) NAS or Server - network attached storage. Basically a hard disk on the network. My newer main NAS uses a RAID-5 array, which allows one disk to fail out of 4 but still continue working until I replace the disk. My secondary NAS has a single drive. At other locations I operate Windows Server 2003 machines.
c) Tape backup - I use the Sony AIT-2 USB/Firewire drives which store 80Gb of data uncompressed per cartridge on my desktops.
d) Internet backup - There are many alternatives available for backing up your data over the Internet. I use Sungard VytalVault which is probably too expensive for most of you unless you have stuff you really need to hang onto.
e) Server-to-server mirroring. I have a number of servers in different places which are all in secure locations, so I ping-pong data between them for additional assurance
For music, I use a), b) and c). My music is stored on the HTPC (Home theater PC running Windows Media Center and other playback software), which acts as the main media server for all other machines. Updates to the library (Podcasts, new rips, etc) are handled by the Mac Pro which dumps any new material onto the HTPC. The HTPC rescans the music folders on a regular basis so it's up to date with the additions made by the Mac. Other Mac/PC's then hook into the library either via Bonjour or by the same software as the HTPC uses (which is Windows-only). The entire music library is backed up daily at night onto my secondary NAS, which is now dedicated to this purpose. I periodically sync the music onto an external HDD, and although it takes a while and multiple cartridges but I also backup the entire music library to tape about once every three months or so.
dang thats quite a system. i just have an external, my ipod and dvds. the dvds have most of my music so it won't be catestrophic and my ipod is always upto date so hopefully the external and ipod dont fail at same time.
how do you back up to tape? sounds expensive (with the equipment) is it?
how do you back up to tape? sounds expensive (with the equipment) is it?
MP3/AAC/MP4 files are note easily compressed. After the lossy compression has been used the files are largely uncorrelated/random data which is hard to compress using ZIP or RAR or anything like that.
The only way to make any significant gains would be to re-encode them at a lower bitrate.
B
It's just a historical bias I have I suppose, but tape has for me always been safer than HDD as long as you verify and keep the cartridges in good condition (and replace before they wear out).
The drive is £700 here, and it's about $1,300 over in the US. It's hot-pluggable, although some software doesn't recognise it under Windows unless you have it plugged in from startup (no such problems under OS X I believe - and OS X drivers are available). Each cartridge is about £40 here in the UK. For the music, I use the backup built into Windows - it's a simple 'dump everything to tape' backup and if I do it this way then it doesn't need any additional software to restore. I just attach the drive, reboot the HTPC, run the backup job and come back to it occasionally to swap cartridges.