backing up playlists

is there any way to back up playlists in itunes?

 

iTunes: How to backup and restore playlists.

 

i would highly recommend when you want to back up your music and playlists to just backup the entire iTunes folder, that will take care of everything.

 

iTunes has an option to back up to discs. It took me 3 DVD's to get my music collection, but the nice thing is that all I have to do to restore my library is to insert the first disc. I would recommend that route.

 

that works quite dwell, but honestly what I recommend and what I have stared doing...

I have a small portable usb powered lacie HDD 60GB that I use entirely for sound, all of my music, my large sound effects library, etc.

i have set up Time Machine to just back up my music folder when this drive is plugged in, so I have an ongoing copy of my entire music library, if I wanted to go back to a time when I had a certain playlist, I could do it, and each time I add a new song to the library I just plug in the drive, and without a click all the new ratings/playlists, songs, album art, etc. is backed up to the drive in a short amount of time.

it is also nice because I like to keep my music library updated between my main computer the MBP and my Fujitsu Notebook on the desk at home, so all I need to do is copy the latest music library to the other machine replacing the non updated one, and launch iTunes and everything is identical.

This is the route that I have been taking with time machine, I would love to have one massive drive for everything, but I have realized having small portable drives for certain things works incredibly well.

 

yup if you have a large collection backing up to disc is a real pain, not to mention the wear and tear on the drive. for me it is about 10 DVDs which is an afternoon's work.

I have my music backed up on two external drives, no time machine here yet I just drag and drop the entire music folder. it still takes quite a while but at least i dont have to feed loads of discs into the machine

if you just want to back up the playlists you can individually export them as .xml files, although I haven't yet found a way to batch export... which is a pain.

 

i saw that, but i already do a backup of my music folder to my external drive.

 

As long as you have the .xml file in there, then you should be fine. Another thing to remember, is that one backup is not enough. I do have all of my music on DVD, but I also back up my entire drive using SuperDuper!. That way I don't have to rely on one or the other. I update my image every week or 2, and then make new DVD's every month or so. No one said backing up was convenient.

 

I think if you have Leopard and Time Machine, backing up individual settings like iTunes playlists and folder structures should be a thing of the past. If my comp ever gets wonky, it's -> Insert Leopard DVD -> Time Machine OSX.

 

I think you are right. But it has already been a thing of the past with SuperDuper!, it just has not been automatic. My problem with Time Machine is that it is not bootable, and I think it still takes a little trickery to get an AirDisk to work, though I could be wrong on that since I have not followed that much.

 

i don't think there is any logical reason to back up absolutely everything on the computer, instead of just backing up the important sections, what is the point of backing up all the system files etc. if Time Machine is not bootable? If you are looking to do that it would make more sense to do a clone of the drive, bu I don't know how that effects bootability, if that is a word

it would be cool if you could boot from a complete time machine backup. but in that case it would have to be tied to the individual machine or it would be violating the EULA wouldn't it, being able to boot to the OS on any machine.

it would be pretty nice if time machine backups were bootable, and that might actually be possible in some way.

 

Time Machine, as I understand it, can do a full image of the drive, or only back up part of it. If it does do a full image, then there is no reason it should not be bootable. SuperDuper! images are bootable. The reason images are good is because you can be up and running again instantly if it is bootable. Also, even if it is not bootable, you can just blast that image onto the hard drive and have the exact same setup as before.

Now granted, for many people backing up parts of the drive, mainly data, is more than adequate, but I think it would be trivial to add support for booting to Time Machine. As it stands, it will take hours to restore a machine using the Time Machine backup. If it were bootable, you could start running again instantly, and then restore the drive when you have time to.

 

the thing with time machine is that it doesn't really create an image of your drive, but just recreates the entire folder structure on the backup drive.

i see what you are saying, and that is exactly why I didn't see the logic in backing up my whole system using time machine. it really isn't that difficult to install the OS to an external drive, or make a bootable image on an external drive.

are Super Duper images bootable from a bus powered usb drive? i know they are through bus powered firewire drives, as that is what the Apple stores use to solve many problems.

and SuperDuper doesn't seem to be updated to work with Leopard currently

 

You know I have never tried booting it on USB that I can remember. I'll try it as soon as I get home.