FAQ: Why iTunes Match can NOT be used as a backup!

Like. Like. Like. Oh, and yeah Like!

For those folks looking for a true cloud backup solution try Mozy or Backblaze. But these cloud backup solutions should only be used as a backup to a regular, ongoing, incremental backup done to at least one local external HDD using Time Machine. Seriously, people, iTunes Match is not a backup service.

Should be a stickied User Tip (@the mods, if you happen to read this).

Hahahahahaha! Yeah, you actually beat me to it. I was writing a draft post when I saw yours.

JiminMissouri wrote:

Doesn't surprise me at all you were working on it too. I could just tell you were about to lose it! I guess my old 90 WPM fingers still move pretty quickly.

I know I shouldn't let the question annoy me but it does. Why people don't backup when it is just brain-dead simple (at least in Mac OS X with Time Machine) just confounds me. I would never trust that some other entity would keep my data safe. That's my responsiblity.

I have TM backup my internal HDD to my Time Capsule. I also have an online, full HDD backup, along with other files to Backblaze which is my backup of my backup. iTunes in the Cloud would be my backup of my backup of my backup.

Ok, enough of that... 😁

bump

bump for the new folks coming along.

as listening to security now podcast on the twit network, i'd stay away from backblaze as they dont has the best security if you need more details watch/listen to the last episode. but yeah itunes match is not a backup

So I can appreciate the limitations of itunes match and the suggestions to use an external hard drive to back up and transfer. however, my problem was that I had a hard drive going bad, with about 1500 purchased songs and 4000 uploaded songs from CD's I bought before ipods existed. After several hours of waiting for the files to copy onto the external hard drive, then figuring out what other library files I had to copy over for my playlists to shows up too, and so on, I thought I had successfully migrated it to my new computer and resynched with my ipod. Then I begin to play the songs and the last half of most of the songs is missing. After researching the forums, I realized I should have done a backup instead of dragging and dropping the files. Guess the clipboard couldnt handle all that. Anyway, I did it the right way and 3 more hours later it appears the migration was much more successful. However about 5-10% of the songs, the last minute or two is STILL missing. I dont know if this is just the perils of transferring 5500 songs at a time or if it was a product of the bad hard drive I was transferring them from, but Im getting tired of wasting time and I was hoping iTunes Match would solve this problem, i.e. I could replace any corrupted/partially missing files with matches. Ive subscribed to match and it appears it matched most of them up, but I dont know how to go about restoring them. Do I just do a full restore of my itunes from icloud? Is there someway to identify the messed up songs other than just writing them down on a piece of paper as I notice they are bad?

Wow ... great answer! Wish I'd known this before buying it. It's basically worthless to me then, since I don't have multiple devices to share music with. And don't anticipate having them. Thanks for the good info!

Thanks for info. It did crash and everything was already backed up on Carbonite and subsequently restored. I was just curious about icloud. Sorry to annoy.

I wish I had read this a year ago; I'm feeling pretty stupid right now. Not long after subscribing to iTunes Match, I repurposed my old external HDDs, effectively removing all my local copies of purchased music, movies and tv shows. A lot of this stuff was on my iMac HDD, but not all of it, and after upgrading my desktop, and wiping and selling the old one, I began the process of redownloading certain favorite content only to discover than hundreds of albums bought from iTunes since the store was created, and about a dozen TV series worth over $1000, were gone--completely gone from my purchased content. Sure, I still have receipts for the lost seasons and albums, but they're simply no longer available for redownload. The iTunes CS response was to remind me I should always backup my purchases, and that Apple wasn't responsible (nor would they help). I've since invested in a couple 3TB external HDDs, which are used solely as backups for all purchased content. I suggest everyone do this.

Thanks for the comprehensive response.

iTunes Match just saved me big time!

I have been curating my music library for the past week. After all of my songs were matched and/or uploaded I deleted the "matched" files from my library and then downloaded the deleted songs (because the matched copies were of a higher quality than the original music files) In the process of organizing the content on my server I managed to delete my entire iTunes share... over 5000 songs and a week of organizing, convering, etc. was lost. I had a backup of my library from a week ago but I really didn't want to go back and start all over again.

I launched iTunes and it told me I needed to create a new library. I did this and then turned on iTunes match for my computer. Voila! All of my albums appeared! Of course I will need to download the songs again but that's no problem.

Thanks to the iTunes Match team for a great product!