Can I set up 2 folder locations for iTunes Media?

Question

Level 1

20 points

Can I set up 2 folder locations for iTunes Media?

I have been searching for a discussion on this topic, but haven't found this particular question, only related ones, so please excuse me if this is a duplicate.

I have two external hard drives. I assigned one as my iTunes Media folder location, and I want the other one to be a backup.

Is there any way to avoid having to figure out every podcast update and make sure its copied onto the backup drive? Is there any way to do this automatically?

It seems to me that if we can designate TWO folder locations, it would work, but not sure that is possible. If not, any other suggestions?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Nov 9, 2012 7:50 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Limnos

Level 10

411,163 points

Nov 9, 2012 9:41 PM in response to AChar

Use a tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper or others to do regular incremental backups. You can set them to only copy items that have changed.

Reply

Answer 2

AChar Author

Level 1

20 points

Nov 10, 2012 9:47 AM in response to Limnos

Thanks, there I have it.

I had hoped Apple had a better solution, and maybe I was overlooking, but I guess the incremental is what I have.

There's recommendations to do automatic full backups after several incremental, and with 3tbs, its not reasonable on my 2007 iMac. It would just bog it down while I'm trying to do multiple things on it already. I'm thinking that I'll just go back to manually do it every few months like I did with my old 750gb drives I had before, and anything of serious value, I'll manually add to backup in interim. I mean, its mostly podcasts and things like that, which need to be replaced on the backup drive, and that won't take as long as backing up the whole drive every so often.

Maybe there's a hybrid version of incremental and manual, but it starts to get into headache territory, so I hope I'm making the right decision. If Mac offered the dual folder drives, that would have been awesome.

Not sure if usb 3 on the drives help, don't think my Mac processes usb 3 speed. The moral of the story is probably to upgrade my system. But it just works so beautifully for everything else I do now, so it seems a bit much to upgrade a system just to make my backups easier. I guess time will tell.

Reply