Best back-up solution for digital files?

Hi - I've read a few threads dealing with this, but they didn't quite address my issue. Long story, but basically, I've HAD to go all digital and I have about 80 thousand digital files - ALL of them are on my MacBook Pro. Obviously that takes up a lot of space, but I don't really care. I like carrying my entire music collection with me wherever I go. I'm a writer/musican and my laptop is my mobile office and I never know when I'll want or need to hear what. I had a one terabyte Time Machine that used to back up my entire laptop regularly automatically, but it seems to be broken and keeps telling me that back-ups are failing. I have one terabyte of cloud storage space, but it seems to only automatically back-up certain information, NOT including my iTunes library - and I can't seem to find how to ask it to also please back up my iTunes library in the cloud.

I know I can go go out and buy a new 1-2 terabyte hard drive to back up everything, but does anyone have another suggestion for backing up digital music? Finances IS an issue and I DO plan on buying a replacement Time Machine because, as a writer, I need to make sure I'm always backing up everything I write automatically, but all my documents, at least, ARE being backed up into my cloud - just not my iTunes digital music collection. I'm really not much of a tech head and am not really sure what all my options are, so layman speak would be appreciated - as well as, please, not too many snarky, "digital music sucks and you deserve to lose everything" comments (which I've heard enough, and also, fully appreciate).

Ideally, I'd like to have back-ups of my digital music in more than one place and, so while I search for and/or add back-ups, if anyone knows how to get the iCloud to automatically include my iTunes library, that would be extremely helpful.

Thank you, in advance.

koabac

 

I used to use USB hard drives for backup, now everything is saved to dropbox in the cloud. Multiple copies of everything, with unlimited versions that can be stepped back upto 1 year (more useful for documents than music).

Costs about $100 a year for a couple of terrabytes which is all I need, sounds very similar to your iCloud option. Just be aware that the initial upload may take a couple of weeks if you are doing it all at once!

 

If your Time Machine is no longer backing up it might simply be because it's full. It can be set up to erase the oldest backups as it becomes full to make room for new data but given the archival nature of your work you may not want to pursue it. I can't imagine if everything including your iTunes is on your MacBook why it would not be backed up unless you had somehow set it up to be excluded.

 

Make an appointment at the Apple Store and they'll fix you up with your iCloud issue. And it'll be FREE!

 

How often do your music files change? Mine never do although I might add a few every now and then. You say you have 80K music files? That would equate to 2-4 terabytes for CD quality music using 40 megabytes average per song.

My advice would be to get an inexpensive USB drive large enough to hold all those music files, make a copy of them from your computer then put it in your safe deposit box. Or give it to another trusted party that does not share your physical location.

Want to back up a document or group of smaller files? Email them to yourself.

 

Thank you so far for your responses. They're all very helpful and reasonable. Much appreciated.

 

I have two physical copies of my entire music library, plus two safety backups, one in a fireproof safe in my home, and one held by a friend.
Hard drives are as cheap as dirt. One World Computing has a plethora of storage options in both size and interface ( USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire, eSATA).

OWC Storage Solutions & External Hard Drives For Macs

 

Back it up to Amazon s3, using a sync tool. reliable and none of the apple headaches.

 

Laptops get stolen, busted, lost, etc and you deserve to lose everything on them if you don't get to backin' up soon.

 

But the OP seems to enjoy the straightforward nature of the kind of "journaling" a solution such as Time Machine provided at one time.

To OP: the solutions require technology, but also the thoughts people have expressed here are very insightful: how often does your hoard (don't be ashamed) actually change? And it's great that you seem to understand already that there's danger in treating your ongoing, fluid work stash the same as your music collection. You've come further than a lot of first-timers who have NEVER backed up anything, NEVER prioritized or partitioned one kind of content from another, and never really thought about what the loss of A vs. B might mean. Or what happens when journaling-types of backup solutions (like Time Machine) "age out" and the users find they've lost drafts 1 through X of their novel, and didn't really want that to happen.

 

USB Drive I have a 128gb one im sure you could buy a 1 TB one probably cost you a couple of pennies tho

 

I use both SSD drives and conventional HDD drives for back up. I don't know why but SSDs have a bad reputation for archival purposes and I don't see why.

 

Yes, thus this thread. I'm a professional writer and musician. I have two old spare hard drive on which I used to back up regularly that are now not large enough to contain everything I have. My Time Machine JUST stopped working correctly and has begun telling me my back up are failing. At the moment, money IS an issue, so I thought a query here on a forum filled with many tech-savvy musicians and creative people could provide a solution I had yet to consider before I made any final decisions or purchases. Believe me, I'm well aware how dangerously vulnerable I am at the moment.

 

With backups, son, there's no such thing as a final decision. You'll be refreshing hardware media and solutions until you die or chuck it all. In the short term, however, you're broke and vulnerable, and you need to get Time Machine back in order first. And someone else has already made suggestions about that.

(As that person said, your Time Machine destination drives might be full or just malfunctioning. It hardly matters. Spinning hard disks needs to be migrated and retired every couple of years at most, anyway, or they'll make the decision themselves about when to die.)

I wouldn't make your music collection/iTunes library a part of any Time Machine/journaled solution. Your works are probably more important. Including your music will just make it a 300-lb. gorilla sitting at the end of your tiny sailboat, threatening to take the whole thing down.

The more static that music collection, the better suited it is to more of an archival-type solution: the occasional snapshot of the whole shebang, with new/changed files getting stored/pushed/added. Online/cloud solutions are good for this type of work but can be a problem if you have a lot of data, but throttled upload speeds. It makes any snapshot of the complete collection such an unappealing task that you just never do it.