Restoring/updating music backups

shatfield1529

shatfield1529

s|hatfield not shat|field
Alright, here's my situation;

About four months ago, I backed up my 20 GB-ish music library from my iBook to an external Firewire HD that my parents use. Since then, I haven't done anything with the Firewire HD, so its contents are practically a snapshot of my music library as it was back then. The music library on my iBook, however, has gone through a lot of pruning and expansion, ending up lighter by a few GB.

What I want to do is make it so that everything that is on the Firewire HD is on my iBook and everything that is on my iBook is on the Firewire HD. In other words, I want a complete set of music files on both drives. I can't replace the music library on the iBook with the music library from the Firewire HD, as that'll overwrite all of the stuff I've added in the last four years. I can't do the opposite because that'll overwrite everything that I had four months ago that I've deleted from the iBook. I really don't want to go folder by folder and compare the two and copy each file that isn't on one of the two drives, because... well, that would take a heck of a lot of time.

Is there a freeware/shareware solution for this? I know of rsync, but I'm not comfortable enough with Unix to risk losing a ton of data by forgetting to include a particular option or parameter.

I appreciate all of your guys' help.
 
Best way would be to open the music folder on your hard drive and drag and drop the folders onto your external. When you get the prompt if you'd like to replace the items with the same name, click on "apply to all" and hit no.
After this is done, repeat the process in reverse order but this time click "apply to all?" - yes.

This will mirror the two music folders. Then go into iTunes and consolidate libraries. This will add all the new music to your hard drive.

And finally, if you have the latest version of iTunes, click on Show Duplicate Songs and winnow out any duplications.

And if you really want to be anal, after winnowing and trashing any duplicates from your HD music folder, trash the music folder on your external and copy all of the new music over to it.

It's easier than it sounds. Oh, and finally, I'd repair permissions and maybe index the music folders as well.
 
Well, if you _really_ don't want the songs you've deleted from the iBook (or at least some of them), you're GOING to have to do it one by one. If the FW drive has nothing you ain't got on the iBook, however, you can just delete the songs from the FW drive and again copy the stuff from the iBook to the FW drive. Randman's solution doesn't, of course, delete those songs you _want_ to vanish. I'd just go through the external drive's songs and import the ones you "re-want". This way you'll end up with a 'right' copy on the iBook. THEN you can delete all songs from the FW drive and copy everything from the iBook to the FW drive again.

But as long as you want _some_ of the songs you've deleted from the iBook _back_, there's no easy way, coz the computer can't know what's important and what's not.
 
I wonder if Transmit (or any other FTP proggie) is able to compare the contents of two directories and compare the innermost files' size and modification date. Those files that have the same size and modification date should remain intact. Yeah, then there's the issue of items that have been moved since the last backup.
 
The Terminal alone can't do that, but there are plenty of free, included applications with the FreeBSD subsystem that can accomplish this. It won't be graceful, but it'll work...

You could use a combination of the "find" command and the "diff" command to find files that are syntactically the same but with different mod dates, and so on and so forth. It would take some knowledge of Perl or C or some scripting language to do it efficiently, but it's entirely possible.
 
I've got a registered version of Transmit, and as far as I know, it doesn't do that. Transmit's a pretty basic FTP program -- while it includes a lot of handy goodies, it doesn't offer a level of functionality like comparing files beyond their names and dates.
 
If your itunes folder is organised you wont be able to just add your new music to you fwhd if youve added albums to your pre-existing artists. Ive had a similar problem, but my firewire hd had an application to synchronise folders like that.

Silver....(something) was the name.
 
If your itunes folder is organised you wont be able to just add your new music to you fwhd if youve added albums to your pre-existing artists.
Click to expand...

The same thought occurred to me.
 
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