Backing up your music

[soulster]

Yeah, I know this should be in the clubhouse section, but, from what I understand, no one here reads it, so i'm posting this here because it's important.

Moth of us have sizable music collections: CDs, vinyl, tapes, ect. We love and enjoy it, too. But, how many of you have backed up all that music? What if a disaster happened? You would be devastated! Just like your computer files, you have to back them up because damage, theft, or disaster could happen.

Now, you can't easily back up the packaging, artwork, and liner notes easily, but you can save the music. What are you doing about it?

I have a huge music collection of tapes, records, CDs, and digital files. Several years ago, I decided to just start backing up all of my CDs. So, I bought an external hard drive and went to work. I ripped small stacks of CDs every day and in my spare time for a year until I was done. I didn't worry about tagging or artwork beyond using Gracenote or CDDB I mostly used dbpoweramp, but also used Exact Audio Copy and Audition to rip. I went through two DVD drives to rip all those CDs. I had so much music that I had to by another hard drive! I ripped everything to FLAC, which is lossless and gives me the exact, same quality as a CD, or better. Then when I was done, I made copies of those hard drives. Then, I made third copies, and created mp3 versions of everything. I created a server so I could stream, and download my music from anywhere. The records? I carefully digitized them and added them to the hard drives.

I'm still in the process of catching mistakes and tagging, but at least I have all the music I have been collecting since the late 60s archived. It feels good to know that if I lose a CD or album, or it gets damaged, that I have a backup. I won't have to worry about tracking down a rare copy if something gets lost or stolen ever again. If I lose a hard drive, I have backups. I can sleep at night. If I want to take my music with me, I can just copy it onto a CD-R or USB thumb drive, take it wit me, or download it.

There are some people here who think that they can just rely on YouTube or streaming services, but those can go away, and the sound isn't as good. you need your own solution that you have control over.

So, how about you, what are you doing to preserve your music? Insurance can't always replace a rare recording.

[woodward]

I just wanted to comment that your idea makes a great deal of sense, however, I feel that the majority of people who read this are only first graders when it comes to the technology to do this back up vs. your college level of skill to perform it. I wish I could do more along this line, but it is extremely difficult. Hope some saavy computer geniuses follow your advise, but I'm afraid that I wouldn't get to first base and probably crash the computer because of my lack of intelligence.

[carlo]

I guess it all comes down to how much you value your music collection. I have over 500 albums [[CD's and LP's), which I know is not much compared to others here, but it's a significant size to me. I have backed up a lot of my CD's over the years onto an external hard drive, but not to the extent that you have described. I would love to do that, but I'm afraid I don't have the time. If I did it, I would have to do it over the time span of a couple of years. Personally, if some sort of disaster were to occur, my music collection would not be the first thing I would be worrying about. Half of the stuff I barely listen to on a regular basis, so I would be sad, but I wouldn't miss it.

I prefer having the physical CD's and LP's. If something were to happen and I had them all backed up, I would still want to buy them all again anyway.

[soulster]

I just wanted to comment that your idea makes a great deal of sense, however, I feel that the majority of people who read this are only first graders when it comes to the technology to do this back up vs. your college level of skill to perform it. I wish I could do more along this line, but it is extremely difficult. Hope some saavy computer geniuses follow your advise, but I'm afraid that I wouldn't get to first base and probably crash the computer because of my lack of intelligence.

I keep getting comments about how unknowledgeable folks here are, but it shouldn't matter if you want to back up your music. I mean, just plug in the drive to a USB port. You rip your music to you iPod, so why not just use a different format and save that rip to an external hard drive? Same thing, and it takes very little skill. It will take time for large collections, but it's all worth it when you're done. Then, when you get a new CD, just rip it and add it to the collection.

You can't crash a computer by ripping your CDs.

[soulster]

I guess it all comes down to how much you value your music collection. I have over 500 albums [[CD's and LP's), which I know is not much compared to others here, but it's a significant size to me. I have backed up a lot of my CD's over the years onto an external hard drive, but not to the extent that you have described. I would love to do that, but I'm afraid I don't have the time. If I did it, I would have to do it over the time span of a couple of years.

Since it's all backed up now, just make a copy of that drive. That does not involve you even being at home. Just start copying the drive over to a second one before you go to work or to bed. It will all be copied when you get home or wake up. Simple!

[soulster]

Oh, and BTW, what's wrong with bringing a little more diversity of discussion to the forum? There are certainly some people who will be interested in this stuff. I don't want to really start threads on how to do stuff because I don't want to look like i'm insulting people's intelligence or a snob or something.

[tamla617]

soulster
as i said on the collections thread i have gone safety,safety,safety 1st.on my 2 hard drives and borrowed space on my daughter's hard drive AND to disc.

its not that time consuming or specialist either.its worth it to,safe in the knowledge i have duplicated X4 and [[important) seperated them so even [[god forbid)if the house burns down i still have my collection,because 2 back ups arent in the house!

i'm not insulted,i already am a belts and braces type [[aircraft engineers are!).some people might not give it a second thought,until the pc/hard drive goes for a ball of chalk.whats the point of warranties when your life's collecting went with it?
good thread btw!

[1382hitsville]

I have put most of my Motown collection in iTunes, so it's on my macbook [[7500 songs), it's also on my iPod. A year ago I bought a timecapsule [[it's an Apple thing that creates automatic back ups). So it leaves me with the fysical collection, iPod, macbook and time capsule. Should do the trick...

[tamla617]

woodward

soulster went into alot of technical stuff to secure his collection which i dont understand how to do.everyone will have a different idea on what to do and how deep to go with it.in its simplest form saving/backing up your stuff is time consuming but not difficult to do.cds are easiest to do because they already talk the computer's language.vinyl and tapes have to be loaded on to the pc in real time that is a 5 minute track must be played and takes 5 minutes [[thru a cheap interface i use a digital pre amp it cost £26 ish pounds 7 years ago) and software that you can probably get free or buy it for 20 quid.once you get over using something new you will fly with it.i know it wont be up to audiophile levels but that is time consuming,difficult and unless you have an A1 MARK ONE EAR,you might not pick up the faults.if you want to go professional all the better.i wish i could!

[tamla617]

soulster

You can't crash a computer by ripping your CDs.

you should have had my 1st pc windows 98,128 mb ram,250 mb hard drive.if i tried to modify previous files while loading a vinyl record it seized!i had to increase the ram to just under a 1000 mb.but i agree,with pc's and laptops in the last 5 years you shouldnt have any crashing probs.windows 7 and vista os computers have at least 1 gig of ram

[soulster]

Well, here's the simplest way to back up your CDs if you want to keep the CD quality:

1. There are now several companies/apps that let you back up your music and other data. iTunes, Amazon, SkyDrive, Mozy, among tons of others, and solutions you can buy and create yourself.

2. If you do not trust companies, you can make your own. The simplest way is to buy a USB external drive, plug it into your computer.

3. Use a program such as iTunes [[use AAC lossless), dbpoweramp [[FLAC, AAC lossless), Exact Audio Copy [[FLAC), Roxio, Nero, or many other programs. Most of you will have at least one of these programs on your computerr already. Some are free, and all can be downloaded.

4. Create a folder on your USB backup drive. "Rip" the CD, using one of the programs, and save the rip to a folder with the name of the album. Repeat with all CDs. You can create the folder with most of these ripping programs too.

5. Once you are all done, make a copy of your new backup drive by connecting another USB drive, and simply copy the contents of your backup drive to the newer one. You don't even have to sit there to nurse the operation. Go eat dinner with your girlfriend. Go play with the kids. Take a nap. Do some yard work [[yeah, right!).

6. When that's done, put the spare copy somewhere off-site, like a friend or family's house, or the office.

And, your music is backed up!

Now, if you have records or tapes, that will be a lot more involved and you will need some good turntable and/or tape deck. If you are not technically inclined, you may wish to learn to do it yourself, or pay someone to do it for you, then back up the results.

If you want to keep the same sound quality as your CDs, use a lossless format like FLAC or AAC lossless. If you want to take your music on the road, jogging, or don't care all that much about the sound, back up to the highest lossy file you can in AAC, mp3, or WMA.

[Roger Polhill]

I have all my music on CD and DVD. The albums that have not been released on CD I have had transferred if that is the word.I play my collection which is almost complete all the time as I really love it. I could only then lose it due to fire or theft.

[carlo]

Since it's all backed up now, just make a copy of that drive. That does not involve you even being at home. Just start copying the drive over to a second one before you go to work or to bed. It will all be copied when you get home or wake up. Simple!

Thanks Soulster. I think I will have to do that. I've been thinking of buying a second hard drive for a while now, because I'm afraid that the first one will someday break or fail. Maybe I will copy everything onto a second one and then put it into a small fireproof safe. I've seen them for sale and they're cheap.

Is an mp3 rip at 320 kbps still lossy? So FLAC is the way to go?

[franjoy56]

thanks, I started backing up my music today on my musicmatch recorder, I started today with This is the Story Disc 1, tomorrow I may hit some more discs the records I will have to keep or give away as I cannot afford to back up all those albums i have some i need to give away.

[soulster]

Is an mp3 rip at 320 kbps still lossy? So FLAC is the way to go?

Yes, it's still lossy. FLAC is the safest way to go, IMO, and AAC lossless is fine too.

Many people claim not to be able to hear a difference between the source and an mp3 or a lossy AAC file., but I say that they just don't know what to listen for, or they have bad hearing. 320 kbps is fine if you don't care about maintaining the original sound of the CD, or if you plan to take the music with you. Of course, you can fit more music onto a smaller drive if you use lossy files. This helps if you are like me and have around 10,000 albums and singles. You can fit all of that on a 500 GB mini hard drive. But, if you want to use FLAC, you will about a T1.5 drive. I'm supposing the average person has around 500 CDs worth of albums and singles, so they would need much less than what I require.

[juicefree20]

Soulster,

I'm with you 1000% as regards backing up your music more than once.

I've always backed up my music. Unfortunately, even at that, sometimes things go awry.

A little over a year ago I had one of my drives hooked up & was transferring some files. I had the drive on the floor [[a rug for cripes sake) & the drive tipped over. Suddenly, my drive was no longer accessible, as I received a message that the drive hadn't been formatted. So now, I have nearly 450 gb of music that I can no longer access. I've tried several data retrieval software solutions, but nothing has worked.

Fortunately, the vast majority had been also backed up to CDs & DVD, but there are quite a few that are lost until I figure a way to get that music off of that drive. Or come up with a few Gs to have the drive rebuilt by a data retrieval company, which is highly unlikely.

Then there's another problem with compatibility, which is somewhat annoying.

From the late 90s through the early 2ks, Roxio was the program that I used to burn my CDs. As most of us discovered back then, Roxio & other burning programs didn't play nice together & created some serious problems if you had more than one on your system.

In my case, I've been using Nero for quite awhile now, so when I went back to try to check to see if all of those discs might contain music that's held hostage on that drive, as Nero doesn't use UDF, all that I can see on all of those discs is the necessary UDF installer program. I'm not about to install that, as experience has shown me that installing that UDF reader will totally screw up the works.



As far as encoding is concerned, in the days of Napster I was satisfied at 128 kbps because I was getting music that I couldn't get anywhere else. These days, I wouldn't encode anything at less than 320, which for my purposes is more than fine. Since I want to mess around with a little mixing, it's easier to use mp3s with my DJ programs, as the file size isn't as unwieldly as flac.

I havemy entire DJ collection which would need to be digitized & thinking about that gives me a headache. At on point I started doing so, but I just don't have the space to set up my turntable & mixer & go through all of that at present. But what I would advise is that you tag everything as you burn it. Me, I'm anal when it comes to that. Unlike files that you purchase or download, my files HAVE to be in perfect ALPHABETICAL order.

If you purchase mp3 LPs, or have a lot of music already on your system, it can be quite overwhelming to start manipulating all of those tags. I make matters worse by putting the 45, 12'' or LP info into my tags [[LP, 12'' 45 release #, date of release, chart positions, comments), as well as scans of the LP covers or 12'' or 45. Had I simply done this a little at a time as I went along, life would be so much simpler. Though I did alphabetize most of my singles & box sets, u I have more than 1 TB worth of files that need to be alphabetized, correctly tagged & to get scans for because it's rather impossible to scan my 12''s & LP covers on my scanner.

This has been a project of mine for the last month or so & it's still overwhelming. I figure at this rate, if I don't buy anything else, I just may be able to finish this up by the year 2014.

Give or take 10 years!

[soulster]

A little over a year ago I had one of my drives hooked up & was transferring some files. I had the drive on the floor [[a rug for cripes sake) & the drive tipped over. Suddenly, my drive was no longer accessible, as I received a message that the drive hadn't been formatted. So now, I have nearly 450 gb of music that I can no longer access. I've tried several data retrieval software solutions, but nothing has worked.
Wow! A drive simply falling over never bricked any drive of mine, but then I also wasn't using it when it dropped.

Try this: take the drive out of the external case and either place it in another external case [[you can buy them at any computer store) or mount it directly into your PC case. It may work. Depending on the brand and model of the external drive, you may have issues getting it open. But, there are many YouTube vids of how to open each brand.

The most stressful part is the time of initially creating your original backup and copying it. But once you have the copy, you can rest easy.


Fortunately, the vast majority had been also backed up to CDs & DVD, but there are quite a few that are lost until I figure a way to get that music off of that drive. Or come up with a few Gs to have the drive rebuilt by a data retrieval company, which is highly unlikely.

If you still have all the original sources, why bother? You'll just have to go through the pain of re-ripping everything.

I also do not know which operating system you are using, but I always recommend NTFS for Windows, if you never plan to hook up your drives to a Mac. If you use a Mac, I recommend you use FAT-32 for comparability if that's what you need.

My main backup drive is a T1.5 Western Digital Green. It's a real powerhorse. The 5200-5400 RPM speed isn't an issue, and actually preferable, as they run cooler. It still streams music beautifully, too.


Then there's another problem with compatibility, which is somewhat annoying.

From the late 90s through the early 2ks, Roxio was the program that I used to burn my CDs. As most of us discovered back then, Roxio & other burning programs didn't play nice together & created some serious problems if you had more than one on your system.

I never had that problem except for using Cool Edit Pro/Adobe Audition with Roxio. Whenever I tried to install or refresh Direct-X plugins into Cool Edit/Audition, Roxio would get in the way and stall the process. I also do not use Winamp. Too buggy. Other than that, I use them all, Roxio, Nero, Sound Forge, Audition, EAC, and dbpoweramp.


In my case, I've been using Nero for quite awhile now, so when I went back to try to check to see if all of those discs might contain music that's held hostage on that drive, as Nero doesn't use UDF, all that I can see on all of those discs is the necessary UDF installer program. I'm not about to install that, as experience has shown me that installing that UDF reader will totally screw up the works.

For disc images, I always use .iso.


As far as encoding is concerned, in the days of Napster I was satisfied at 128 kbps because I was getting music that I couldn't get anywhere else. These days, I wouldn't encode anything at less than 320, which for my purposes is more than fine. Since I want to mess around with a little mixing, it's easier to use mp3s with my DJ programs, as the file size isn't as unwieldly as flac.

Yeah, I still have a couple of files from the Napster days. But, since then, I have upgraded them all. I cannot tolerate anything lower than 256 kbps, and even that is stretching it. Fortunately, most of my music resides on CD, vinyl, and downloads from...ahem!...dubious places in FLAC. In fact, 80% of all my music comes from my personal CD/vinyl collection.


I havemy entire DJ collection which would need to be digitized & thinking about that gives me a headache. At on point I started doing so, but I just don't have the space to set up my turntable & mixer & go through all of that at present. But what I would advise is that you tag everything as you burn it. Me, I'm anal when it comes to that. Unlike files that you purchase or download, my files HAVE to be in perfect ALPHABETICAL order.

I started in 1998, but have since remastered everything at least three times over. Whenever I upgraded my turntable, cartridge, soundcard, software, or improved my techniques, I evaluate my drops to see which ones would benefit. I upgraded the sound of three more albums this last couple of days. I am finishing up remastering Tom Browne's "Rockin' Radio" album. It sounds much, much better than the last version I did.

It's easy for me to do because my computer and stereo are integrated as one unit.


If you purchase mp3 LPs, or have a lot of music already on your system, it can be quite overwhelming to start manipulating all of those tags. I make matters worse by putting the 45, 12'' or LP info into my tags [[LP, 12'' 45 release #, date of release, chart positions, comments), as well as scans of the LP covers or 12'' or 45. Had I simply done this a little at a time as I went along, life would be so much simpler. Though I did alphabetize most of my singles & box sets, u I have more than 1 TB worth of files that need to be alphabetized, correctly tagged & to get scans for because it's rather impossible to scan my 12''s & LP covers on my scanner.

I despise the tagging process! When I ripped my CDs, I didn't bother about tagging beyond getting the songs labeled. I still go through and tag albums with songs that are not titled. Most of them are my needledrops where I got lazy on and just archived them. Now, when I do new additions, I add artwork, create proper tags in Media Monkey.

I love rare archiving 45 RPM singles. Other times, i'll recreate single edits from the album versions. It's really cool to know that I may have the only high-quality digital copy of things in the world!

Through all of this, I also create custom year-by-year collections of all the top/favorite hits. I have done every single year from 1962-1990 so far, all with hits singles. Yeah, I have all that music! I even go back and tweak those every so often. The best part is that I add everything to a server so I can download or stream my collection from any part of the world!


This has been a project of mine for the last month or so & it's still overwhelming. I figure at this rate, if I don't buy anything else, I just may be able to finish this up by the year 2014.

It took me a year to rip all of my music to hard drives. And, i'm constantly finding stragglers. And, i'm missing one CD, and I really do not want to re-buy it.

[honest man]

Hello can Nero be used on laptop to make own CDR if so can anyone guide me how to do so,im not very good with this,i always used a Desktop but got tired of paying out repairs- crashing etc,only have laptop now but don't know how -if i can make my own cds, any advice appreciated, cheers.

[soulster]

Hello can Nero be used on laptop to make own CDR if so can anyone guide me how to do so,im not very good with this,i always used a Desktop but got tired of paying out repairs- crashing etc,only have laptop now but don't know how -if i can make my own cds, any advice appreciated, cheers.

When you open Nero, click on help. There, you will find instructions on how to do whatever.

[arrr&bee]

Wow,isn't technology fasinating?[i don't know if i'm reading a science novel or a medical book]although i did know a girl named[lossy]in high school[or was that[flusey]?and the last time i[ripped]something i had to replace the whole wall[my wife stopped letting me handle tools after that]but this is really great info and with my collection[which is fairly big]i should be thinking about the big[what if???]great post!