I have 40,000 some tracks saved on my external Western Digital hard drive. I want to back up that hard drive just in case it crashs. What’s the best way of doing this? I don’t want to have to download all those songs all over again. Is there a software program that i need to do this? I am running Windows XP on a HP Notebook for my concerts.
                                                        George

Man, you must have some really looooooong concerts!!! WOW

No..just a lota lota songs…..

IndyBaritone - 09 February 2008 11:11 PM

Man, you must have some really looooooong concerts!!! WOW

Sorry, just couldn’t help myself. 

Steelin For Jesus - 06 February 2008 11:46 PM

I have 40,000 some tracks saved on my external Western Digital hard drive. I want to back up that hard drive just in case it crashs. What’s the best way of doing this? I don’t want to have to download all those songs all over again. Is there a software program that i need to do this? I am running Windows XP on a HP Notebook for my concerts.
                                                        George

Sorry to be so long in posting a reply but I don’t get to spend much time on here any more.  Anyway, there are a few options.

If you have enough space on your internal hard drive, you could copy the files there.  I’m guessing though with 40,000 files at roughly 4mb per you probably don’t.

If you have a DVD burner, you could copy them off on DVD (an option I had to throw out even though I don’t recommend it).

My recommendation would be to jump over to Newegg and get another WD 500gb external drive and copy the files there.  Newegg has them on sale right now for 122 bucks.  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136175

There is a product called “Click Free” that you can back up everything on your computer (and then reload it to another computer if needed.)  I ordered mine from QVC.  Check it out. Can back up at least 10 computers on it.
Hope this helps.

I am not very computer literate, but couldn’t Steelin buy a new external, then load a portion of the music onto the computer, then copy to the new external, then repeat until complete?

In my opinion, multiple backup is a must. I have about 10,000 songs, and I have them on on three computers and three external hard drives (externals can go bad) which I keep in a fireproof safe.

...like kerr said, with another external drive.  That is all the Click Free device mentioned above is, but it includes additional software (for additional cost) to automate the process.  There are a lot of free backup tools online that work and you only have to invest in the cost of the drive.

Another option is burn your files to blu-ray discs, but you are only going to get about 48-50 GB of data per disc.  DVDs will only get you around 4.5 GB per disc.

I recommend keeping multiple backups in different locations, just in case of an emergency.  No point in having 3 hard drive backups if they are all going to be destroyed in a house fire.

You could use cloning software, but probably the easiest way would be get another external and copy from the current one and paste to the new one. This will take a good amount of time (depending on which version of USB both drives and the ports have). To do it this way though, you would need to use two ports. If you don’t have two you can use at the same time, you would probably have to copy in smaller portions and paste to your computer hard drive first. This will take even longer, but I suspect you surely have enough. If not, a better way would be get a USB hub (get one with the AC adaptor to ensure you get enough power).