itunes backup suggestions

Sfar

That really does sound easy...

So I can backup my external drive as well as the mini with the operating system? or does that not make sense...I just need to worry about the external with all the music. thoughts?

Jtwrace - Yes, you can back up any drive to any backup medium that has the capacity of the original. I use SuperDuper to back up an external drive with all the iTunes music and database on it, and also to clone the internal drive of the MacBook Pro so that I can boot from the clone if I ever need to.

Sfar-

Looks like I need to get SuperDuper!

This way I can clone my mini and my external drive that has the itunes music. I didn't know that you can clone two different drives onto one. SuperDuper will allow you to select multiple drives to clone or do you clone one then set the other as the normal one to clone? My mini has nothing on it other then the OS. My 1TB drive as all the music on it.

If you're going to copy two different drives to one backup drive you'll need to partition the backup drive so that it appears to be two separate drives. You can do that with the Disk Utility application that comes with the Mac OS.

Before you start using the backup drive use Disk Utility to create two partitions on it, one the same size as the internal drive of the Mini and the other with all the remaining space.

For instance, if you have a 1 TB drive as your backup and your Mini has a 160 Gb internal drive, create one 160 Gb partition on the backup drive to use as a clone of the Mini's internal drive and another partition that uses all the remaining space on the 1 TB drive. Theoretically that will be 840 Gb but in reality it will be somewhat less than that.

When you start up the backup drive it will show up as two separate drives, one the same size as your Mini's internal drive where you can clone the operating system and a second where you can backup your iTunes drive.

WOW! That's great. Thank you for the help. I will need to figure that out as I'm new to Mac...