Do you have a ton of MP3′s or music and fear losing it if your computer craps out?
I have 40-50 gig of music sitting on my Seagate external hard drive. I moved all my itunes songs to this external HD a while ago because I wanted to free up some space on my MacBook Pro. This was a fine solution, but I use this external HD for Time Machine as well and I like having plenty of space free for backups. So aside from buying another external HD or upgrading the internal HD in my Mac, I was limited to what I could do.
Everything is cloud this or cloud that lately. There has to be a solution for my music right? Sort of.
Initially I thought it would be a good idea to just upload all the music to one of my dedicated servers I use for webhosting. It’s an asset I already have, I may as well use it.
I installed MacFuse so I can map my FTP server to my computer, then changed the location of where my iTunes music is stored. This seemed liek a great solution, but MacFuse didn’t seem stable enough. It was always crashing my Finder or going beach ball on me. Strike one.
I already have an Amazon web services account so this seemed like the next best option, with unlimited storage. The steps are similar in as much that I had to install a tool that fools iTunes into thinking that the S3 storage area is local instead of remote. It’s a tool that uses MacFuse in the background. I had similar issues with the mapped drive disappearing on me all the time and causing computer slowdowns. Strike two.
I have been resistant to getting a Dropbox account because I have never really needed it. I have plenty of remote storage solutions already available since I am a webhost, and this way I can keep all my content and not rely on somebody else.
I feel really stupid for not getting a Dropbox account sooner. In a matter of minutes I had all sorts of cool options setup and humming away. I also had my iTunes directory looking at my Dropbox directory and it worked perfect. Everything is now awesome and my music is stored in the cloud, and available anywhere I need it. I also can backup my bookmarks, personal files, anything…in matter of one or 2 clicks. Amazing.
Seriously, checkout Dropbox and break free from keeping all your files stored locally. It’s terrific and free for 2gig. If you need more storage you can pay a small monthly fee. Also if you use this link we both get an additional 250 mb for free.
Do you want to learn how I keep my iTunes music stored in Dropbox? I did a full writeup about it in this blog post.
I am regular guy who loves photography, food, skateboarding and play a little paintball on the weekends.
Oh yeah, I sell website hosting, SEO & do consulting for Wordpress and Joomla!
I invested in an Apple Time Capsule a few years ago and have peace of mind that everything on both of my computers backs up every hour. And I have no bills to pay.
Probably the only downfall with that option for you is that it's Mac-only. But much better than waiting on that stuff go all the way across the Internets when backing up or restoring.
Oh I agree, and use Time Machine for data backups. This solution is more for just my music, and allowing me to access it anyplace, and anytime.
….although I must admit, I use Mog for all my mobile music needs so this solution is already kinda dated for me. http://colgeek.com/hf4eQ1
Exact same boat as you. Went down the same paths. I think you might be off on Drop Box though. As far as I can tell it doesn't appear that you can use it only to store files, that is, you have to keep a local synced copy of all files. In the case of pushing music to the cloud this defeats the local storage issue (and also explains your immediate response times). Am I wrong on this one? Is there a way to config it so it doesn't keep local copies?
Thanks for the great investigative work so far.
You are correct Lenny. I discovered this myself shortly after as well.
I ended up scrapping most of my music and just using MOg full time though.
And I thought I was the sensible one. Thanks for setting me sratihgt.