[Steve The Egg]

I thought we could use this thread to share tips and tricks of music organization.
I have mine like this:

My Music(Folder)>Band(Folder)>Album with codec(Folder)> songs + album art.

As many of you know, it's a never ending process of organizing music. I'm currently working on getting all the ID3 tags correct with punctuation, accurate names, and correct albums. I use Album Art Downloader to get all the album art. And I highly recommend that for anyone who has to have the album art. Then I of course use Foobar to play my music.

As for backups, every couple of days I copy the music folder onto my back up hard drive.

So share how you organize your music and hopefully we can learn from each other

 

[MoodySteve]

My music is sorted into the three main directories: Albums, Mixed Sets (DJ Sets) and Singles. They comprise the Archive. I also have equivalent folders in a 'New Stuff' directory for music that hasn't been properly backed up/added to the archive.

The Albums directory is sorted by the first letter of the artists' names. The Mixed Sets and Singles directories are organized by genre.

When the New Stuff folders reach a certain capacity, I burn the contents to a DVD-R, label it with the date, and then move everything I just burned into the Archive. This is the auxiliary backup scheme.

Every day, when I'm at work, I have Cobian Backup do a differential backup of everything in my archive to a hard disc backup. This is my main backup scheme.

I would heartily recommend Cobian Backup. It does file-by-file copy operations with no compression, batch files or any other funny stuff that tends to be the Achilles' Heel of a backup program. And the price is right too.

 

[Kilane]

I don't do album art, so most if not all my music goes seomthing to the tune of

Music\Aritst\Album

Occasionally if I'm ripping a single it's exists just in \artist\... for anything incomming as a recommendation I have a seperate \pending\ artist folder.

It works, it's simple... but there's really no good way to organize some 100 gb of music (most of which are mp3s) and so most of the time I just slap it in foobar and search for it.

As far as backup I have been running a Raid 1 array for my datastore, so no worries there.

 

[Steve The Egg]

Good idea with the RAID 1. I think I'll get another 500GB 7200.11 after I get my Denon 2000's

I'm about to try Cobian back up on a test file to see if I like it.

EDIT: Cobian was exactly what I needed. Thank you so much!

 

[hayste]

D:\music\albums\Artist\(Year) Album\# - Artist - Title
plus folder.jpg's of album art in each album folder.

I use SyncBackSE for automated daily backups of my entire music folder to a WD MyBook 750GB external HDD. Works great.

 

[krmathis]

Music/Codec (ALAC, AAC, ...)/Artist/Album/Track #. Track name

Which I back up to an external FireWire disk at a regular basis. Using rsync and a bash script.

 

[ozstrike]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kilane /img/forum/go_quote.gif As far as backup I have been running a Raid 1 array for my datastore, so no worries there.

RAID is not backup!!

Mine goes:
F:\My Music\Artist\Album\01 title

Naming system HAS to be that way, otherwise it doesn't feel right.
I also have folder.jpg for the majority of my albums, which are added into the id3 tags as well, using Mp3tag.

My rips go into C:\Incoming until they are sorted out.
Bootlegs go in the artist folder, under another subfolder, so it's
Music\Artist\Live\2008-03-13
or whatever.

Mixes and various artists go in the Various Artists folder under Music, The album artist is tagged as "Various Artists", and foobar sorts it out.

Splits are put in one of the artist's folders, with a shortcut to it in the other artis'ts folder. They are then tagged with the album artist as "Artist 1; Artist 2". This allows foobar to show the album under both artist selections in Facets.

All my tags are capitalised properly, and punctuated where possible.

This is backed up daily onto my External Mybook. There's also a copy of the majority of it on my laptop hard drive.

Edit: I highly recommend foobar and the facets panel. Foobar can rename all my files to a specific naming scheme, and even move them to folders based on the artist etc.

 

[odoe]

Music\Artist\Artist (Year) Album Title [codec]

This is what I try to stick to anyway.
This sits on an ubuntu fileserver that I vnc into and I back it up to an external drive using rsync weekly to biweekly. I should probably set up a script for that.

 

[Jubei]

I rip to a temp folder and use Media Monkey to get album art. Then I move folder to my proper music folder, which is a separate internal physical drive from the system drive.

Music is sorted as Music>Genre>Artist>Album>track number_track title. Album art is stored in the same folder as music tracks.

I am quite lazy with my backups - I maybe do it once every few months. It just takes too long to back up; I do use SyncBack for this task. But since I have 95% already ripped, only new acquisitions are left in peril if system fails (well, of course update playback statistics will be lost as well).

I do use an old-school paper notebook to keep track on when and what I have ripped, as well as when I last did backup.

 

[Kilane]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ozstrike /img/forum/go_quote.gif RAID is not backup!

When I have an entire disk in my box that doesn't hold anything just to just be a failsafe for data I think it might qualify.

 

[MoodySteve]

I understand the objections toward using a RAID array as one's sole backup method. RAID1/3/5 offer great protection against data loss resulting from hard disc failure, but that's about it. You're still completely screwed if:
-The RAID controller itself fails
-The contents of the array are erased or destructively edited
-Something terrible happens to the entire computer

RAID also has a host of potential problems to add to your system. RAID1 is the least picky, since it doesn't involve any data striping, but RAID3/5/beyond arrays can be a major pain.

The biggest perk of a RAID array, in my opinion, isn't its ability to mirror in real-time, but rather its ability to keep the array running even when it's 'degraded' (i.e. a disc fails). This doesn't really apply to home users, but it's quite valuable to businesses who don't want entire days of work going to waste because a hard drive in the server went down.

So, I suppose I agree that a RAID1 setup is not sufficient backup for something as precious as a well-maintained music collection. Given the cheapness of HDDs these days, I'd just get a third drive of the same capacity as the drives in the array and do a file-by-file backup from your array periodically. Then you'll be covered for any kind of failure..especially if you keep your backup disc in a location away from the computer.

 

[xenithon]

I have music sorted as:

X:\Music\Artist Name\Artist Name - Album Name

I have a copy on my backup drive, and use Beyond Compare to keep them in sync.

That is the FLAC files however. I also have an external Seagate FreeAgent Pro which I use with my Mac, which has all of the files but in Apple Lossless format.

On the backup drive on another PC I have a third copy of both FLACs and ALACs.

 

[ozstrike]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoodySteve /img/forum/go_quote.gif I understand the objections toward using a RAID array as one's sole backup method. RAID1/3/5 offer great protection against data loss resulting from hard disc failure, but that's about it. You're still completely screwed if: -The RAID controller itself fails -The contents of the array are erased or destructively edited -Something terrible happens to the entire computer RAID also has a host of potential problems to add to your system. RAID1 is the least picky, since it doesn't involve any data striping, but RAID3/5/beyond arrays can be a major pain. The biggest perk of a RAID array, in my opinion, isn't its ability to mirror in real-time, but rather its ability to keep the array running even when it's 'degraded' (i.e. a disc fails). This doesn't really apply to home users, but it's quite valuable to businesses who don't want entire days of work going to waste because a hard drive in the server went down. So, I suppose I agree that a RAID1 setup is not sufficient backup for something as precious as a well-maintained music collection. Given the cheapness of HDDs these days, I'd just get a third drive of the same capacity as the drives in the array and do a file-by-file backup from your array periodically. Then you'll be covered for any kind of failure..especially if you keep your backup disc in a location away from the computer.

Exactly. Most of the times I've had to restore from backup has been from my stupidity deleting files by accident. Once I had some corruption.
If I "backed up" using RAID, I'd have been screwed

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

Kinda similar to the OP. Only difference is I dont state the codec next to the album since its all either MP3 or FLAC. I have a root "Musique" folder under which all the albums are located.

I have FLAC folder under it which holds all my lossless albums. Outside of Musique I have a MP3's of FLAC folder which have 190kbps LAME mp3 files of the lossless albums for quick transfer onto an mp3 cd or mp3 player.

Monthly backups to my 500gb HDD at home. But I need to rework a lot of ID3. Lots of FLAC albums simply go "Track 1" "Track 2" cos I was either lazy when I ripped it or was in a hurry. Album art was handled by Album Art Aggregator.

For album art on the mp3 player I select the files I want to sync, copy them over to a temp folder, run this through Monkey Audio to tag the mp3's with album art and then sync.

 

[odoe]

For album art, I have found the best way for me is to use foo_run in foobar with a script using Album Art Downloader. This way I can just grab the album art as I go through and listen to albums and notice it's missing.

What is a mess mostly is my OST and Various Artists album folders. I feel like I should organize them better, but I'm just not sure.