Sync catalogs (iPhoto, iTunes) on a mac

I have huge iPhoto and iTunes catalogs. This can present a problem for both loading the applications and for backup. I have learned to deal with the Application load times, but backups are very important to me.

I'd gone through the iPhoto backup process and restore more than once, and I didn't like the fact that I didn't have an offsite backup, so I paid for a flickr pro account ($24/yr, supports iPhoto export and RAW format). I had been simply copying my iTunes over to my NAS for a long time (as well as using Time Machine), but that became a chore because I had not automated it.

After about a month of off-and-on searching, I finally went back to my UNIX roots and decided on rsync.

You simply can't beat rsync.

I wrote a very simple shell script to call from cron every night to sync whatever IU thought I needed to sync to my NAS (it works to any other source, really, due to rsync's flexibility).

This is my simple rsync script:

#!/bin/sh

# Sync catalogs to externally mounted volume.

# nick@buraglio.com

RSYNC='/usr/bin/rsync'

ITUNESSRC='/Users/Shared/iTunes' # iTunes Folder

ITUNESDST='/Volumes/Volume_1/Catalog\ Backups/iTunes' #Destination for iTunes Backup

IPHOTOSRC='/Users/Shared/iPhoto' #iPhoto Folder

IPHOTODST='/Volumes/Volume_1/Catalog\ Backups/iPhoto' #Destination for iPhoto Backup

PARAMS='--ignore-existing --delete --progress --recursive --perms --times --size-only --whole-file' # Any parameters for rsync

EXCLUDEITUNES='-exclude='.*' -exclude='*.m4v'' # Files or folders for exclusion

EXCLUDEIPHOTO='-exclude='.*'' # Files or folders for exclusion

$RSYNC $PARAMS $EXCLUDEITUNES $ITUNESSRC $ITUNESDST

$RSYNC $PARAMS $EXCLUDEIPHOTO $IPHOTOSRC $IPHOTODST

Thats it. Since the "--delete" flag is in place, I recommend use of the "--dry-run" flag the first time to make sure it does what you want, since delete will remove everything in it's path and make the folder match. I just have this run from cron every day using this line in my users crontab.

@daily /opt/local/bin/rsynccatalogs.sh

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