Bandwagon, the little OS X application that backs up your iTunes media online, will be relaunching this evening as a DIY version. Just give it your Amazon S3 account info and you’re good to go. I’ve been beta testing it for about a month now and am quite pleased with how it works.
I say “relaunch” because Bandwagon initially came out in late February with the promise of unlimited storage for users. They quickly learned they wouldn’t be able to satisfy peoples’ insatiable storage needs and relaunched with this Amazon S3 capable solution. My buddy Dan at UNEASYsilence has a top-notch video review going through the features of Bandwagon; definitely worth checking out if you’re considering hopping on the Bandwagon (bad pun, I’m sorry).
Dan says he was able to backup his over 300GB iTunes collection using Bandwagon – pretty impressive. My iTunes music is a lightweight at under 10GB, and that still took about 2 days to upload.
Speaking of which, iTunes 7.2 was released yesterday, adding support for iTunes Plus in the iTunes Store (DRM-free music from EMI) as well as iTunes U.
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nice. Can use brits get S3 given its through amazon.COM?
I personally use mozy.com…… unlimited storage for $4.95 a month. If you want a free 2 gig account give me a shout Paul because i have a code that gives you extra space free.
Dave
My 40Gb of music took three weeks on an ADSL connection… I wasn’t impressed, especially as, if I want to restore it it will presumably take tetheame time….
@Astorg – restoring won’t take nearly as long. ADSL stands for asynchronous dsl meaning your download is faster than your upload. Regardless of the speed though, I wouldn’t mind it if I lost all of my music and needed it restored.
@Paul: Very true… and I agree it’s still worth it just for the value of the backup. But I can’t understand why it takes noticeably longer, ceteris paribus, to upload via Bandwagon than to S3 via Jungledisk, for instance.
@Astorg – In addition to just uploading files to S3, Bandwagon backs up metadata on their own servers, hence the fee in addition to S3.
That’s my guess for the extra time.
@Paul: Fair enough, though the deterioration in performance compared with standard S3 uploads is so substantial that I would never have imagined it was entirely explained by the complexities of handling the metadata.
But, as I say, I’m definitely not complaining, the uploading was mindblowingly slow but it is sweet to go to bed at night knowing that my music is safely up there, somewhere. The real test, restoring, will come in ten days time when I replace my old G5 with a new iMac…
@Astorg: that does sound strange. Speed should be the same as JD. How long did it take you to upload your itunes lib via JD?
@Terence: I didn’t conduct a comparison with uploading my iTunes library via JD (after all, i only need to store it once), which is why I said ceteris paribus it takes much longer.
But To give you just one example, i just uploaded a 5.5Mb video (see it live on http://www.vimeo.com/clip:207947) to S3 via JD. the speed was 568kb/sec so it took just ten seconds.
Even allowing for the complexities of storing metadata, I’m surprised that using the same connection, uploading 40GB of data to S3 via Bandwagon should take three weeks.
@Astorg: that does sound surprising. Do you remember the speed at which Bandwagon was uploading say an mp3 file? Perhaps you can add a new track…we want to make sure it’s not a bug.
@Terence: Well yes, it was about ten time slower, like about 40kb. I’ve actually uploaded the whole iTunes library now, but I will be adding other tracks eventually. What what the normal uploading speed be on a fast ADSL connection?
@Astorg: I do about 90kBps (from Manila, PH) upload using Bandwagon. Should be faster stateside.
@Terence – 90kB/s is actually pretty fast. Most US Cable internet service providers I have dealt with have a max upload near 40-50kB/s.
@Terence:Â I tried backing up another album I bought on the iTunes store today, using version 1.0.7.
The application now runs much faster and I’ve noticed a lot of improvements to the interface.
Now what would be nice… would be if online streaming and the ability to listen to your music from any local iTunes setup. I suspect that wouldn’t make much sense financially for those with S3 accounts because of the bandwidth issues. mp3tunes offers this and other features, albeit for a slightly higher price…
When I get my new desktop later this week, I’ll be testing out the Restore function… but Bandwagon looks as if it’s on the right track…