Moving music files from one B2 to another.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Hi! I have backed up my music to an external hard drive and I now want to load it into my other B2. Can anyone tell me exactly how to do this because I don't want to mess it up. FYI - many of the files from the first B2 already exist on the second B2, so I don't want to overwrite what's already on there.

Thanks!

Shawn

[Daniel Taylor]

There are three ways to transfer music to the B2:

1) Import from C command (found in the USB menu);

2) Upload via the WebUI;

3) Direct transfer via NAS.

None of those methods will automatically skip any files that are already on the B2.  You would have to deal with that manually.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Shawn

I am confused, you say that on your second B2 there are files that you have already on the first B2.

I BELIEVE that in this case, while the "Import" will overwrite them (provided the file names are identical - if not you will get a second copy), why should this matter to you - in the end you will not see any difference.

Anything uniquely on the second B2 will not be harmed by the "Import".

Fred

[Shawn Rosvold]

Thanks Fred and Daniel. I was under the impression that anything that was on the external HD that already existed on the B2 would just be skipped over (copied incrementally?) when I used import from C. I think I am mistaken because it's been copying for 24 hours now and it's still importing. I didn't have very many new albums to add. Oh well. 

Shawn

[Daniel Taylor]

For me, it's hard to remember that it's Export that is incremental, but not Import.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

I THINK that "Import" is NOT incremental but I could be wrong, perhaps if Peter reads this he could tell us for definite?

Fred

[Peter Lowham]

Hi All,

On the Brennan units, the Export is incremental, that means that if you Export to an existing Export directory set then the B2 will only export the music files that do not already exist on the existing Export directory.

However the Import works in 'overwrite' mode which means that when you use the previously done Export directory set, then the Import will overwrite an existing track or album of the same name that already exists on the Brennan.

Regards,

Peter.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Thank you Peter🙂

Fred

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Again Peter

Just for clarity please could you also define what happens on import if you have

on the HDD

Artist1/Album1/track one (FLAC)

and on the Importing USB device

Artist1/Album1/track one (WAV)

Fred

[Shawn Rosvold]

Thanks Peter.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Fred,

Your query above regarding importing is an interesting one.  I hadn't previously tested for this situation but I have now just run the test.

So, my B2 has  'Artist1/Album1/track one .flac' already present in the 'music' folder.

I copied the same artist name/track name in WAV format to an Export file 'Artist1/Album1/track one.wav'

I ran the Import process on this to the B2.  The B2 imported the 'wav' track and this immediately overwrote the 'flac' version.

Then, the B2 ran compression on the '.wav' version (I have 'flac' compression set) and it replaced the '.wav' version with a new '.flac' version.

So the answer is that if you import a set of wav tracks into an existing collection and if the '.flac' equivalent tracks are already in the B2's 'music' directory then the '.flac' equivalents will be overwritten by the '.wav' versions from the Import.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Peter.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Hi Peter,

I should have mentioned in my last post that I have no duplicates after the import finished.

Thanks!

Shawn

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Thanks Peter,

I somehow had a suspicion that the file extension may not make a file unique in the Brennan universe. Suspicion confirmed 😀med

Fred

[Daniel Taylor]

Peter's response was very interesting and illuminating.  I fully expected the .WAV file to be imported along with the pre-existing .FLAC file.  What I did not expect was that the FLAC file would be replaced with the WAV.  Once that happened, I guess it's to be expected that the B2 would then compress the WAV to FLAC (so long as compression is set that way).  Thanks Peter, for your continuing quest to help us all understand the Brennan universe.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Yes Daniel,

Not the "norm" of most operating system implementations!

Fred

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Shawn,

Having no duplicates after the import has run is a normal outcome because the Import process will overwrite an existing track/ album if is already present on the B2.

Regards,

Peter.

[PMB]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for confirming that. Strange as when doing an Export you can end up with .wav and .flac versions on the backup.

Paul

Brennan Support.