B2 Backkup

[Holly Bognar]

We formatted and inserted a backup drive into our B2 on Sunday afternoon and it is still running today - 1:35 pm on Tuesday afternoon.

It's still running - now it  says it is "compressing 519 or 3201" which we interpret to mean song 519 of the total.

Is this normal?

Thank you.

[Mark Fishman]

If you are backing up your B2 -- "backing up" being the generic term for "making a safety copy", and it's best to use "Export" for that on a B2 -- then compression has nothing to do with it. If you didn't wait for the B2 to compress all its files before starting to make a copy, then some of the copied files are uncompressed, and might be copied again when they are finished compressing.

In other words, "compressing" is not a normal part of making a backup copy. It's a separate function.

Can you explain a little more detail of what you actually did?

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

Hi Holly

Just formatting inserting a backup drive into a B2 does NOT start the backup process. You need (from the front controls) to select "Export to USB A (or C) to initiate the backup and you need have the B2 doing nothing else.

The message " compressing 519 of 3201" indicates the B2 is currently idle and has gone into compression mode. As Mark says it is best to backup the B2 AFTER compression is complete. We normally recommend ripping only about 20-30 CD then let these compress overnight before making an "Export to USB .." the next morning. The "Export to USB" command is incremental so only the latest work is added to the backup. You then begin the next days ripping session.

Do not listen to music while the B2 is backuping or ripping or you are dealing with playlists - the B2 does not like to do 2 things at once.

Fred

[PMB]

Hi Holly,

Loading CDs to the B2 is a two stage process - first the B2 makes a high speed copy (rips) of the CD and stores it in it's original digital format (WAV). Later when idle (and in standby mode) the B2 compresses any WAV files to FLAC (by default) or MP3 to save disk space. Compression is quite slow so we recommend ripping 20-30 CDs at a time and leaving the B2 powered over night to compress the files and be ready for use the next day.

As the guys have said, it is best to let the B2 compress all files (Tracks) before doing a backup, otherwise you'll end up with WAV and FLAC (or MP3) versions of the same Tracks on the backup.

You can check how many Tracks are left to compress by pressing INFO on the remote. This will give a readout on the B2 showing the number of Tracks, Albums and Artists, the number of WAV, FLAC, MP3 or AAC Tracks and disk space used.

WAV Tracks are the uncompressed ones (3201 in your case, it appears). This will take a few nights to compress... Let us know what the display shows.

Paul

Brennan Support.