How to back up your DJ library

What to back up

• Your music. The audio files themselves, wherever they live: the laptop, an external drive or several.
• Your library. The DJ app's own files, holding every cue, grid, loop, playlist and rating. Each app keeps these somewhere different (below).

A good rule is three copies, on two kinds of storage, with one away from home. A backup on the same laptop isn't a backup: if the laptop goes, so does the copy.

Backing up with Fadero

1. Bring your music and library in. The desktop app brings in your rekordbox, Serato DJ or Traktor library as it is, or drag files and folders into Fadero.
2. That's the backup. Fadero keeps one master library in the cloud: your music and its cues, grids, loops, playlists and play history. Nothing lives only on the laptop.
3. Keep prepping as you do now. The desktop app keeps rekordbox, Serato DJ and Traktor in sync with it, both ways, and backs up your DJ app's library before every sync.
4. If the laptop dies, sign in on any computer and your whole library is there. Export CDJ-ready USB sticks straight from it, no rekordbox needed.

How the master library works · Moving a library between DJ apps

Doing it by hand

Without Fadero, each app has its own routine. Here's where each keeps its library, and how to restore it.

rekordbox

1. Back up the library. In rekordbox, choose File › Library › Backup Library. It saves a single .zip file.
2. Decide about the music. rekordbox asks whether to include your music files. Say yes for one complete file, or no if you back up your music separately.
3. Move it off the laptop. Copy the .zip to an external drive or cloud storage, and do it again after every big prep session.
4. To restore, install rekordbox on the new computer, choose File › Library › Restore Library and pick the .zip. Your music needs to be back where it was, or rekordbox will show the tracks as missing.

USB sticks are separate: rekordbox can back up a stick's Device Library on its own, but that only covers what's on the stick.

Serato DJ

1. Find the _Serato_ folders. There's one in your Music folder, and another at the top of every external drive you've added music from. Each holds that drive's crates and library database.
2. Close Serato and copy every _Serato_ folder somewhere safe, along with the music on that drive. Serato saves cues and beatgrids inside the music files themselves, so the music backup matters as much as the folders.
3. Know what Serato's own backup does. When you quit, Serato can make a _Serato_Backup folder. It keeps one copy, overwritten each time, on the same drive, so it helps after a corrupted library but not a lost laptop.
4. To restore, put each _Serato_ folder back on the drive it came from, with the music in the same place, then open Serato.

Traktor

1. Find the Traktor folder. It's in Documents › Native Instruments › Traktor followed by the version number, on Windows and Mac.
2. Back up the collection. Copy collection.nml (every track, cue, grid and playlist) and traktor_settings.tsi (your settings), or simply the whole folder.
3. Know what Traktor's own backup does. Traktor keeps dated copies of the collection in a Backup folder inside that folder: handy for undoing a mistake, but on the same disk.
4. To restore, close Traktor and put your collection.nml back in the Traktor folder, with the music where it was.

Where manual backups fall down

• You have to remember. The backup is only as recent as the last time you did it.
• Paths have to match. Restore onto a computer where the music sits somewhere else, and the library can't find its files.
• The app's own backups stay on the same disk. They save you from a corrupted library, not a lost or dead laptop.
• Every app is different. Use more than one DJ app and you have more than one routine to keep up.

Sources: rekordbox FAQ, Serato support: Library auto backup, Native Instruments support: restoring the Traktor collection. Menu names can differ between versions.