How to backup B3

by Martin Brennan January 30, 2024

Background

I recommend that you copy all the music on your B3 onto an external USB hard drive. That way if there is ever a fault you can quickly restore your music.

The process is incremental so I suggest you backup as you go when ripping your CD collection.

I'd further recommend that you do a fresh backup after any extensive renaming. By that I mean delete the old backup first - on a PC or by reformatting the backup disk using the B3.

You will need a USB hard drive with sufficient capacity to hold the music on your B3. You can find how much space is used by your music using

Settings & Tools >> Stats.

Preparation

You can use any USB storage device - hard drive, SSD, thumbdrive or SD card (with USB adaptor).

The backup device must be formatted FAT32 before B3 can use it.

If you plug the USB device into USB A and you do not see a USB icon on the bottom left of the display then it probably has the wrong format.

You can format the USB device using

Settings & Tools >> Maintenance >> Advanced >> Format USB A

WARNING - this will delete everything on the USB device so make sure you are happy to do so.

Backup

Start the backup using

USB Functions >> Export to USB A

The Export function will save all playlists and music to a folder called b2Export. B3 displays how many files are copied as it goes.

The process is incremental so it skips any files already on the backup disk. Note the file count will be larger that the number of music tracks. There are typically two extra files per album [album art and Musicbrainz ID].

Restore

B3 allows you to import music from USB using

USB Functions >> Browse USB A

In fact you can pick any artist, album or track to import but if you want to restore all the music on the backup disk then navigate to folder b2Export and press Next.

Playlists are handled seperately - useful if you just want to restore playlists.

Settings & Tools >> Tools >> Import Playlists

Other USB functions

To backup just your playlists.

Settings & Tools >> Tools >> Export Playlists

To write a subset of your music to USB

Create a playlist containing all the music you want to transfer then

USB Functions >> Export Playlist to USB A