Everyone means to back up their Serato library. Almost nobody does it properly, because the obvious version — copying your music folder to an external drive — misses the part that actually took you years to build.
Here is what a real Serato backup has to include, and how to end up with one you can genuinely restore rather than one you only find out is useless on the night you need it.
Why copying your music folder is not a backup
Your Serato library is in three places, and only one of them is your music folder.
Your music files. The audio itself. Easy to copy, and the part everyone remembers.
Your crates and playlists. These do not live with your music. Serato keeps them in its own folder, and if you lose it you still have every track — just no crates, no playlists, and no structure. Ten years of digging, flattened into one long list.
Your cue points. These are stored inside the music files themselves. Copy the files and your cues travel with them; rebuild your library from scratch and they are gone.
So a folder copy leaves you with the raw material and none of the work. That is the gap that catches people out.
What a proper Serato backup includes
A backup worth having covers all three:
- every crate and playlist, with the folder structure you built
- the library data Serato uses to keep track of it all
- the music files your library points at, with their cue points inside them
If it is missing the middle one, you are not backing up a library, you are backing up a music collection.
How to back up your Serato library with MLT
Backup is one of the tools inside Music Library Tools. It takes a copy of your crates, playlists, library data and the tracks your library depends on, and puts it somewhere safe as one restorable set.
There are three ways to run it, for three different jobs.
Full backup
Everything, in one go. This is the one to run first, and the one to run before anything major — a new laptop, a new drive, or a big clear-out.
Incremental backup
Only what has changed since last time. This is the one you run regularly. After a digging session it copies the new tracks and leaves the rest alone, so keeping a backup current takes seconds rather than an evening.
Single-crate backup
One crate on its own. Useful before you reorganise something you care about, or when you want a snapshot of a set before you start pulling it apart.
Getting it back: restoring a Serato library
A backup you have never tested is a guess. Restoring is the half that matters, and it is free in MLT — Restore reads a backup and shows you what it will bring back before it writes anything: what is coming across, what is already in place, and what it is leaving alone.
It rebuilds your crate structure rather than dumping tracks in a folder, and because your cues live inside the files, they come back with them. On a new machine that is the difference between being ready to play and spending a weekend rebuilding.
When to back up
- Before a new laptop. Obvious, and still the most common time people discover their backup was music only.
- Before a big library change. Removing duplicates, moving files, cleaning up — take a copy first. See Find Duplicates if that is the job.
- Before a drive change, and ideally on a second drive that is not the one your library lives on.
- After every digging session, as an incremental run.
The short version
Copy your music and you have your music. Back up properly and you have your library — crates, structure, cue points and all. The two are not the same thing, and the difference only shows up on the day something goes wrong.
Backup is part of Music Library Tools — one payment, no subscription, Mac and Windows. Restoring is free. Download MLT to take a look at what a full backup would cover.