Itunes problem! Please help me out, urgent!

DopeyBovineMan · Apr 25, 2011

Hello,

I recently re-installed snow leopard on my MBP.

Before I did so, I copied the whole itunes folder in my home folder, to an external hard drive.

When I tried to restore my library by replacing the new itunes folder with the old one, I get little question marks beside each song.

The songs are in the folder, because I can manually play them by opening up each artist folder. I don't want to manually do this with my 1000+ songs.

Please help me out guys, what can I do to get my tunes back?
Thanks

Tommyg80 · Apr 26, 2011

While you are in i-tunes, you can go into "Preferences" and then "Advanced." Reset the "Folder location." Now, while still in I-tunes, go to file/library/Organize Library. It worked for me when I had the same issue. The Problem happened to me immediately after I restored my media library from an Wifi External HD, on to a new Internal HD for my MBP. This process at least fixed the issue for me. Its worth a shot!

Also, when placing files into i-tunes, I would suggest using the "Automatically add to i-tunes" folder. I believe you could have dropped the entire music library folder directly into it and it would have done its job. At least, that is what I have started doing as a measure that this issue wouldnt happen to me again.

Buzzard2010 · Apr 26, 2011

Also when you re-installed Snow Leopard did you software update to 10.6.7 and update iTunes to the latest version?

HTH,
- Simon

DopeyBovineMan · Apr 26, 2011

Tommyg80 said:
While you are in i-tunes, you can go into "Preferences" and then "Advanced." Reset the "Folder location." Now, while still in I-tunes, go to file/library/Organize Library. It worked for me when I had the same issue. The Problem happened to me immediately after I restored my media library from an Wifi External HD, on to a new Internal HD for my MBP. This process at least fixed the issue for me. Its worth a shot!

Also, when placing files into i-tunes, I would suggest using the "Automatically add to i-tunes" folder. I believe you could have dropped the entire music library folder directly into it and it would have done its job. At least, that is what I have started doing as a measure that this issue wouldnt happen to me again.

Wow, thanks a lot.

I just clicked search for mp3 files in itunes and it put all my songs in the library, and they work!

I wish there was a +rep system in these fourms.

Thanks again. I'm so grateful. ;D

Deckyon · Apr 26, 2011

With only 1000 songs, you lucked out. I had to restore from an emptied Trash Can over 50k songs and they all came back with filenames like "QA000001.mp3" where only the extension was maintained. This included Apps, Audiobooks, eBooks, everything in my iTunes directory... It is lucky iTunes could pull the metadata out of the files.

Still working on rebuilding the playlists, but hey, all the data got saved.

DopeyBovineMan · Apr 26, 2011

Deckyon said:
With only 1000 songs, you lucked out. I had to restore from an emptied Trash Can over 50k songs and they all came back with filenames like "QA000001.mp3" where only the extension was maintained. This included Apps, Audiobooks, eBooks, everything in my iTunes directory... It is lucky iTunes could pull the metadata out of the files.

Still working on rebuilding the playlists, but hey, all the data got saved.

Yeah, that's my problem, the playlist weren't kept.

I'm going to backup my itunes library onto DVD's this time. I don't care if it takes 100 of them. I don't want to lose my music again.

Going to work in silence is really weird.

Deckyon · Apr 26, 2011

I am rebuilding over 700 album playlists. I still have to go through my eBooks (PDFs) and get them renamed - iTunes didn't do those. But hey, the data is safe (seems to be my calming mantra as I rebuild all this...) Over 400GB had to be restored.

I would recommend an external HD. If you keep all your music on your PC, then Time Machine should keep it backed up for you. I don't know about right now, but I just got a 2nd 1TB drive (WD) from Best Buy for $100. May not still be on sale.

DopeyBovineMan · Apr 26, 2011

Deckyon said:
I am rebuilding over 700 album playlists. I still have to go through my eBooks (PDFs) and get them renamed - iTunes didn't do those. But hey, the data is safe (seems to be my calming mantra as I rebuild all this...) Over 400GB had to be restored.

I would recommend an external HD. If you keep all your music on your PC, then Time Machine should keep it backed up for you. I don't know about right now, but I just got a 2nd 1TB drive (WD) from Best Buy for $100. May not still be on sale.

Haha, Funny mantra.

I have a 10tb bank of mybook HD's, but I've had 3 of them crash in the past 2 years. I still back up everything I have, and have the bank setup as RAID. But, I wouldn't trust it for anything critical. Extremely crappy hard drives.

Deckyon · Apr 26, 2011

Yeah, you need one you can trust. One that doesn't move a whole lot. I wont be going to do optical backup until there is a Thunderbolt Blue-Ray recorder. Too many disks at this point, and by the time I bought enough Dual-Layer DVDs, I will have basically purchased another HD.