Damaged iTunes Library

mark campion · Apr 25, 2007

Yesterday i had 5,000 songs in iTunes. Today I have none. When I opened i tunes I got a message saying "iTunes quit unexpectedly" and i reopened it. I then got this message... The file ‘iTunes library does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has attempted to recover your iTunes library and renamed this file to “iTunes Library (Damaged) 4”.
Obviously, if you regard the number involved, this has happened before but this is the first time the library was wiped. Can anyone shed some light?

fiveightandten · Apr 28, 2007

I don't have an answer for you. But seeing as you can download iTunes for free now from the Apple site, you may want to trash the app and do a clean reinstall. Then just import all your music again. It will obviously take a little while to do that in your case, but it may be worth it so this doesn't happen again.

-Nick

cjay · Apr 28, 2007

Is the library wiped from the drive? If not then just trash preferences then open iTunes again, point it to the correct location and add it to the library.

kd_charlemagne · Oct 7, 2007

I had the same problem when I downloaded an episode of Always Sunny from itunes. You likely didn't lose your music though...just your library data file is corrupt (this means you probably will lose you playlists). Just go to users/username/music/itunes/itunesmusic (or where ever your music files are saved to) and you should have all your music files intact. Just select all and drag to itunes. It gave me this error msg. everytime I started itunes until I deleted the episode that was corrupt. Now it is fine. So maybe if you delete the last thing you downloaded you won't have anymore problems...good luck!

csm2840 · May 7, 2008

I just experienced this problem for the first time myself. Yesterday, I had well over 6,000 songs in iTunes; then, this morning when I tried to open up iTunes, I got hit with the same error and subsequent message: "‘iTunes library does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has attempted to recover your iTunes library and renamed this file to “iTunes Library (Damaged)". All my playlists were gone and over 3,000 songs were missing!! GOOD NEWS, though.... I figured out a solution that worked for me. Maybe it will work for you? I went into my iTunes data file folder on my computer. There, I noticed two files of particular relevance: 'iTunes Library' and 'iTunes Library (Damaged)'. I also noticed that the (new) iTunes Library folder was only 4.83MB, whereas the iTunes Library (Damaged) file was 26.1MB. It appears that iTunes created a new library DAT file once it determined that the original was corrupted. Now, I don't know why I got the error message (in question) in the first place. It could have been (and hopefully was) just a fluky glitch. But this is what I resolved to try... I created a new file folder named iTunes Library Backup Files; I then copied the two iTunes library DAT files--the new one and the damaged one--into this folder. I then went back out to the parent folder and deleted the new (created) 'iTunes Library' file and renamed the 'iTunes Library (Damaged)' file to 'iTunes Library'. This, apparently, is the file that iTunes will read and use whenever you open the app. Then, the next time I opened iTunes, I didn't get an error message and PRESTO... I had recovered all of my playlists and music files as if I had never had a problem to begin with. Now, this worked for me; it may not work for you all. But it's worth a shot, I suspect. Try it (if need be), and let me know if it works. Good Luck! --SM

louishen · May 7, 2008

If the itunes library is damaged, there should be a back-up copy next to it called iTunes Library.xml

Just use the iTunes Import function to restore the library from this back-up copy

Dakirky · Jul 14, 2009

Itunes Library

I was converting all of my music files over to AAC from MP3, during this process i some how lost 5.3Gb of music. I got no error message, the music just disappeared. I did what anyone would do, re add the files, only problem is it won't let me. So currently I'm sitting on top of 8.90Gb of music and can only access 3.6 of it. As you can imagine I'm a little bit peeved by this, any suggestions on how to fix it would be greatly appreciated.

ligerzero459 · Nov 21, 2009

csm2840 said:
I just experienced this problem for the first time myself. Yesterday, I had well over 6,000 songs in iTunes; then, this morning when I tried to open up iTunes, I got hit with the same error and subsequent message: "‘iTunes library does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has attempted to recover your iTunes library and renamed this file to “iTunes Library (Damaged)". All my playlists were gone and over 3,000 songs were missing!! GOOD NEWS, though.... I figured out a solution that worked for me. Maybe it will work for you? I went into my iTunes data file folder on my computer. There, I noticed two files of particular relevance: 'iTunes Library' and 'iTunes Library (Damaged)'. I also noticed that the (new) iTunes Library folder was only 4.83MB, whereas the iTunes Library (Damaged) file was 26.1MB. It appears that iTunes created a new library DAT file once it determined that the original was corrupted. Now, I don't know why I got the error message (in question) in the first place. It could have been (and hopefully was) just a fluky glitch. But this is what I resolved to try... I created a new file folder named iTunes Library Backup Files; I then copied the two iTunes library DAT files--the new one and the damaged one--into this folder. I then went back out to the parent folder and deleted the new (created) 'iTunes Library' file and renamed the 'iTunes Library (Damaged)' file to 'iTunes Library'. This, apparently, is the file that iTunes will read and use whenever you open the app. Then, the next time I opened iTunes, I didn't get an error message and PRESTO... I had recovered all of my playlists and music files as if I had never had a problem to begin with. Now, this worked for me; it may not work for you all. But it's worth a shot, I suspect. Try it (if need be), and let me know if it works. Good Luck! --SM

This right here is how you solve it. Thanks for the info!

wahwahwebster · May 19, 2011

Official Mac Support Fix

I, finally, found this on the apple site. It worked:

iTunes: How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists

Nerdy Joe · Jun 13, 2011

Help

csm2840 said:
I just experienced this problem for the first time myself. Yesterday, I had well over 6,000 songs in iTunes; then, this morning when I tried to open up iTunes, I got hit with the same error and subsequent message: "‘iTunes library does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has attempted to recover your iTunes library and renamed this file to “iTunes Library (Damaged)". All my playlists were gone and over 3,000 songs were missing!! GOOD NEWS, though.... I figured out a solution that worked for me. Maybe it will work for you? I went into my iTunes data file folder on my computer. There, I noticed two files of particular relevance: 'iTunes Library' and 'iTunes Library (Damaged)'. I also noticed that the (new) iTunes Library folder was only 4.83MB, whereas the iTunes Library (Damaged) file was 26.1MB. It appears that iTunes created a new library DAT file once it determined that the original was corrupted. Now, I don't know why I got the error message (in question) in the first place. It could have been (and hopefully was) just a fluky glitch. But this is what I resolved to try... I created a new file folder named iTunes Library Backup Files; I then copied the two iTunes library DAT files--the new one and the damaged one--into this folder. I then went back out to the parent folder and deleted the new (created) 'iTunes Library' file and renamed the 'iTunes Library (Damaged)' file to 'iTunes Library'. This, apparently, is the file that iTunes will read and use whenever you open the app. Then, the next time I opened iTunes, I didn't get an error message and PRESTO... I had recovered all of my playlists and music files as if I had never had a problem to begin with. Now, this worked for me; it may not work for you all. But it's worth a shot, I suspect. Try it (if need be), and let me know if it works. Good Luck! --SM

I did everything except one thing.. When I tried copying the "iTunes library(damaged)" to my "iTunes back-up folder" this msg pops up and says- Cannot Copy ITunes Library(Damaged)

ata Error (cyclic Redundancy Check)

sumshel · Aug 1, 2011

damaged itunes

I'm having the same problem. I tried the above solutions - still not working

mackenzi1 · Oct 11, 2013

This worked

wahwahwebster said:
I, finally, found this on the apple site. It worked:

iTunes: How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists

Thanks - this worked.