All iTunes files disappeared

[Alwyn]

For some reason all my music has vanished from iTunes on my iMac but it's still on my iPhone. I back up regularly to Time Machine although a recent addition won't be there.

Restarted iMac and they all re-appeared. What's going on?

 

[RadDave]

For some reason all my music has vanished from iTunes on my iMac but it's still on my iPhone. I back up regularly to Time Machine although a recent addition won't be there.

Restarted iMac and they all re-appeared. What's going on?

Hi Alwyn - not sure that I can answer you query, but have some questions that might clarify the issue or eliminate some possibilities: 1) Was you Yosemite upgrade recent and did the problem start then; 2) Your iTunes library simply points to your music files (whether on your internal HD or an external device), so your physical data was still there (did you check); 3) Did you look into iTunes Preferences under Advanced to see it the location of your music was correct; 4) Are you using iCloud; and 5) Were you logged under another user account?

Just a few thoughts which may not help, but glad that you recovered the library on the re-boot. Dave

 

[MacInWin]

Sounds like it just lost the location of the library somehow. Rebooting let it read the location again. Unless it happens again, I'd chalk it up to "gremlins."

 

[1611Eric]

Hey Alwyn,

I'm having a similar issue and had an amazing tip today from a member here so i thought i'd pay it forward.

My problem isn't solved yet, still waiting on some help. But if you download a (trial) program named Daisy Disk. You can scan your Hard Disk and if the music is still on it, it will find it. Once you've found it you can use the program to open it in Finder and drag it back to the location where it's supposed to be.

Hope this solves your problem.
Good luck.