iTunes Library.itl corrupted

[dbm]

Hi,

Yesterday I got an error message with iTunes (12.1.0.50) which said that the 'iTunes Library.itl' file was corrupted, and had been saved to 'iTunes Library (damaged).itl'. This seems to have made iTunes forget all my content. Complicating things, I have iTunes Match. I attempted to recover my library using iTunes Match, but this showed all the media with a cloud icon, offering me the chance to download the media again. I tried this and ended up with two files for the album I tried to recover - the previous version and a newly downloaded version. I have over 10,000 tracks in my library so don't want to end up duplicating them all!

Is there a good way to rediscover the media on my drive? It is an external RAID if that makes any difference. I wondered about deleting the meta files and then either adding all the media again (can you add a folder and get all the contents?) or pointing iTunes at the media directory again?

Any suggestions greatly received, since all my media is now unaccessible!

 

[bobtomay]

I do not use iTunes Match. I do have my media on an external drive and I have iTunes keep the media folder organized and add to it when importing new stuff.

Also note, I do not use Playlists. So, I have no clue if this method will add back playlists - I doubt it.

Don't know the suggested method. What I have done in the past - after making sure I have the media folder location under the Advanced Preferences set to my external iTunes Media Folder - headed to the Menu bar and selected File - Add to Library - then pointed it to that iTunes Media folder on the external. That's probably the long way because I was too lazy to do any research.

You might also want to read through this - prior to trying the above.

 

[dbm]

Thanks for the reply. I've had a read of that Apple Support page previously and it didn't seem to address my circumstances specifically - iTunes Match seems to be the twist here. Without it I could just reimport and everything would be fine!

I'll try creating a new iTunes Library to see where I get to.

Any further suggestions gratefully received.

 

[dbm]

So I tried creating a new iTunes Library to import my media in, and it go part of the way through then crashed. A chunk of my media has been moved to the new library, but seems to still exist in the old library structure, too.

If I just use 'Add to Library' on the top-level folder again, will I end up with duplicates for all the material which was transferred the first time?

 

[dbm]

Okay, another update.

I've created a new iTunes library, and signed out of iTunes for the moment. This takes Match out of the picture temporarily. I've added all my media to my 'new' library, though this has lost things like the 'watched' status for my video media.

Next step will be turn iTunes Match back on and see what happens!

On a side note, when I added my media to the new itunes library my iBooks content was not moved. I opened iBooks and there doesn't seem to be a way of re-pointing it at the new structure. Any suggestions on this?

 

[dbm]

Final update before new thread about a different problem!

All my data is recovered, apart form one mp4 movie (legitimate - I got it from a Kickstarter I backed). Attempting to use Match seems to have recovered some, but not all, of my played information for video / movies but not music.

I found an import function in iBooks to import my books from the old structure and have done so, though I've no idea where the data is actually stored.

I've broken the old file paths (for both iTunes and iBooks) by changing folder names to make sure I'm not accessing data unknowingly and if I haven't needed it in a week or two I will delete all the old stuff to reclaim the disk space.

The last issue is iTunes Match, and I've created a new thread for that here: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/323510-itunes-match-4010-error.html