EMERGENCY!!! ITUNES RELATED
MorseCode
1,516 Posts
Had my labtop on a minute ago with itunes, safari, and ichat on at the same time, running off the battery. Itunes froze and my labtop started making a clicking and beeping noise. Turned it off, waited ten seconds then turned it back on. When I went to open itunes, rather than the usual loading of the library, it said "loading itunes xml", followed by a popup screen saying "itunes library damaged, loading itunes library". Then I closed itunes and re-opened it. Now there are 1.7 gigs of music as opposed to what was 50 gigs or so. I can't retrieve any of the old files within itunes. TELL ME THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. A large portion of that stuff was not backed up. I just bought a 250 external and was planning on backing up most of my files this weekend. WTF!!!???? Is there a way to retrieve any of those files??!! HEELLLPPP!!!! 
Comments
My girl uses iTunes on my laptop for her iPod. She's been complaining that once in a while it automatically deletes tracks from the playlist. The whole iTunes thing with the ghost-files and all has always been annoying to me.
It does all this automatical stuff all the time and takes too much room from the hard-drive. I don't understand why it can't store the files in the iPod, but has to keep them at two places at the same time. Stupid machines!
As long as you haven't had any data loss, everything should be listed there by Artist Name. Just drag and drop back into the iTunes library.
What was damaged was not your actual music files. Within your "Music->iTunes" folder you see a data file called iTunes Library. This file keeps track of what is in your iTunes Music folder and where each file is stored. If you've ever clicked on a track in iTunes and seen a "file not found" sort of message, it's because somehow a music file was moved or deleted without that data file being updated. Similarly, your data file is telling you you have only a small amount of music in your library when actually you still have tons. By dragging your iTunes Music folder into iTunes, you're simply updating the data file ... "reminding" iTunes what you have in your folder.
Because all of the tracks will simply be added to the library, any tracks that were already on there will likely appear twice within iTunes. It doesn't mean that you have two files ... it just means that iTunes has created two paths to the same file.
If you want to avoid the mess of "doubles", you can first delete everything left in your library (making sure that you "Keep Files"). Then just dump the iTunes Music folder back in. Unfortunately, if you do this, you lose the content of any playlists that you have ... so if you have a lot of playlists, don't do this.
damn homie, for a second I thought you lost it at all (wheren't we just talking about that?)
BACK THEM SHITS U PMUH FUCKA!
What's wrong with folders and crates?
you will find two files:
iTunes Music Library
iTunes Music Library.xml
now that you've been burned by the magic corrupt data file error, I suggest you periodically backup these two files. I've had to recreate hundreds of playlists before. Now I've learned my lesson and I periodically backup these two files. Even if it does corrupt, I will only have to back track from the last backup.
You didn't lose the mp3 files, but you probably lost some playlist info, so Aser's advice to back up those two data files once in a while is a good idea.
Luckily, I never experienced this problem *knock on wood*
Now when I follow these steps:
I'm also seeing "ITunes Music Library (Damaged)" and and data file titled "temp file". Does this make more sense? So I'm guessing I'll have to just drag the folder like you guys were saying and then build all the playlists again. thanks again for the help duders.