Before leaving work yesterday, I turned on iTunes on my computer with the foolish expectation that when I got home it would be ready to play music right away, without me having to start it up (yes, I am that much of an anal retentive). The problem seems to have been that all my music was on my external hard drive, so the computer went back to the default folder. When I got home and plugged it in to the mac, iTunes started loading the library from the external HD again, but when it had finished, the main library was littered with those little exclamation marks that mean that it can’t find where the songs are located. I flicked through and worked out about half were lost.
I wondered what to do and after a bit of searching on the web, saved my library file, deleted all the songs and then reloaded the library file. This time, it said something along the lines of “import successful, but some files could not be found”. I looked down and the library had been reduced to about 11,000 tracks, about a third of what there should be. I searched the external HD in a panic, but there were about the right number of files there, so, for some reason, iTunes just can’t find them…which is bloody annoying.
The only solution I have found, has meant deleting all my songs from iTunes, and then just dragging and dropping the iTunes library folder in iTunes again. It’s worked and the library is back to an (unnecessary) 30,000 odd songs, but it has also deleted all my playlists and all the info about playtimes etc. Really, really annoying. I now have to go through and re-list about 200 odd album playlists. I could of course just not do it, but I wouldn’t be able to look at the iTunes window without sweating or something else OCD.
I still have no idea why it may have happened in the first place, so I have no idea what to do to prevent it happening in the future? Anyone experienced anything similar? Probably…
God how awful.
On the other hand one must ask oneself whether or not you have ever considered getting a life
Under what conceivable circumstances can one even know about 20,000 tracks – let alone listen to them? If you know 20,000 pieces of music then there are vast quantities of brain space that should be used for important things that are cluttered up with garbage
Ooooooooooooh dear
I dunno how you could know about less than 20,000 tracks…and you’re supposed to be a musician…
Yes well you may have put your finger on why my career as a musician didn’t really flourish
Well, I am now mking a point of systematically listening to all my music again – it’s rather liberating…
As your father has so eloquently spoken there’s not much I can add – especially as I only know about 50 songs and pieces of music – I know what I like though!!!