After system crash itunes can't find my music

my system had to have windows re-installed due to a variety of problems. now i can't fin over 20GB of music. i have it on my iPod, but i can't see it on my computer. any suggestions?

hi Daniel!
we can get the music back from your ipod, but first let's try to see if we can find the music on your PC first. this resource might be useful:
Buegie, "Please help!!! Have lost all my tunes..." #1, 04:53pm Oct 26, 2005 CDT
love, b

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For moving your iTunes library, I recommend this method...
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307074
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Hold the SHIFT key while launching iTunes. You will get the option to navigate to the iTunes folder on your external drive. In the iTunes folder point it to the iTunes Library.itl file.

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I finally found a solution here: http://forums.techarena.in/windows-xp-support/983948.htm
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Although my music is available on my ipad and phone, Itunes can't find and play my music on my laptop. WTH?

+changed the location of the music folder to E: iTunes Music.+
All this does is make future additions go to that new place.
When you move things around outside of itunes, it loses the path, as you've found.
Can you move everything back and use the Consolidate Library command to move it to the new location?
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http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive

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But I can using Windows.
Lost over 8 hours today. Still not working
Even deleted itunes and reinstalled.
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turned off iphone
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Hi All!
I thought I'd post this to help out others that may be having the same problem.
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Victory!!!
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Hope this helps someone.
Peace
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I would recommend you put everything including th eiTune slibrary files into the iTunes folder on the external.
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Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ from yoru internal to the external.
Move your current iTunes media folder on the external into the /iTunes/ folder you just copied to the external.
Hold Option and launch iTunes.
Select Choose library and select the iTunes folder on the external.
Now you can plug in the external to another/new computer and launch iTunes holding option as above and everything will be there.

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Something is different in the paths to the files....hence itunes cannot find them.
Sound like you know about the ITL file, which is why you copied it over.
What you can do is look in its companion XML file to see the paths itunes thinks it should be using.
If your XML is really big, open it using WordPad instead of NotePad. About the 10th line down is the itunes preference setting for the itunes folder:
key>Music Folder</key><string>file://localhost/K:/iTunes%20Music/</string>
On my system it's K:/iTunes Music
The %20 just indicates a space.
Then each song will have its own path
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/K:/iTunes%20Music/Cowboy%20Junkies/The%20Trinity%20Session/07%2 0200%20More%20Miles.mp3</string>
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Have you tried, importing the music into iTunes again? So delete the music from iTunes only not the system, & then import to see if it finds your musics?

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My itunes was working fine using my external hard drive. Then I played a song that was not part of that music folder. Now itunes says it can't find any of the songs that are listed. The little evil exclamation point pops up. How can I reconnect to the hard drive without having to start all over?

Thanks for the clarification of check vs click. I guess once I saw the word "double" I stopped reading. I ended up "reloading" the drive to itunes. The interesting thing is that itunes isn't setting the location for the external drive. It is set for a folder under "my music" The actual songs aren't there, but the folders are there. When i put my external drive music to a new itunes library, i did so without copying the songs. So about 100 gig of music is in a folder that is really only about 300mb. I noticed before i restarted that the location was this folder. When i opened it, it was empty. After redoing everthing all of the songs are on the folder. I probably should have just changed it to go to the external drive like you suggested. Just for fun i changed the location to the external and bypassed that small folder. It worked great. It only took about 2 minutes to update, and it works great. I thought i had to use that stupid little folder. Thanks for all of your help!!

File://localhost/ Issue Itunes Can't Find My Music.

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+changed the location of the music folder to E: iTunes Music.+
All this does is make future additions go to that new place.
When you move things around outside of itunes, it loses the path, as you've found.
Can you move everything back and use the Consolidate Library command to move it to the new location?
Here is a good article from iLounge on what you need to understand about the process.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive

ITunes can't find the music - long post

Here’s the situation; apologies for length, I want to get all the details down.
The music collection:
8Tb (and growing) in lossless format, on an Ethernet network, accessed via the Mac Mini running OS 10.9.2 that’s my entertainment centre. The music is stored on a D-Link server in a RAID 1 setup. I’ve disabled the iTunes import features keep the iTunes media folder organised and copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library because with a very large library of opera and other classical music with multiple artists, this produces chaos. I’ve tried editing the file info before import, but the organisational results are still awful. I put the music files into folders named by composer, then subfolders for each work named by composer and performer(s), then add them to the library. If I didn’t do this I’d have (and have had), e.g. Turandot sorted by artist into eight separate albums. I’m sure many of you know the problem already, I just want to make sure everything’s clear.
There’s also a separate, lower bit rate, collection for my iPod.
The music library (.itl) files:
There are two, the complete library file for home listening, and the separate library file for iPod music. I’ve tried keeping the library files on my hard drive so they’re included in Time Machine backups; and keeping them on the server with the music collection. The same problem happens whichever way I do this.
I option+click when loading iTunes to select the library file I want to use, to make iTunes point to the correct media file location. I make sure I’m connected to the server before I do this(!)
The problems:
Every time I select a playlist either the playlist doesn’t list any tracks but shows me how many songs there are in the playlist; or iTunes tells me it can’t find the first file in the list - do I want to locate it manually? I do locate it and then I have to tell iTunes to find the other missing files; it finds the files in that playlist but then takes several minutes to tell me that it can’t find all the other ‘missing’ files in that big library. Meanwhile, I’m not able to listen to any music.
It seems to me that iTunes only works properly if the music is actually on the local hard drive but how many of us have that little music? I buy DVDs and rip the music myself, at max bit rate, I don’t buy downloads.
One problem seems to be that the Mac OS doesn’t index external drives automatically, is this true? This morning I’ve forced Spotlight to index the server drives using the terminal mdutil command but it’s made no difference, the problems are still there. What is Spotlight supposed to do? I’ve followed the instructions for using it and researched using it on the Web, but it’s never been able to find files I know are there, yet EasyFind has no trouble locating anything on the local drive, the music server or other external drives. I suspect that there are more fundamental bugs in the OS affecting this, because sometimes I’ve looked at a folder count in the Finder and know that the displayed number of files is wrong, it’s less than the number of files I know are there. Get Info will give me different numbers for the same folder at different times when I haven’t added or deleted any files in it.
I’m looking at Music Collector as a replacement for iTunes, but if iTunes’ problems are based in the OS, there doesn’t seem any point in switching. The price is reasonable, I’m happy to pay for it if it will work properly on the Mac OS. If I’d had to pay for iTunes I’d be getting my money back as it obviously isn’t fit for purpose. I’m in the EU, we have proper consumer protection laws here.
The Mini is 17 months old, still under a 3-year high ed warranty and has just come back from servicing at an Apple retailer, which fixed a software problem that prevented the OS from loading, so it should be problem-free... right?
Do you think reimporting the whole music collection again, using the two iTunes settings I’ve disabled, would make iTunes retain its links? I have the server space. It’s a nightmare scenario, imagine that Turandot again, 55 tracks split into eight albums, by soloists, conductor, and orchestra, and iTunes’ and/or Mac OS search facilities not working properly. How would I find all the tracks and create playlists for everything? There’s a lot of CDs that would give me the same problems. I have a 50-CD set of the Berlin Philharmonic covering 100 years of recordings, trying to organise this into coherent playlists multiplies the Turandot problem many times over. It goes on. That’s why I switched to organising the music myself in the first place, I was getting migraines trying to find everything to create playlists and not listening to any music.
I’ve been running various Linux distros on a dedicated box for several months, but again, music is the obstacle to switching. I haven’t found products that do what Audio Hijack Pro (especially) and Fission do, on Linux. Everything else on that platform works for me.
Sorry about the length, but music is the most important thing my Macs do. I’m disabled and music matters a lot. Any tips, links or advice generally would be much appreciated. I don’t mind spending a reasonable amount of money to get something that’s reliable, because iTunes doesn’t seem to be it, although I wish it was.
TIA.

Is this a NAS type of setup (of which I know very little)? Mine is not a response based upon strong technical knowledge but iTunes seems to have problems with those. Just about everybody has issues with iTunes but you say it is not fit for the purpose. What is that? I bet for 99% of people it does. Not everybody has 8TB collections they are trying to use with a RAID structured external server. iTunes is really a mass consumer piece of software. Yes, many people have expanded beyond internal drives, but NAS arrangements seem to add levels of complexity beyond a direct external drive that is Mac formatted and at most served by an Apple brand wireless router which I suspect is probably how everything is tested. Anything more is fortuitous in terms of support. Except that you say the library files are on the external drive too it sounds to me like the server is asleep when you say it cannot find files and then suddenly can when you go to find one.

After system crash itunes can't find my music

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