Corrupted iTunes Library

My iTunes library seems to have become corrupted, and I want to replace it with a backup copy on my external hard drive. I emailed Apple, and they told me it can't be done. Instead, the library has to be recreated. Does anyone know if this is really true? Is there a simpler way? What's the point of exporting the library if you can't use it as a backup?

Run Apple's Disk Utilities and make sure your drive passes the check. No sense in rebuilding your iTunes library file if you still have drive issues.
Quit iTunes and then look in your iTunes folder (the one that's in your Music folder). Inside you'll see several files and folders. iTunes Library contains your playlists and music library and that's what has become damaged. You say you see nothing in iTunes at all so the old file was removed and replaced with a new empty one. Still, throw that in the trash and let iTunes make a new one for you.
You probably see a folder called Previous iTunes Libraries and a file called iTunes Music Library.xml. If you are lucky the xml file is intact. Start up iTunes and from the File menu select Import... then navigate to your iTunes folder and select the iTunes Music Library.xml file. It may take quite a while to load if you have a big music collection. Does this look reasonably current and accurate? If so, you are in business, but just to be on the save side, from the File menu select Add to Library and point to the folder that contains your music files. If there's any music in the folders that isn't in the library it will get added.
Assuming the above didn't work, you next best hope is that the Previous iTunes Libraries contains a fairly recent library. If so quit iTunes then duplicate the most recent one (or perhaps the next most recent one since the newest may be the damaged one) and put it in the iTunes folder. Rename it iTunes Library and start iTunes. From the File menu select Add to Library and point to the folder that contains your music files. If there's any music in the folders that isn't in the library it will get added.

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I seem to have a corrupted iTunes library. I can't transfer the library to an external drive. The transfer hangs up on a specific tune. Anybody have any ideas. I am running OS 10.6 w/ a 2Ghz Duel core processor.

I seem to have a corrupted iTunes library. I can't transfer the library to an external drive. The transfer hangs up on a specific tune. Anybody have any ideas. I am running OS 10.6 w/ a 2Ghz Duel core processor.

Old Barry wrote:
via a usb connestion
So you are copyinbg the entire /Music/iTunes? folder to another drive by copying in a Finder window?

How can I delete a corrupted itunes library

My iTunes was freezing at the beginning after I have tried to load some mp3 files.
I got an advice to click "option" with the iTunes icon and I could build a new library.
Now, How can I delete the old corrupted one which is almost 100Gb??

Hold the option key while clicking iTunes.
iTunes: How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451

Corrupt iTunes Library file (.itl AND .xml)

I just got a new mac and decided not to put my music on it. Instead I kept my entire itunes library on an external hard drive. At some point, my hard drive must have disconnected while using iTunes and the library files became corrupt. When I see the files (in finder) on my mac, their size = Zero KB and their "kind of" = Alias. When I check out those same files on my windows computer, it says their actual numerical size (probably before they became corrupt). I've read that you can restore playlists with the .xml file but that is also corrupt.
Is there any way at all to repair/recover this library? PLEASE HELP I've worked very hard on creating this library.

I had this problem repeatedly and found that it seems to happen when you exit or restart Windows while iTunes is running. Note that when you close the iTunes window the program actually continues to run for a significant amount of time after its window disappears and even after the "saving iTunes library" message disappears. Basically iTunes starts writing out its library and then gets interrupted during the shutdown, causing the corruption.
I have solved the problem with the very pathetic solution of bringing up Task Manager, switching to the Processes tab, and waiting until the iTunes.exe process is gone from the list. Then I know it is done writing and it's safe to exit or restart Windows. I have never had corruption when I have done this.
(This isn't completely consistent with the posts above since one claimed that they restored a known good library after reboot and still had the problem. Perhaps that is something else, or perhaps the known good library had actually been corrupted before it was saved.)
Note that when the *.itl file is corrupted this way, it is pretty much always the case the the *.xml file is also corrupted. Since the XML file is text, iTunes is able to read what there is of it to rebuild the *.itl, but since the *.xml file is truncated, a lot of songs will be missing. It's a bit puzzling that Apple chose a library format that redundantly writes to two separate files but they write them out simultaneously so if one gets corrupted the other one almost always is corrupted as well.
The good news is that this problem is beyond simple to solve for Apple. The bad news is that for some inexplicable reason they keep releasing version after version with this same serious bug.

Corrupt iTunes library .itl file - help turingtest2

turingtest2 - I've read majority of your suggestions for people who have had corrupt itunes libraries and I was wondering if you could help before I spend 2-4 hours trying to fix my library. Here is my issue:
I started iTunes today and found that only music in "the cloud" is showing up in my music library. I googled this issue and came across your suggestions.
My last backup .itl file is from December 30th so I don't really want to use this. I have made a ton of changes to my library since then.
The .iTunes Music Library.xml is fairly recent, however it is not as up-to-date as the library on my iPhone is. There are numerous playlists and changes I've made since then as well.
Is there a way I can export the format of my itunes library from my device? I'm not sure if the .itl or .xml is stored on the actual device, I assume it's probably not and just used for iTunes and then iTunes formats your device based on the converted .itl file.
I have all my music on my computer so that's not an issue, I just would like to have all the playlists I've created and changes I've made to my library. My ideal situation would be to grab this file from my device, re-create my library, then sync it up with this library, which will take some time but I'll still have the exact same setup.
Otherwise, I'll have to use the older iTunes Music Library.xml and try to re-create all my playlists and add/remove the changes I've made to the library.
Help is appreciated, thanks.

What are you seeing, a blank itunes library?
Add the music from your folders back into itunes, then.
Either drag & drop from a Windows Explorer screen into itunes - drop the top-level music folder onto the word LIBRARY near the top left.
Or do it through the itunes menu > File > Add Folder to Library

Corrupted iTunes Library Issue - Help!

So I'm running an Intel-based version 10.6. Today I downloaded an Apple Update trying to fix a keyboard issue, and when i restarted found that my iTunes library is gone, save for maybe 400 apparently random songs. I have not lost any of the music itself, just the library. I can't seem to recover it - there's no evidence of the past library and restarting didn't magically bring it back.
Is there some step I'm missing to restore the previous iTunes library, or do I now have to manually go through and re-add everything? It's all scattered about different places, is the problem, and its about 22,000 songs. I have a 120G iPod synced to it, is there a way to sync just the library from the iPod to the iTunes?
My other idea is, since I'm almost out of space on the 120G iPod anyway, and since I have another way to charge it, maybe just backing all my music up onto a hard drive, deleting it all from the computer, buying a second iPod, and starting new and just not re-sync the old one ever (only charge it). Thoughts?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
PS - I don't want to erase all the music and re-add everything to iTunes from the iPod, because the last time I had to do so I lost some stuff.

The central file to everything is the library.itl file in your Music > iTunes folder. Start iTunes with the option key held down and guide it to that file. If you're lucky then it will be the one you need. If not then it is hard to determine where the file might be. Normally an update should not affect something like the iTunes library but if your file directory was having issues (did you verify with Disk Utility first?) then who knows? This is why one backs up before installing system software updates.
If you have a backup then let us know. You may be able to rescue a copy of the iTunes Library.itl from that and replace the bad copy in your iTunes folder.
Since your media are scattered about it may be a painstaking task adding them all again but it may come down to that. Again, back up...

Rebuild corrupt iTunes library?

I've had this problem before, but the last time a simple DiskWarrior rebuild of my hard drive solved it.
All of a sudden (since going from 7.2 to 7.3.1), iTunes can't find any of my tunes. They're all right where they were, and if I click on one and find it manually for iTunes, it can play it.
Is there a way to force iTunes to rebuild its directory of the iTunes Music folder? Or will something else work? I've got thousands of tunes in there and I can't imagine manually finding all of them.
(Basically, every tune now has an exclamation mark in front of it.)
Stuart

Hi Stuart,
I just recently had the identical problem. 4,000 songs and most with the ! in front. On an album there would be 8 of 10 songs itunes could not find and they were right next to the 2 of the 10 it found.
Using the Apple method of rebuilding the library did not work for me. It would rebuild the library but I would still get most of the songs with ! marks. You could also add/import all your music again but you will end up with duplicates. Manually deleting 3,000 orphaned duplicates was not an option. I looked on these forums and did not find anything that worked so came up with a crude but effective solution. In the end, it took less time to do than I spent trying more elegant solutions.
What I finally ended up doing is backing up the entire library to another hard drive or you could do it to cd/dvd(which is a good idea any way) then trashing the old library. Yup, I nervously trashed all my songs. Itunes should not be running during this procedure. Then I needed to trash preferences in my home folder (your mac/users(you)/library/preferences). The preferences you are looking for begin with com.Apple.itunes. If memory serves there are 3 of them.
Now log out and back in again. Start itunes and you will get the same dialog boxes you did when you first used itunes. Answer the questions then you should see an itunes library with nothing in it. If there is a list of your music with the ! in front of the songs then there was a copy of the library xml that you did not trash somewhere in your system. If the window for itunes is blank then all is as it should be. Just go to your backup and drag your music to the itunes window. It will completely rebuild your library copying the music to your hard drive. For me, my itunes library is on another hard drive and I had to make sure that *before dragging and dropping* I went to itunes/preferences/advanced/itunes music folder location and selected the other hard drive. My boot drive is not big enough to hold the operating system, applications, and my itunes music. I didn't want another problem created by over filling my boot drive.
Everything now works as it should, I have a backup of my music and life goes on. While this is a crude method it worked for me.

Corrupt iTunes Library .XML File for library with 3,000+ playlists.HELP!

Here is my situation. I've been ripping my cds to Lossless for almost a year now and I'm at about cd 3000. A few days ago my Mini got hung up on a cd and locked up. The cd drive even completely stopped spinning after about an hour. I did the only thing I could and turned the power off. It was totally unresponsive. When I re-booted I got the "iTunes Library has been renamed (damaged) error. I tried several fixes which didn't work such as simply renaming damaged(by removing the word damaged from the file name). Right now I have dragged the Library File and the XML file to my desktop and tried to restart iTunes to import the XML file but that's giving me none of my playlists. I have a playlist for every album in my library. I like this way so no need to comment on how it doesn't make sense to you. My database file is 43MB and the XML is just a few KB. My library is stored on an external drive. I will freak out if I have to create all these playlists again. I know that there is a playlist generator app that will automatically do this but I had these all last name, first name and aliases and how I wanted to find them so I put a lot of work into how I organized everything. What else can I try?

It's so funny you just replied to this because I've been waiting patiently for a week and I just now posted another snag I'm running into right above this post.
I never really had any kind of problems with all of the playlists. It never really hung up or anything like that at all & I'm using a very first generation Mac Mini. It would seamlessly play from any song I picked to any other song I picked by just clicking on it.
I had multiple reasons for using so many playlists if you want to read about them here:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1230475284

Corrupt itunes library.xml

The last time I opened iTunes, it told me my library file was corrupt and began importing my library XML file. iTunes doesn't keep a very good job of syncing the XML file with the library because only about 1/10th of the import was accurate. I lost all of my play counts and dates - added, modified, and last played. So, as it is, my library is almost informationally worthless. My question is, since I have the damaged library file, is there anyway to extract what wasn't corrupt from it, or to repair it by importing the music from my itunes music folder which contains all of my current music
Are there any common programs to do this? Any tips or tricks?
bmo

You might want to check versiontracker.com for iTunes utilities. There may be one that will salvage iTunes files. I don't have any personal experience with iTunes salvaging utilities, so I have nothing else to recommend. I do know that versiontracker.com is usually a pretty good place to check for useful utilities, if you don't find a specific answer by searching this discussion forum.
When you have your library repaired (hopefully a repair can be done) make regular backups of all your iTunes files you don't want to lose. The iTMS suggests this after each purchase I've made and I think it's a good practice to get in the habit of doing once a week, or once a month if you don't make too many changes to your library.

Corrupt itunes library file

I have had no crashes etc... I use iTunes daily. TOday I opened iTunes and it said it was importing my Library file... it then announced that the file was corrupt and created a new. Problem is, I now have nothing! None of my smart lists, playlist, no purchased music.. nothing. I even rented a movie last night... never started it... not there. Gone.
Ideas?

I suppose you could check in your itunes folder, and see if there is an old file there marked damaged, or corrupt or something. You could also try importing that file back into itunes from the file>import menu.

7.2 upgrade: how to recover corrupted iTune library index file from backup?

Hi folks,
I upgraded to iTunes 7.2 and my library file (the xml one)
got corrupted...
My >40 GB of mysic seem to be on the safe side fortunately,
same for a half way recent backup of the file
iTunes Music Library.xml.
Both sit on an external hard drive, while the corrupted files
are on the main disk. Sounds not to bad, compared to what I read from others!
Questions:
1) How can I use my backuped XML index file to recover my playlists etc in iTunes? Unfortunately I only backuped this single index file, i.e. the "Music"
one, yet not the other iTunes database file.
2) Then, I had still made some modifications (mostly MP3 file tags)
after the backup of the index file. I realized that while looking on
the time stamps of the directories that contain my actual music.
Do I need to do something to make these modifications visible
in the recovered iTunes??
Thanks for any useful hints in advance!!

I solved my problem through a minor variation of this recipe:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93313

HT1449 Partially corrupted iTunes library after moving media folder

I moved my media folder to a new hard drive but somehow lost the library file in the process. I used my time machine backup to get an old library file and I placed it back in the iTunes folder on my home drive, but unfortunately it's a few months old, and additions to my itunes folder since then are invisible when I open iTunes. Is there a way to force the iTunes app to rebuild the library, thus recognizing my new downloads since the old library file was built? Songs I'd downloaded and copied from my CDs up to the old library build are working fine.

You probably should have done:
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the Option (alt) key (shift on Windows), then guide it to the new location of the library.
To answer your question, drag the media folder on the other drive to the Automatically Add To iTunes folder. It will add anything that's not in iTunes and ignore anything that is.

Album art displays very slowly; iTunes library file is corrupted?

Since I have updated to the latest version of Leopard, my album art in the iTunes music folder displays at a snail's pace, where before it was fast as lightning. It appears my iTunes Library file is corrupted, because when I created a new iTunes library file, all my art work on my tracks displayed very fast, no slowdown at all. Also when I logged in as a different user, same thing. No problems with my album art being displayed. Is there a way of fixing a corrupted iTunes library file? I have a lot of music, videos and TV shows, all neatly arranged in various playlists I created. Just to do it over again would take me weeks. Also since I've been backing my internal drive using Time Machine, can I go back and retrieve my iTunes library file before it became corrupted? Thank you for any help you can give me.

You should be able to retieve your pre-corrupted library file from TM, provided the corruption didn't happen to far back.

So I updated the itunes and now it won't open it, it states a message "the itunes library.itl" cannot be open because it was created by a newer version of itunes, I have unistalled and re-installed newer and older version and still i get this message.

I updated and now i can't use the itunes. I have unistalled several times, installing newer and older versions but still i get this message. Is there anything i can do to fix this problem??

Try the following user tip with that one:
Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash

Most of my iTunes library has disappeard. I cannot find them when I search in the iTunes folder either. How can I get them back?

I had hundreds of songs in my iTunes library, but when I open it now, I have about 40. They were a combination of downloaded songs from the iTunes store and songs loaded from my personal CD collection. I have searched for advice online. I have searched my iTunes folder and my recycle bin, and my songs are no longer there. I did not download a new version or plug in a device. Nothing has changed. Where could my songs be?

See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.
tt2

Corrupted iTunes Library

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