I lost all of my tunes somewhere between updates...

Question

!#%!^^!!($@*! Crap! This bites...
Here's the scenario:
- I have a G5 and a Shuffle (single user on 10.4.2, nothing funky at all - very vanilla setup and well maintained).
- Updated to iTunes 5.01 earlier this week didn't fire up iTunes until tonight
- Prior to opening the new and improved iTunes 5.01 tonight I did the Shuffle update posted today
- Shuffle update went fine, software updated indicated it completed without fault
- Opened iTunes, accepted new license agreement and entered the normal library interface
- Reconnected the Shuffle (took it off the USB cable during reboot from Security Update applied) to receive an error msg. about being unable to locate files... Huh?
- Sure enough, my budding library of ~200 songs was pruned to about 10 or so working songs. No difference if paid for on iTunes, ripped from my CDs, or acquired - the tunes are GONE
- I see the folders for the artist and tracks but no actual file
Contacted Apple support and with a bit of creative guidance from somebody in a land far away realized how quickly everything became my fault...
Mmmkay. So deleting the playlist from the Shuffle last week not only deleted the thirty songs on the Shuffle but also mangled the rest of my library? I think that's a stretch especially noting the Shuffle and the songs contained in the playlist worked fine prior to tonight.
So, now that I've vented briefly over the loss of my music and the frustration of less than stellar support I have to ask if anybody else encountered similar voodoo?
I'd hate to think I run the risk of losing my songs everytime Apple publishes updates for iTunes or iPods.
Sure I can back up right now when my library is small, but how do folks manage this with gigs of tunes? I could hook up my DAT drive but finding an affordable SCSI card for the G5 is proving difficult and I'm not crazy about keeping a stack of DVDs laying around.
Gah! Frustrating.
Any input appreciated. For now I must locate my old SATA drive just pulled from the G5 and see if my iTunes folder backup is on that drive....

Answer 1

Something is definitely amiss here folks. I just plugged in my 120G SATA drive removed from my G5 roughly one month ago. And I encountered the same voodoo.
After extracting the new 250G and inserting the old 120G drive I unfortunately had no success. Lo and behold the same symptom for iTunes, all of the artist and album folders are in there but no actual MP3/AAC files.
I know the 120G drive was intact prior to removal (the 120G files were the copied to my 160G boot drive and then into the new 250G drive running as the iTunes repository) and the files from the 120G and the 160G were playable when the drive was removed (I could browse at will and open the files on the 120G or the 160G).
This reminds me of the days when I was an Apple Certified Tech and System 7 came out. That OS had the voodoo where files would "disappear". Of course as we later learned that was not the case, and the cure was relatively easy. That behavior is akin to what I'm seeing here.
I wonder if I can "revert" to iTunes 4.9 just to see if anything changes (or maybe the OS prior to the last security update if that had any file system revisions in it - need to check that).
For what it's worth I did search the drive(s) to see if the files were simply mis-placed somehow and as anticipated, nothing revealed from the search.
Can I conact the iTunes Store/Support to re-download any of the purchased music I had?
This is not a real confidence builder for getting into the world of iTunes. But, I should of course heed my own words of wisdom - back up early, back up often....