Invalid iTunes library/damaged iTunes library

I created a library for all my media with the option key and iTunes on my external hard drive. All my music, TV shows, podacsts, etc. is stored there and all is intact, except I launched iTunes like normal and I get the message
"The file 'iTunes Library' does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has created a new iTunes library and renamed this file to 'iTunes Library (Damaged)'"
I've read other threads. I can't seem to rebuild the library with the .xml file. I tried the drag your library to the desktop thing and that doesn't work.
All my physical data is fine, but I need the library back so I don't have to spend weeks recreating it by hand.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thank You!

Indie, I don't understand this part. Do you just mean re-creating your playlists and reassigning star ratings and that kind of thing? I took your "having to play all the files" literally and don't know what that has to do with anything.
I hope the Apple Store folks advised you to make regular backups of the critical iTunes Library file. Some people are wise enough to keep a backup of their iTunes Music folder. Fewer make a backup of the iTunes Library file, but that's how you can recover from an incident like yours with the least amount of work.

Similar Messages

Itunes music library "damaged"

my ibook crashed when trying to download a large email attchment and when I re-started, my music library was damaged and a new one was "created" with nothing in it. How can I re-install my old library.... I can see the one labelled damaged but I can't import it via itunes.

A damaged 'iTunes Library' file is unusable and there is no way to repair it as far as I know.
If your 'iTunes Music Library.xml' file still reflects the contents of the now damaged 'iTunes Library' file, you can try to use this one.
Choose 'Import...' from the File menu and navigate to the 'iTunes Music Library.xml' file. Click 'Choose'. There's a very small chance it will work.
Usually you have to re-create the library after a 'damaged library file' message.
Drop the 'iTunes Music' folder (in./Users/YourUsername/Music/iTunes) on the empty library in iTunes.
iTunes will rebuild the library. You have lost your playlists, play counts, date added, ratings and podcast subscriptions, but at least the library is populated again.
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

Original Library Damaged

I had problems with a corrupted library file and decided to delete my itunes library and reinstall what I had backed up about a month ago onto some DVDs. So, I deleted my entire iTunes folder - the music, the library and everything else inside. I restarted iTunes now and it automatically created a library and a music folder, which I expected and planned to install the backed up library to. However, I noticed the library file it created was called "iTunes Library (Damaged)"
The library seems to be saving, even though I haven't put any music into it yet, but why would iTunes be creating an orignally damaged library? Is this something I can fix and if so, are there any suggestions?

Bump.
Does anyone have any answers as to what the problem may be?

Damaged iTunes libraries

While looking for why I've used almost all 74 GB of my memory, I found that I have six folders in iTunes marked "iTunes Library Damaged" "iTunes Library (1) Damaged," "iTunes Library (2) Damaged," etc. What are these folders? Can I delete these? If I do, will I gain memory back? Will I lose music? Thanks for any help.
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I'm having a similar problem. Can you tell me where you found these 'damaged' folders? I need to delete mine too. I think they are caused when an iPod is disconnected during syncing.

Invalid "iPod Games Library" creates damaged iTunes library

About once every other week when I fire up iTunes, I get this message:
The file "iPod Games Library" does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has created a new iTunes library and renamed this file to "iTunes Library (Damaged)".
All my media files are still on my hard drive, but I have to start from scratch with my library and all of my playlists. And with 160GB of files and dozens of playlists to rebuild, it's no small task.
Is there a way to resurrect my old library once it has been declared "damaged." Or is there some other means of recovering all of those playlists I spend so many hours putting together?
MacBook Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.9)

I have encountered the same issue and can't find a stable solution (other than storing 2 - 3 copies of the library file before shutting down).
I have added a new hard drive, imported 27K songs multiple times, exported libraries and still no luck.
I would certainly appreciate any other suggestions to help resolve this.
Thanks

ITunes 7 calls my library invalid

after upgradeing to itunes 7 i got this message
the file "iTunes Library" does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has attempted to recover your iTunes library and renamed this file to "iTunes library (damaged)"
this deleated over 1000 of my songs... which i backed up so it's not really alost... but whats wrong with my old library and will it happen again
also now when playing songs on iTunes i hear a clicking sound from my speakers. its not the speakers cause it only happens when i'm playing iTunes

ok i just discovered somthing rather interesting
all this time after iTunes said my library was damaged i was trying to re upload all my songs from out side sources (DVDs External HD etc) and eventually i was being informd that i was running out of space on my HD.
in my KAT>MUSIC>iTUNES>iTUNES MUSIC folder...all my songs are there... undamaged and i was able to simply copy them back to iTunes from there.... file folder by file folder.... brought back almost 8000 songs so my total in iTunes library was up too about 10,000.
then as i was re nameing some of the files in itunes (deleteing some copies etc) iTunes shut down. when i restarted it, it said once again... "your iTunes Library is invalid.... we are retriveing your library and calling the old library iTunes Library (Damaged) 1" when i opened iTunes i was back down to 2000 songs
so now in my KAT>MUSIC>iTUNES folder there is...
iTunes Library 4MB
iTunes Library (damaged) 13MB
iTunes Library (damaged)1 15MB
and in my KAT>MUSIC>iTUNES>iTUNESMUSIC folder there are all my songs
why does it keep calling my library invalid and should i even bother re-copying the songs to iTunes. should i delete the (damaged) libraries that are takeing up so much space in the HD

How do I fix an Itunes Library (Damaged) on a Mac with all current software and udates?

I have lost my main Itunes Library. I have one now that came straight from the music in my phone. All playlist are gone. 75 gigs of music are gone. the only music availible to me is the music that was in my phone. down to 15 gigs I have found a file that says "Itunes Library (Damaged)" but I can't do anything with it. Of course Mac wants $ to fix it. Is there anything I can do to remedy this disaster? Running Imac with OS X 10.8.2, Iphone 4 w/ios6 and original Ipad with all updates. The Iphone seems normal but is missing all playlist. It reorganized the music. The Ipad has no music and over half the Apps have disappeared.
HHHHHHHEEEEEEEELLLPPPPPP! Please!

Assuming you have AVG then yes, a second patch has apparently been released to day which may resolve the issue. See this post for general advice.
If you don't see the .itl file extension then don't add it to the filename of the renamed file.
iTunes Library 2012-09-22.itl > iTunes Library.itl
iTunes Library 2012-09-22 > iTunes Library
My advice has generally been aimed at Windows users, but if you have AVG on a Mac and that too suffers from this issue then it is worth nothing that at one point the iTunes Library on a Mac was stored without any extension. If you match the name of the empty library file you are replacing it should work.
tt2

ITunes Library (Damaged)

Hey guys, using windows i got a blue screen error. booted my PC back up and opened iTunes. a small window come up about the library. i ignored it as i thought it'd say 'Find the directory' or something, but it just went i had no songs in my library. My Library is now damaged. NOT The .Xml File Just The .itl File.
<3 Thanks

Also, when i try to add ANY Library it says
'The File 'iTunes Library (Damaged).itl' cannot be imported because it does not appear to be a valid exported file.'

Repair itunes library (damaged) file. Multiple iTunes libraries on an external harddrive. All libraries have been working fine. Do some "housecleaning" on a one of the large libraries 296GB. iTunes quit and now has damaged file. 296 GB still on HD.

How to repair itunes library (damaged) file. Multiple iTunes libraries on an external harddrive. All libraries have been working fine. Do some "housecleaning" on a one of the large libraries 296GB. iTunes quits and now has damaged file. 296 GB still on HD.

The duplication is unnecessary. Exporting creates a duplicate of the file. So now you'll have a duplicate of a duplicate. Exporting is not "working on" a file.
No it's not merging, it's exporting from one to the Finder and into another. No matter what lose something. If you export the Original you leave behind all the work you've done in iPhoto. If you export anything else, you lose the non-destructive editing and the ability to revert to the original. With merging you preserve that work. Yes, you can trash the old Library when you have completed the manoevre but no it's not the same thing as merging.
This User Tip
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4921
has details of the options in the Export dialogue. But in brief:
Current gets you the iPhoto Preview, used for sharing via media browsers. It's a jpg, medium quality missing metadata. Original gets the file you imported, unchanged and then you can export different version of the current version at different qualities. If you choose to export anything except the Original you do not get a Raw. There's no such thing as an "edited Raw", and you lose the connection between the original and the exported version. That means you've taken a non-destructive workflow and turned it into a destructive one.
The Tiff will certainly be higher qulaity and less likely to suffer generational loss in future editing but the file sizes are vast, often more than 10 times the size of the jpeg.
Put it this way, it would be cheaper to buy Library Manager than the disk you'll need to contain all the Tiffs. Unless you plan on a lot of editing, I'd go for a high quality jpeg as a reasonable compromise.
To be clear:
So, I guess my new question is, how can I edit the Raw image and keep it in a RAW format that IPhoto recognizes so that I can reprocess without any loss at a future time, or is it that once you edit a RAW image, then it is no longer a RAW image?
Once you edit a Raw it can no longer be a Raw. End of.

What is causing this? The file "iTunes Library.itl" does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has created a new iTunes library and renamed this file to "iTunes Library (Damaged) 4". This happens everytime I start iTunes lateley. Help!!!

Everytime I open iTunes lately...I get all my music thrown out of the library and this annoying message come up...The file “iTunes Library.itl” does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file. iTunes has created a new iTunes library and renamed this file to “iTunes Library (Damaged) 4”. Is this how an apple works? It doesn't? Why all of a sudden is it doing this? Please help. Thank you.
David

Did you happen to bring this iTunes library over from a windows machine? You might read this kb article to see if it helps http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451

Itunes library damaged - help!

My Itunes library became damaged today. All of the sudden I have only 158 songs in my library instead of over 4000 and all of my playlists are gone. There is a "damaged" Itunes library icon in my music folder now which was created at 10:45 this morning and modified at 1:16p.
Also my IPhoto has been acting strangely for the last couple of weeks. I've had to recreate my photo library a couple of times over that time and some of my photos have disappeared altogether. I downloaded the IPhoto Manager program last night and had some luck with it but I'm wondering if these issues are somehow related.
Thanks for you help.

Restore that backup you take regularly... Ah, OK.
*Empty/damaged library after upgrade/crash*
Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps you shouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the *Previous iTunes Libraries* folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename *iTunes Library* as *iTunes Library (Empty)* and then rename the restored file as *iTunes Library*. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
See Music Folder Files Not Added and Super Remove Dead Tracks for clean-up tools , if required.
tt2

Repairing "damaged" iTunes library?

Is there any way of repairing a damaged library file? Or is there a problem with the current version of iTunes that corrupts library files when it reads them? Here's my situation:
I opened iTunes (latest version 7.4.2) the other day and it said my library was corrupted/damaged, and it made a new library file. All the music files are intact. I tried to copy over a backup library file from a month ago (which worked without problems a month ago) but it said that it too was corrupted/damaged. This doesn't make sense to me, and seems to indicate another kind of problem rather than with the library file.
So my question is as follows. Is there a way to:
a. Do something to iTunes to make it recognize my Library as valid?
b. Repair a "damaged" library file somehow?
Thanks
-Kevin

RELAX -- i was able to restore my iTunes Library to work again without any changes or loss. -- see below for what i did, here's how it happened...
...when my ext HD was accidentally disconnected while running itunes, the app froze. I reconnected the HD and restarted itunes. A dialog box saying something like importing data came up and it stayed for a long period and i could see it was working the HD. i probabably should have let it run until it was done, but i pressed the stop option after 5 minutes because i thought it might be hung up. Seems all the HD jogging meant it was rebuilding the 160 Gb library -- who knew?
anyway, i guess the app was trying to do an automatic restoration process (we need to communicate better, iTunes...) The aborted process created a new library file that had only about a quarter of my music and no playlists, which obviously is not OK at all, so i came to this discussion for some clues...I saw a lot of discussion about reloading everything which seemed kinda wack, and was not an option so i pieced together some bits of best answers.
What worked for me was:
1.Quit iTunes.
2. Copy the largest, most recent library from the "Previous itunes library" folder to desktop. It will have a date appended to its name.
3. New default iTunes library and iTunes Library.xml files are created in the iTunes folder if you restarted iTunes when it couldn't read your preferred library. The itunes library file has an itunes logo on it and the iTunes Library.xml file is a text document. Trash these two new files. Don't bother with other Library files in sub-folders, because just the two top level Library files are read by the app.
4. Drag the library file from the desktop back into the iTunes Music folder. The file should be renamed just "iTunes Library" -- Don't worry about not adding a replacement iTunes Library.xml file - a new one will automatically regenerate if the iTunes Library can be read.
5. Start iTunes and ta-da...Hopefully that'll do it. Do something to celebrate, I was so stoked i signed up for this discussion to share what worked for me... Help a neighbor, or do something nice...

Damaged Itunes Library

I have read many posts about solving the "damaged Itunes Library" problem and none of the solutions works for me. My Itunes Library is located in the correct position, I have completely uninstalled and reinstalled Itunes and still, several times a week I get the damaged Itunes Library message and I have to re-import all of my music and recreate my playlists--this takes several hours each time.
A little about my setup. All of my music resides on a seperate internal hard drive--the F drive. My Itunes database is where it should be in c:\documents and settings\user\my documents\my music
My question is why is the Itunes Library file becoming damaged so often? Could it be Spysweeper, Norton Antivirus, PerfectDisk Defrag Utility...?
I have even spent $25 and tried Anapod to manage my music but I don't like it very much...but I could get used to it if Itunes doesn't start behaving properly.
Thanks for any sugestions.

I too have a damaged iTunes library. all of a sudden, it seems. It was working fine yesterday and then this afternoon I opened iTunes to find a song and there was no library, no playlists, just an empty library page. I totally freaked out because I've got 83 GB worth of music (not backed up, stupid of me). When a library is damaged, does that mean I cannot reimport the music files from the damaged library? Rumpole, when you re-imported all of your music, did you re-import from CDs? Or were you able to use those music files from the "damaged" iTunes music folder? And what about all of those free music files from iTunes on Free Music Tuesday? All gone? Please reply, SOMEONE, so I can either calm down or completely wig out. I can't handle the idea that I may have lost ALL that music!!!
Details: iTunes is on my C drive, and the music is on my D drive, with the setting that all music gets imported directly to my iTunes library on the D drive. I've had iTunes for years and never had a real problem with it. Now, and it seems that this happened after I upgraded to 6.0.4.2 fairly recently. AAAAAHHHH!!!

Damaged iTunes library, again

This problem is driving me bananas. I'm getting the dreaded "The file 'iTues Library.itl' does not appear to be a valid iTunes library file.."
All of my media lives on a Lacie external drive. I've saved all of the media to my desktop, wiped and re-partitioned my external drive multiple times, and have re-imported all of my media. I've swapped out FW wires, as well as which port on the Lacie I'm using.
iTunes will function properly for a day or two, and then music will start to skip, and ultimately, I'll get the message.
I'm running iTunes 10.6.3.
I'm running OS 10.6.8 on an Intel iMac.
I've read hundreds of posts and replies, and I cannot figure out how to fix this problem short of continually cleaning my external drive and starting over - which takes about two hours to do every time,
Can anyone offer a suggestion as to how to start at square 1 and reset things so that I'm free and clear of this craziness?
Many thanks in advance for any help you may be able to offer -
Krs

Sigh I just found out about holding down the option key while opening iTunes to choose a library, and it turns out my iTunes Library (damaged) file is actually damaged. Is there another way for me to recover my playlists and put my songs back into iTunes? Thanks!

AHH iTunes Library (damaged).itl?

I found a couple of posts about this problem but it was nothing very recent, nor anything very helpful. :/
(read: i'm not very good at computers, and i really don't know what you mean by 'just restore it'. so, step-by-step you're-an-idiot guides are good for me.)
I tried opening up iTunes, and it told me my library file was corrupt. It then started to import my library XML file. When my library loaded, of my <8000 songs and <30 movies, it left only 400 songs. I'm not computer savvy at all and I reallllly don't understand the problem iTunes is having?
My iTunes folder has the following three files in it --
iTunes Music Library.xml
iTunes Library.itl
iTunes Library (damaged).itl
I guess what's aggravating is that I lost all my playcounts/ratings/playlists.
I tried recreating my iTunes library using this guide -- http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451 -- but I'm guessing the .xml file is bad, because it only imported twelve songs. What should I do? My knee-jerk reaction is to reinstall iTunes, but that would mean I'd have to import and reorganize alllll my music files regardless. Why is iTunes treating me like crap? Was it something I did? D;
null

See what these setting are on your PC, I found it in a post by forum regular b noir. It has helped folks not get that damaged library message.
+Right-click "My Computer", and select "Properties". Click the "Advanced" tab.+
+Under "Performance", click the "Settings" button. Go to the advanced tab in the window that that brings up.+
+Make sure under "Memory usage" that you've got "Programs" selected rather than "System Cache".+
As for what you can do NOW, since the XML file isn't getting things rebuilt properly and there are no previous libraries? If you have an iPod, you can try getting ratings and stuff off of it using a 3rd-party program. I haven't used one so can't recommend any.
If you don't have an iPod, I'm afraid all you can do is start from scratch. Drag all your music from Windows Explorer into the main itunes library window.
In the future, make regular copies of that ITL file. I put mine on a USB drive, and an external hard drive. I wouldn't want to lose 4 years of ratings and playcounts either.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660

Invalid iTunes library/damaged iTunes library

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