ITunes losing all music files imported since 6/2

I have a frustrating problem I can't seem to figure out. I am running iTunes 8.2 on Leopard 10.5.7 on an Intel iMac. I keep my music on an external hard drive connected by firewire 800.
The issue is that all of the new music I have added since 6/2 will not stay in the library. I will add the files which get synced to my iPhone and iPod without difficulty. At a certain point, when I go to sync, I will get the error message "The following songs could not be synced to the iPhone b/c they could not be found." This most recently occurred when I turned my computer on. These files are everything since that date. Nothing particular happened on 6/2. It's just that's the last album it has retained.
When I go to the library, all of the songs added since then have the dreaded ! next to them. The files are missing from my external hard drive, and from the back up of my external hard drive. They are not in the trash. Spotlight does not find them except for the copies in my emusic folder (which is fortunately where most of them came from so I don't have to re rip everything).
I have tried:
1. Reinstalling iTunes, including deleting some files from the library recommended in a different post (sorry do not remember which-- some plist files).
2. Running Disk Utility to verify and repair the external volume.
3. Reimporting the music and changing some metadata.
This has occurred with files I have ripped, purchased from the iTunes store, and imported from mp3s on my hard drive. It is incredibly annoying. Please help!
2. Reimporting the songs

Hey Georgia
The first link below will get you iTunes downloaded to your computer. Check your purchase history to download any previous purchase and the second article will assist with that. The final actable will assist with transferring any purchased content from your iPhone to your MacBook Air, anything that was not purchased will not transfer.
iTunes 11.1.2
http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1614
Downloading past purchases from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519
iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iOS device or iPod to a computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1848
Regards,
-Norm G.

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ITunes losing all music and won't redirect to correct folder

Hi there,
This morning, iTunes has lost all my music. The whole library has the little exclamation mark. Using the 'Find info' comand, I can see that iTunes is looking for them in the music folder of my internal drive. However, they've always been kept on an external drive, and when I redirect iTunes to an individual track in it's correct location, and it asks me if I'd like to use the location to find the other missing files, it fails to correct the location of the rest. I am getting this message: “iTunes was able to find 1 of 18083 missing files.” Rather frustrating...
I'm using iTunes 10, on OS 10.7.3
I have the correct iTunes media folder indicated in the advanced preferences tab.
In case it's relevant, I'm also syncing with a new iPhone 4s, which I've only had for about 3 weeks, though in terms of audio, I only sync recently added albums + podcasts.
And an additional odd behaviour that I noticed this morning was that in my iTunes Media folder, outside of the Music folder, several artist folders had appeared, each containing an album folder and one or several songs from that album, the rest of which were all in their normal locations inside the Music folder, minus the tracks in the newly-appeared folders. All very odd.
Thanks for any help,
Emma

I have finally solved this issue. Here is the solution:
1. Open iTunes
2. Select Music
3. In the upper right hand corner select Albums.
4. Under "All Albums" highlight the first album, then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, hold down the shift key and select the last album.
5. All albums should now be selected.
6. Place the cursor over one of the albums. Press with 2 fingers on the trackpad to bring up the menu.
7. Select "Check All"
8. Congratulations - no more grayed out songs and they will sync now.
9. Go into your iPhone sync and check the songs you want to transfer and click the sync button.
I hope this helps you to resolve your issue.
NO MAX

After a backup all music files are invisible and iTunes don't see anything

Hi,
I got a very strange problem and I'm really lost.
I made a backup of my portable iTunes libray (using a 160 GB Maxtor one touch 4 mini usb) on another backup disk (750 GB Maxtor onetouch III firwire 800). I have my library on a external disk to safe disk space on my MacBook Pro disk. For the back up I use the software Personal Backu4 of Intego Software. The 160GB iTunes disk is Formatted als Mac OS Extended format.
Now all back up data that aren't music files (AAC or MP3 files) was correctly back up, but all music files was like deleted, all artist > album folders looks empty. But, cheking with the disk utility it looks that all files exist and the Used space (36.06 GB) looks correctly and the numbers of files too (some 5942 files). But all files are invisible, folders looks empty. Now is looks that all purchased and CD imported int my library didn't exist anymore: and this in BOTH disks, side by side is the same situation.
How I can come out from this situation, I really don't have any idea how to coming out fron this sad situation.
Hany help is really appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Julien - Switzerland
Message was edited by: jdaulte

OK, here's what REALLY doesn't make sense.
After manually fixing a lost file, NOTHING in the XML changes. Not one single character changes in the XML file. I diff'd the whole file before and after - no difference. So, basically, it goes out and 'finds' it and updates something that we can't see to repair the connection, meanwhile we are left to think that this XML file has the library data in it.
Mind you, the media file(s) are present and accounted for in the file system - correct name and path and everything - before and after I go Locate the file when iTunes complains about it being missing..
iTunes is so overbloated, we can't even fix stuff when we see precisely how it is broken.

New version of ITunes installed - Not all music files are being recognized

My system crashed and Itunes was automatically 're-installed.' My music is located on my external hard drive. When I reconnected my music to ITunes about 3000 music files did not appear in my library. Before the re-install all music files were available in the library.
The music files are all still located on my external hard drive. Strangely, when I copied my music on my external hard drive to create yet another back up of my music many music files were missing on the copy. The missing files were a combination of downloaded music from a cd and purchased, no trend.
I welcome any advice on how I can get 1. my ITunes library to read all of my music files (which are in ITunes format) and 2. how do I copy all of my music on my external hard drive to make a safe back up (I-tunes back up is not an option because not all of the music appears in my library)
Thanks for your help

See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

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I have all my music on an external drive, which is not always connected to the Mac. When I start iTunes w/o the hdd connected iTunes occasionally marks some of the songs as not found. Which is ok so far. BUT if it finds the same inode (of the original file on the external hdd) on the internal hdd it changes the location of the songs to the internal hdd. In my case to files like /Previous System/<some path>/Info.plist. So iTunes thinks the files are still there and cannot play them. After deleting all the Previous Systems files iTunes marks all those files as not found, that is, it does not search for the inode on the external hdd again. Very confusing.
Yesterday I started from scratch with an empty iTunes Library (I moved the original one) and the problem reoccurred instantly after I imported all my music, quit iTunes, disconnected the external HDD and started iTunes again. So some of my songs are lost, iTunes will never find them again w/o me reimporting them. Also the problem might occur anytime in the future and I seem to not be able to cure it, because iTunes tried to be intelligent. But how it can confuse inodes w/o looking at the device ID and why the songs did not return after I removed the /Previous Systems folder I cannot image.
I checked the inodes on the internal and external hdd for some of the songs and they were indeed identical. So iTunes seems reset the path/location in the Library DB if it can find the inode of a song which it cannot find by path. Why it does not look at the device id in combination with the inode# is a mystery.
Some additional details:
iTunes Music Folder Location: on external hdd
The Library files are on the internal hdd at ~/Music/iTunes.
I hope someone can answer that. I do not want to start from scratch every week. I hope my iPod which holds all the songs synchs meta info like play count and rating back as well.
Kind regards, soryu2.

And further....
I went into iTunes to try to download all my purchased music. Some, but not all, is showing up under iTunes>iTunes Media>Music. It looks like the library thinks some if the music is there, but it actually is not.
Seems like my library is corrupted (or something).
Since I have to upload all music from CD anyway, should I delete my iTunes library and start over, first by downloading all purchased music.

How do i make it so iTunes plays the music files from where i have chosen to store them?

how do i make it so iTunes plays the music files from where i have chosen to store them as opposed to it scattering copies of my files into a myriad different folders based on the albums they came from when i'm not even interested in keeping whole albums?
I recently converted myself to mac after having been a windows formatted person since the beginning of time. I use last.fm and the client scrobbler only supports iTunes on the mac (scobbling since Nov 06 and i'm now heavily dependant upon it as a means of discovering new music) - if you don't know what that means then take it for granted i have no option other than to use iTunes as my media player whn using the mac. And almost immediately upon using iTunes i was filled with horror.
My tale of woe as follows: I copy all my mp3 files to folder X on my new mac. I copy my simple playlist in to that same folder X. The simple playlist simply lists all the files in folder X in the order i want to hear them in... simple right? And what happens the moment i start playing my simple list? Well you probably all ready know; itunes throws copies of all those files in to the air, scatters them to the four winds so each of them fall into a little folder of their own representing the album they might once have come from. I don't keep whole albums. For me the 'album experience' is a ruse to trick one into listening to weaker material. I only keep the concentrated goodness. I only put up with albums in a previous lifetime because in the days of vinyl i had no other choice apart from spending hours compiling mix tapes. Now i am liberated from these restrictions and have been for the 15 or so years i've been using a computer to listen to music. Until along comes iTunes forcing me backwards in time, frog marching me back into the past.
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Adding a new file: After deciding that song is a keeper i will copy it into that simple folder that holds all my music and drop it in to a position on the list i deem most suited for it. Incidentally over this entire 15 year (i'm pretty sure it's been around that long) my media player has been winamp but for the reason previously mentioned i am unable to use winamp in mac world.
Removing a file: fortunately winamp has an option to simultaneously remove a file from the list and the hard drive. And naturally so because after all if i no longer like a song then i want it expunged completely from life or at least from my hard drive and playlist. In the brave new world of iTunes i have to remove from the list there then delete the file from where iTunes copied it from and then the place iTunes copied it to.
Editing the list: drag an item in the list to it's preferred location and select to save it as i would for any other file using any other application... well desktop type application as opposed to one that uses a database as its primary means of storage.
Syncing with the mp3 player: copy drag drop playlist file from the simple folder on the hard drive to the simple folder on the mp3 player as i would for any other file. And then also copy drag drop the most recently created files from simple folder on hard drive to simple folder on player after having ordered them by creation date so as to make it easier to select the most recently created. After a while the mp3 player will fill up with the files no longer on the list so i will delete all files from player then re-copy all flies from simple folder on hard drive to simple folder on mp3 player.
I do not make changes to the list on the mp3 player so synchronization needs only to go one way: from laptop to player.
So all very simple. Apart from editing the positions of files in the list everything is managed by copy drag dropping and deleting files using windows explorer.
But i'm in a mac and circumstances have forced me in to the corner of using iTunes. And this whole iTunes situation is terrifying for me as over the years i've heard horror stories about it deleting all of someone's music files. Perhaps this may have been by using the software incorrectly but even so, the very fact that it appears possible for this to happen simply by using the software incorrectly and the fact that it happens with some degree of frequency given the number of reports of this happening that i have heard of over the years on music discussion forums fills me with dread that i have to now use this software. And given the software's blatant disregard for the user's choice as to where to store his/her files it's no surprise that this happens. The software is pointlessly doing dangerous things with my data. Please make it stop.
Please can i just at the very least make iTunes play the music from the folder i have chosen to put my files in and not copy those files here there and everywhere without my say so? Thankyou.

option discovered in preferences. Really this and any feature that moves deletes or edits a users data should as far as possible be OFF BY DEFAULT. It shouldn't by default and without the users specific say do this dangerous and unnecessary thing without even letting the user know what it's doing!!! And then cause me a few hours (as i'm new to mac) searching for the option so as to switch it off. If i hadn't noticed the status cage declaring that it was copying files then i might never have twigged that this insane thing was occurring. And if i hadn't of noticed i would have been left maintaining the contents of the folder i copied the files to, the folder which as far as i was informed and so believed was also the location of the music files i was playing. How does Apple justify this 'genius' piece of software non-design? Surely it will hurt no one if this was off by default for new users - overall at least i dare say it would cause a lot less distress in the future for the unsuspecting public at large. Thanks for the support.

Find all music files and move to one folder for all of family to access, find all music files and move to one folder for all of family to access

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Move my husbands itunes library and my itunes library from each of our laptops to our main imac, making one huge itunes folder
I want to store our music on an external hard drive, which I have, so I have a full library for backup purposes.
I want all future music downloaded on any of our laptops to transfer to the main imac computer, again to keep one main library
I want all video, apps, books, etc on each laptop to be available in one file on my main imac also so we can all use them
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Thanks, l

I am totally running into the same issue as well. On top of that, when syncing to my iPhone, it took some of the tracks from my iphone and recopied them to the iTunes library, as new files, so now I have a ton of duplicates, and tons of tracks that can't find the iTunes folder, so they have the little "!" next to them.
It would be really nice to have someone answer this question. I didn't think, moving my iTunes library to a bigger external hard drive would have caused all this madness

Can I change the file path that itunes reads my music files from? 65000 files trying to be transferrd from external to internal HD. I dont want itunes to manage my collection, just read it. thanks

Can I change the file path that itunes reads my music files from?
I have about 65000 music files that i have transferrd from my external to a new laptop internal HD.
I have organised the folders myself as I use a PC and do not want itunes to organise the folders because when I'm searching through music on windows it is sorted out by artists/albums with 'the...(eg The Beatles)' under 'T' instead of 'B'.
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The files that weren't inside the media folder on the original machine need to be copied over to exactly the same paths as they had on the source machine. See this thread for an ongoing discussion of a similar problem. See also this post on migrating the iTunes library.
tt2

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When i updated media transfer to 1.41 this problem apeared:
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BUGS:
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Great to see real OS X support.Message Edited by peter321 on 09-Jun-200707:31 PM

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If the disk absolutely cannot be repaired by anything, you can try recovering important files to another hard drive using something like Data Rescue, File Salvage or Stellar Phoenix.
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* Disclaimer: links to my pages may give me compensation, and should not be taken as endorsement of my services by Apple.

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I'm having installing itunes on my computer. Will removing itunes remove my music files?

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My playlist appears in itunes, but the music files have mysteriously disappeared from my iTunes Media file. Is there a way to recover them? Tried searching and cannot find them.

This page might help: http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=44083
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ITunes losing all music files imported since 6/2

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