ITunes Playlist and Time Machine

I just spent a couple of hours making a playlist for an event. Then I made a couple more playlists for different parts of the event. All the while, Time Machine was dutifully making its backups. I was listening to some songs in the playlist and deleting ones that might not fit after all, when I accidentally deleted the entire playlist. No confirmation dialog from iTunes; it was just gone.
I hadn't lost hope yet, as I was certain that I could just use Time Machine to scroll back in time and retrieve the lost list. But that wasn't the case. The only version of "iTunes Music Library.xml" was the most recent version. For some reason, Time Machine doesn't keep an incremental backup of it.Most likely it's because it has to be kept exactly up-to-date or there would be orphaned/missing songs.
It figures. The one time I actually NEED time machine, it didn't seem to work. Unless I'm missing something.
Any ideas? At the very least, how does one re-enable the prompt on deleting playlists?

Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl contains the playlists but it also contains all the other information about what you see in iTunes such as items added, ratings, etc. If you last backup was not long ago and you have made almost no changes to your library since then, you could just replace that one file an more or less revert to what it was when the library file was last saved. If you have added a few songs you could just find them in your media folders and drag them to iTunes again to bring things up to date.
If the above is not acceptable then there may be other ways to do it such as saving the old library file in another location on your computer, opening it in iTunes and exporting the playlists, then re-importing them in the current library. This may also require some file editing and I haven't tried any of this to be able to advise you specifically at this point.

Similar Messages

How to restore *just one iTunes playlist* from Time Machine?

Hi all --
I'm pretty picky about my iTunes playlists. There are several main ones ("Jazz Lite," "R&B," "Jazz Traditional," etc. etc.) and these playlists can overlap in their coverage/share certain songs.
So last Sunday I realized that I had fat-fingered things and had accidentally deleted the R&B playlist.
If possible I'd like to surgically restore *just that R&B playlist* from Time Machine and include it among all of the other existing playlists.
Although I've searched around on the internet for an answer, everything that has turned up so far seems to involve:
- restoring ALL playlists from Time Machine
- older version of iTunes (I'm currently using 11.0.3)
Your help greatly appreciated!

For posterity's sake, since i had this issue too, i thought i'd post my solution.
Locate and save a copy, locally on your computer, of a library.itl file that would contain the playlist you need. I'd suggest saving to your desktop. name it so you'll recognize it as the old library file.
Quit iTunes if open, and relaunch, holding down the Option key immediately after
when prompted, select "Choose Library"
Find the file you saved in step 1. this will launch iTunes with all the old playlists and such. Don't worry, it doesn't touch the actual songs themselves, so nothing is lost of from your current library.
Find the playlist(s) you want, right click on them and export. save them as .txt file (again, suggest desktop for ease)
Once all playlists you want to restore are saved, quit iTunes.
Launch iTunes, again pressing Option immediately after
Select "Choose Library" and select the Music -> iTunes -> iTunes Library.itl file. This will restore iTunes to the most current copy of your library
Select File -> Library -> Import Playlist and find the .txt file for your playlist on your desktop. et voila!

ITunes Library and Time Machine over network

Hello everyone,
I've got a 2008 unibody MacBook running Mountain Lion, I've been using Time Machine on a SeaGate external HDD, in addition to storing my iTunes Media on the drive. This external drive was always plugged into my computer via USB. Well the drive crashed so I've been looking into alternatives. I bought an Extreme Base Station and was hoping I'd be able to plug a similar external drive and achieve the same results wirelessly. After some research, it seems this is very unreliable. I've also come across a WD MyBookLive (NAS) which has a lot of software built in to act as an iTunes server and work with Time Machine (which sounds perfect), however I haven't gotten either of those functions to work. I'm guessing this might be a firmware issue on the MyBookLive, but it's also not letting me update it. What can you guys suggest? What would be the best way to make this work? Thanks in advance!

I could see this being a real issue for me. Is there any news on this front?
Here's my background/intention with TM:
1. I purchased a brand new MacBook for a family member, it's her first Mac experience
2. My wife and I have have MacBooks which we adore (Plus 3 iPhones in the family, Apple TV, AirTunes, the works -- Don't brand me as a "Mac Hater" which these forums love to do as soon as you point out an oversight. let's stay on topic, please!!)
3. We have a 500GB USB drive on my Wife's system for TM use
4. I have a 150GB USB drive for my own TM use.
5. In an effort minimize the amount of USB devices needed, I want to share my wife's 500GB drive for all of us to use TM with it. Seems logical, no?
6. Well, it's a MacBook it is mounted on so it will go to sleep at times, even go on the road.
Now, before people get excited (which they love to do here when you point out a potential issue with our beloved Macs) I fully understand the drive will not always be available. This is already the case as my TM drive is at home and I am at work with my MacBook as I type this. TM is not freaking out and will work happily when I mount the TM drive.
However, will my stepdaughter have a corrupted backup if she has the remote TM drive mounted when my wife puts it to sleep? Even if no backup is running?? My SD is rather sharp, she understands that to do a backup she needs to mount the share and click "back up now" on TM. But should she forget to unmount when she's done is in for disaster??? That wouldn't make sense but from I'm reading here it sounds like the case?

Help with iTunes database and Time Machine after Lion clean install

I did a clean install of OS X Lion and think I've given myself problems with my Snow Leopard Time Machine backup and with my iTunes Library database files.
My iMac (2007) had become very sluggish so I opted for a clean install. Before the install of Lion my Snow Leopard 10.6.8 internal 1TB HD was at about 600GBs. I was using Time Machine to backup to an external 1TB drive. I had my iTunes 10.? library on the same drive.
For the Lion install I partitioned my internal 1TB HD into two partitions - a 250GB Lion boot partition and the rest for Lion data files.
Now I have two problems - 1. I can't work out how to re-connect my Time Machine backups, since they were related to a much bigger original drive, and 2. I can't seem to find my iTunes database files.
I also don't want to restore any application files at this stage, as I'm determined to do a fresh install of only the applications I need as I go along, and hopefully avoid the issues of sluggishness I had with Snow Leopard.
I have all my iTunes files in their pre-Lion external HD folder, but that folder does not seem to have the iTunes Library.XML or iTunes Library files. I didn't delete them so I'm hoping they were in my iTunes folder on my SL boot drive. But that drive was deleted during the install, so I'll be depending on Time Machine to restore the database.
Can anyone suggest a way to deal with Time Machine for my Lion install, and a way to restore my iTunes database? I'd like to keep as much of the Snow Leopard Time Machine data as I can, while continuing to do Time Machine backups from my Lion installation.
Anyone know where iTunes stores those database files, if not in the external drive iTunes folder? Spotlight search doesn't find the files, but is there a way to search my old Time Machine backups without having the Time Machine backups folder re-connected in Lion?
Thanks.

My iTunes folder is organised like this if it helps:
And iTunes uses them from the Prefrences like this:
Regards,
Colin R.

ITunes, IPhoto and Time Machine

Hello everyone, i would like to move my iPhoto and iTunes to an external drive to free up space.
My question is will Time Machine still make a copy of my music and picture library?
Thank you for the help

Volumes on external drives (except Thunderbolt drives) are automatically added to the backup exclusion list. You can remove the exclusions in the preference pane, and then the volumes will be backed up, provided they're in MacOS format. Volumes in other formats can't be backed up with Time Machine.

ITunes match and time machine

I just got iTunes match... Will time machine automatically keep on backing up all my iTunes library too?
Thanks!

If you have been backing up on Timemachine.
All you need to do is enter time machine... Then the rest is obvious.
Find the iTunes folder and hit 'Restor'.
If not the only way to get all your iTunes music back is to enter iTunes Store.
On the right hand side you should see 'Purchased'.
Click 'purchased' and there you have it.

Cant find Itunes playlists in Time Machine

I backed up my Itunes with Time Machine to a passport external hard drive. I am now trying to move my Itunes library to another computer. When I go into the files I see a file under applications called Itunes.app but when I dig into it I cant find my playlist, songs, apps, any of that stuff to transfer. There is immediately a file called contents, then in that is (codesignat, frameworks,MacOS,resources,coderesources,info.plst (a quicktime), pkginfo, version.plist (another quicktime). All I want to do is move my Itunes to this computer, thought it would be as easy as sliding it over but its not converting. When I try to combine the libraries its not finding a music or app file in these. Does anyone know where in Time machine this would be backed up or what Im doing wrong?
important note, Im using Macdrive to move from my mac files to a PC. My Mac is dead but I had done a complete time machine backup prior to it.

Data is not stored in the application. iTunes data is stored in /Users/username/Music/iTunes.

Using 1 External HDD to store iTunes content AND Time Machine Backup

Ok, I don't know a great deal about external hard drives but from what I've read, I'm hoping there's an option to use a 2TB hard drive to store my iTunes content, and as a Time Machine hard drive for backing up. Is this at all possible?
I have an iMac and a MacBook (therefore this would be quite beneficial). If I attach a 2TB hard drive to an AirPort Extreme Base station can I use Time Machine on BOTH computers, linked wirelessly to the one hard drive?
Is it just a matter of partitioning, say, 500GB for storage and the rest (1.5TB) for Time Machine?
Thanks in advance,
Ry

The best way is to partition the drive - one for your iTunes and one for TM backups.
Using a drive connected to an AEBS for TM backups is not supported, but it can be done. Use Airport Utility to set up the TM drive and turn on File Sharing. You will have to "mount" the shared drive before you can use it with TM. Same with the partition you would use for iTunes.

Can I retrieve an old itunes playlist from Time Machine?

Something happened, I lost all my playlists. As a DJ, they were kinda important. I cannot find them anywhere on my current hard drive. I keep weekly backup of my system on an external drive using Time Machine. Can I recover just my playlists from the last Time Machine backup?

The detail of the answer depends upon what exactly you want to do. You can either restore your whole library back to the way it was at the time of the last backup (easy) or you really can recover just playlists (very fiddly but possible).

IPhoto, iTunes, and Time Machine

I have a late 2009 Mac Mini running Mavericks. The Mini has a 200gb drive. Is it better to have iPhoto, iTunes and Time Machine on an external hard drive? I understand it doesn't matter where the location is as long as you have adequate drive space. That is not what I am asking. Another words, you have a separate external drives for EACH one. Does it make sense to have separate drives for iPhoto, iTunes and TM. All of these external drives plugged into the Mini. I am thinking of the recovery as well as if one drive crashes then you are not dead in water,
I am thinking this way because iPhoto alone can get fairly large as well as iTunes. It makes sense to me to have separate drives for each one. Anyone else have this type of setup at home?

Thanks for the response. I understand that I would need a backup of all three drives. However, I was asking if it is better to have your iPhoto and iTunes libraries on separate drives versus using 1 large drive to hold the data. The other point, iPhoto and iTunes can get fairly large in size over time. So, do you use 1 large external drive or use 2 separate drives. Obviously, I know that when a drive crashes, you may or may not be able to recover any data off of it. Obviously, I know that you need a backup of the drives in case of drive failure.
I would like to know if other Apple users have separate drives for iPhoto, iTunes and TM? If so, which manufacturer are you using?

HT1553 I want to do a clean install of Mountain Lion. Can I do this without a DVD version of the OS, and can I restore only specific things like iPhoto and iTunes libraries from Time Machine backup.

I want to do a clean install of Mountain Lion. Can I do this without a DVD version of the OS, and can I restore only specific things like iPhoto and iTunes libraries from Time Machine backup.

Mountain Lion is only available as a download, so there is no DVD to purchase. What you can do is download ML and then stop it from installing as soon as it's on your drive. From there you can make your own bootable ML flash drive.
When your purchase and download Mountain Lion, it will end up in the Applications folder and automatically want to install. Press Command+Q to stop the install and exit. The installer will remain on the hard drive.
1) Right click on the installer and choose "Show Package Contents".
2) A folder will open on the desktop. Drill down to Contents > SharedSupport and double click the disk image InstallESD.dmg to mount it on the desktop.
3) From here you can either burn a DVD, or copy the contents to a flash drive. Personally, I would strongly suggest using an 8 GB flash drive formatted as Mac OS Extended. You will be able to boot to it in about 30 seconds instead of at least 10 minutes off of a DVD, and it will install MUCH faster. Make sure the flash drive is empty, or you've copied anything off it it you need as it will need to be erased.
4) Don't just drag and drop the contents you see in the open disk image to the flash drive. It won't boot that way as it will be missing some hidden files. Open Disk Utility. You will something similar to this:
5) To accomplish the above, highlight either the flash drive's single partition (as I did), or the item at the bottom (Mac OS X Install ESD), which is what you will see with the Lion disk image mounted. It doesn't matter which one you pick. You'll then have the option to select the Restore tab towards the upper right. Drag and drop from the left column into the Source and Destination fields as shown above. If you've already erased the flash drive, you can uncheck the box. Click the Restore button.
You've just made your own bootable Mountain Lion USB Flash drive installer. Once you boot to the flash drive, run Disk Utility first to erase the drive you want Mountain Lion on, then continue with the install.
As far as restoring your iPhone and iTunes libraries, I couldn't tell you. So I wouldn't do any of the above until someone else chimes in with a way to do that after a clean install of ML.

I created a new Itunes playlist and when I synch my phone it is not visable as a playlist on my phone (Iphone 6), but it does appear on my computeras a playlist on my phone. How can I get it to be visable on my phone?

I created a new Itunes playlist and when I synch my phone it is not visable as a playlist on my phone (Iphone 6), but it does appear on my computer as a playlist on my phone. How can I get it to be visable on my phone?

Hi,
It sounds like there may be some disconnect between the phone and the computer. Could be a number of things going on, but one way I've been able to fix this issue on several occasions is by completely removing all of the music from the iPhone (Settings > General > Usage > Storage > Manage Storage > Music > swipe 'All Songs' to the left and tap 'Delete') and then re-syncing it from iTunes all at once. Be sure to disconnect your phone from the computer and close iTunes first. Keep in mind that any songs that are on the phone but are NOT in the iTunes library will not be synced over after you delete them from the phone. If the songs on the phone were purchased from the iTunes Store you can transfer them to the computer's iTunes library by connecting the phone to iTunes then selecting File > Devices > Transfer Purchases from [user's] iPhone.
After deleting all songs from the phone, go back into Settings and check the music storage again to make sure everything was deleted. If the 'Music' app is not listed anymore, then you should be good to go. Just to be sure, you can also check the Music app itself and make sure no songs appear there (if songs appear with cloud icons next to them, turn off 'Show All Songs' in Settings > Music and then check the Music app again -- no songs should appear).
Once you're absolutely sure all songs have been removed from the phone, restart the iPhone, plug it back into the computer, and let iTunes sync. Give it time to sync everything over at once and make sure the sync doesn't get interrupted. Everything you've set to sync should sync over properly.
If it still doesn't sync, there may be a corrupted file in the iOS installation on the phone or in the iTunes installation on the computer. It's more likely that the issue is in the phone's software, especially if you ever installed an iOS update over Wi-Fi (through the Settings app). I'd recommend making an iTunes backup and restoring the phone to factory settings through iTunes. Then set the iPhone up as a new iPhone and test the syncing -- the playlist should sync over properly. If not, Remove and reinstall iTunes and related software components for Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 - Apple Support. Then test again.
Once you get the syncing working with the phone set up as new, restore the phone from your iTunes backup and test the syncing again. Now that the iOS files have been reinstalled, hopefully the corruption is gone! If it still doesn't sync properly, the corruption may be somewhere else (in a song in the playlist, in some app data in the backup, etc.). That could be harder to pinpoint, but don't worry about that for now. Start simple.
Good luck!

ITunes Library from Time Machine Backup to Windows 7?!

Hi everyone,
Yeah, I'm switching over to a PC...
Does anyone know how to put an iTunes library from a Time Machine backup to a PC (running Windows 7?)
Thanks!

When I tried to relaunch itunes holding down the option button and select my backed-up itunes folder from time machine
Is this after you restored the iTunes folder from Time Machine? Or were you trying to select the iTunes folder on the Tme Machine drive to use as the iTunes library?
Quit iTunes.
Open Time Machine.
Selct \Music\iTunes\ in Time Machine.
Go back to when you want it restored from.
Click on Restore.
When it asks, select Replace.
After it is finsihed copying, launch iTunes.

I want to restore my iTunes Library from Time Machine

I want to restore my iTunes Library from Time Machine, but when I enter the Time Machine, I don't know where to look for it. Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Paul

Your iTunes Library is typically in…
Your home directory > Music > iTunes
… and if you restore that entire folder it will revert your iTunes Library in total to the state it was as of the date and time you select in Time Machine.

I restored my safari bookmark playlist from time machine.But it again missing after sometime.Again I restored the same thing happns again.plz help

I restored my safari bookmark playlist from time machine.But it again missing after sometime.Again I restored the same thing happns again.plz help

Triple-click the text on the line below to the clipboard, then copy it to the Clipboard (command-C):
~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist
Quit Safari.
Select
Go ▹ Go to Folder
from the Finder menu bar. Paste (command-V) into the text box that opens, then press return.
A folder window should open with a file named "Bookmarks.plist" selected. Move the selected file to the Desktop, leaving the folder open.
Relaunch Safari. It will open with the default set of bookmarks. Delete them all. Select
File ▹ Import Bookmarks
from the Safari menu bar. Import from the bookmarks file you moved to the Desktop. Arrange the bookmark folders as you wish.
If Safari now performs normally, you can delete the old bookmarks file. Otherwise, quit Safari again and put back the file you moved, replacing the newer one with the same name. Close the Finder window and post again.

ITunes Playlist and Time Machine

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