Keeping itunes library after hard drive has been wiped

Help! We had a problem with our computer in that the whole hard drive was wiped so it's gone back to factory settings. Does this now mean that we'll have to start again and put the whole library of songs back on? I've got over 2,000 songs on my ipod so really want to avoid this if I can.
Cheers

Do a 'Search Discussions' for posts by Zevoneer, that will set you up.

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Restore iPhoto after hard drive has been wiped?

My Macbook Pro Hard Drive recently failed and the Apple store wiped it clean. I had a number of important photos on iPhoto and I am wondering if there is any way to retrieve these? Being that they were added recently to my computer via my iPhone (they were deleted from the iPhone after they were imported), they are not backed up to any hard drive. I have iCloud on both the computer and the iPhone, but I am unable to retrieve images from that on the phone or the mac. For some reason photo stream was not working when I synced my phone to iCloud last.
Is there any way to retrieve photos from iPhoto or the iPhone (after they have been deleted?).
This is critical because I have recently left a rental and the pictures were taken before I moved in and after I left and now the land lord is attempting to accuse me of ruining the place.
Thanks.

There is a extreme possibility you can recover deleted files from the hard drive provided:
1: The Apple folks did a quick format, which they likely did as a Zero erase would take hours.
2: Where the old files were located on the drive hasn't been overwritten yet with new data.
3: Your competant in spending $100 for Data Rescue and install OS X on a external boot drive (blank)
Create a data recovery, undelete boot drive
The Apple folks shouldn't hae erased your drive without allowing you the opportunity to perform data recovery efforts, since they don't perform this function you should have consulted here first or got more info and not allow them ot erase your drive.
A local PC/Mac computer fix-it could have recovered the data first, then you could have taken it to Apple if you did't have a backup yet.
Most commonly used backup methods

Keeping song data in iTunes library after hard drive crash

I have an iPhone 3GS that I used to sync with iTunes on my Windows PC. Then the hard drive on that PC crashed, but fortunately I had made a backup of my entire iTunes library on an external drive. Now I have a new Windows PC that I want to transfer my music to so I can sync it with the iPhone as before.
However, since the crash I have continued to listen to music on my iPhone, so the play counts, song ratings etc in the backup copy of my library will be out of date. I thought that simply copying the backup library onto my new PC would allow my iPhone to sync with it as if nothing happened (so that the iPhone would update the song data on iTunes on my computer), but when I ticked the box to sync music, it warned me that it was going to do an "erase and sync". As I understand it, that means it scrubs the music off my iPhone together with its data, and then replaces it with the rebuilt library.
Is it possible to persuade the iPhone to recognise the rebuilt library as the one it is allowed to sync to (without erasing its own library first)? Or even just copy the iPhone's song data to the computer (with or without the song files themselves) and then restore from that once the iPhone has done its erase & sync?
Thanks in advance.

Wonderful! The iPhone recognised its own library and synced happily, updating the iTunes metadata as I wanted.
Rebuilding the library took a bit longer because the backup wasn't consolidated and the library didn't know where to find some of my music, but it was sorted with a bit of file jiggling. Now the two devices are getting on like best friends. Many thanks for your help.

Restoring iTunes Library after hard drive failure.

So a few days ago I had to re partition my hard drive (erase all the data) because I received an unfixable problem from Finder error 10810. The problem created overlapping files on my hard drive which was able to be solved by doing a repair disk from Disk Utility. So I made sure I had a backup of all my information on my iMac, and erased the hard drive and re-installed Snow Leopard. After the installation was complete I began restoring all the files I had from Time Machine, but when I got to my iTunes library I received the error message saying that "You cannot access the iTunes folder because you are not authorized". So if anyone can help me out with this that would be great, I tried calling Apple but i'm not willing to pay the ridiculous $50 fee to speak to a human being.

I'm trying it file by file, because I don't need everything back on my hard drive but things like my iTunes Library I want. And I did use a different username when doing the setup assistant, but I thought about that and went back and re-named my current account and then went into my backup files and set all the sharing permissions to Read and Write for all accounts.

Restoring iTunes library after hard drive crash

The hard drive on my Macbook pro (mid-2009) crashed. I took it to the genius bar for a diagnostic. The drive was physically fine so they wiped it and reinstalled Mavericks, which is now running 10.9.4. I am restoring user files from Time Machine individually to keep things clean. Hooray!
I'm now running iTunes 10.3.1. Years ago, I placed the iTunes library in Users>Shared on the hard drive, so my wife could access the files when she logged in. We don't need to do that now, so today I dragged all the music files from Time Machine to the "Music" section on the iTunes window.
They seem to have installed and indexed fine, but I lost some of the original data--like date added and numbers of plays--which would be nice to have. (Then all now read as installed today with zero plays.) My playlists are all gone as well; I'd like to have them back.
Is there any way to restore the music so those things stay intact, by basically making my library the way it was?
I considered dragging the entire set of folders over from the Shared section of Time Machine, but was afraid the music would not index, and the folder structure and nomenclature was different (for example, it had iTunes Music instead of iTunes media and there were a couple other anomalies). I imagine this is because the Shared library was set up under a different version of iTunes.
I hope this doesn't further complicate things but my user name was changed at the genius bar (from what it was prior to crash); they added my last name to my user name. I didn't notice till I got home. So far I have had no trouble accessing the files I have dragged in (Numbers, Word, etc), but don't know if the permissions on the music files might be affected.
All help greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answers to all your questions are in the links below:
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847 - plus supplemental information about organizing to new structure https://discussions.apple.com/message/26404702#26404702
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7392 and making an iTunes library portable.
06/2014 ChrisCA post: Restore iTunes library from Time Machine backup - https://discussions.apple.com/message/26104480#26104480

Retrieving iTunes library after hard drive dies.

Here is my dilemma.
My external hard drive that containes my entire itunes library of over 17,000 songs just died.
First, what is the best way to reassign my iTunes library back to my computer instead of the now-dead external hard drive?
I have an iPod that also has all my music on it but it is set up to automatically sync with iTunes. Once I get my iTunes library back on my computer will it erase everything on my iPod? I am aware of some programs that can take music off an iPod and put it on any computer, so if it doesn't earse it all when it syncs, I would most likely do this.
I also have a seperate external hard drive set up with Time Machine. I could possibly retrieve some of my old iTunes library from it but I only need to restore iTunes and not the entire computer.
What is my best course of action for mantaining the majority of my iTunes library?

Unfortunately unless you specifically told Time Machine to back up the contents of your external Media HD it won't do it automatically, so it seem you iPod is the only repository for your music. There are plenty of tutorials on the web that will walk you through getting music off your iPod.

Retrieving content for iTunes library after hard drive crash

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's encountered this situation, but i couldn't find a decent answer anywhere. My HDD crashed, but i recovered all my documents, together with all iTunes documented files (including songs). I didn't lose any data. The problem is that iTunes can't just read copy pasted files (to avoid the spread of bought iTunes songs/apps). How can i get all those songs back in there?
1) I've still got everything on my iPod, but my iPod won't even be recognised with the name i've given it. Synchronising my iPod is out of the question...
2) I've got screenshots of files i found in the back-up document files
http://s720.photobucket.com/albums/ww201/Ollii/Computer%20Info%20Screens/
3) I can upload every song back again, but that takes ages. And I would like to have my apps back too
Thank you in advance

I built a new computer and I copied and pasted the entire itunes file that was in my music for XP to the music file in win 7. After it was done I downloaded itunes agreed to all the fun stuff and it found everything when i opened it. To play the purchased music I need to sign in to my account. After that everything worked great with no problems and it was like it never moved. As for your apps I still live in the stone age with an 80G ipod and an apple TV. So good luck with that but I do not see a problem with that as well. For any purchase from apple you have a total of 5 computers to use with you account. So I hope you were able to unauth. the old hard drive. If not you have to rest you count which can only be done 1X a year.

Updating iTunes library after hard drive reformat

Is there a way to upload songs from an iPod to the iTunes library? I had to reformat my hard drive and was able to upload purchases, but I would like to upload all songs on my iPod as opposed to reloading all the CDs.

For everything else (music from CDs, other downloads etc.) there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well. You can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers
A selection of iPod to iTunes utilities:
TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
SharePod Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod2PC Windows Only
iDump Windows Only
YamiPod Mac and Windows
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows
Floola Mac & Windows
iPodRip Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
Music Rescue Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
There's also a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to a Mac or PC. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available on page 2 at this link: Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide
I would also advise that you get yourself an external hard drive and back your stuff up, relying on an iPod as your sole backup is not a good idea and external drives are comparatively inexpensive these days, you can get loads of storage for a reasonable outlay: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive

How do I re-install Acrobat after hard drive has been replaced?

I purchased and installed Acrobat XI in June. Shortly after this the hard drive on my laptop needed to be replaced and I now need to reinstall. Can I do this using the original code, as if installing a new product, or do I need to do something different? Please advise

Yes, simply use the original installer and serial.
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IMovie does not see Aperture / iTunes library after hard drive restore

Hi all,
I recently exchanged the 320GB drive in my MacBook for a 500GB drive. I installed the 500GB drive and restored everything from my time machine backup. This went flawlessly and the MacBook works great, except for two issues:
1st: It did not read NTFS volumes anymore, I had to reinstall NTFS-3G - problem fixed.
2nd: I do not see my Aperture and iTunes libraries in iMovie '09 anymore. This worked great before.
Does anyone know how to fix this? Or what the problem could be?
Many thanks,
Michael

DaneelGiskard wrote:
.. restored everything from my time machine backup.
.. I do not see my Aperture and iTunes libraries in iMovie '09 anymore. ..
Does anyone know how to fix this? Or what the problem could be?
read about that problem frequently.. never got an answer, if the following usual advice fixes the problem:
• check permissions with Disk Utility
• check read/write rights of specific Folder AND files inside via Finder..

HT1391 how to recover itunes library after reformatting computer - has also wiped my ipod clean when I tried to transfer the music from there

Hi - I have reformatted my computer and want to know how to recover my tunes that were on itunes - I have tried to transfer the tunes from my ipod but it has wiped this clean too - any suggestions welcome!!

*If my kids dock up their iPods to charge them (the iPods still have the music on them) will the computer "sync" the iPod to the now empty library that's on the computer?*
If the iPods are set to update automatically you need to take care connecting to an empty iTunes. You can use a keyboard command to prevent an iPod auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer on a Mac hold down the Option and Command (⌥ and ⌘ Apple) keys together. This will stop the iPod from auto-syncing with iTunes and it will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 20 to 30 seconds depending on your computer. You should then be able to change your settings: iTunes for Mac - Keyboard Shortcuts
Once the iPods are connected it might be a good idea to change them to manual updating at least until you have your library back in shape. The content of iTunes and the iPod are not syncronised in this mode so the two can be different, you can get details here:
Managing content manually on iPod
iPod - Syncing Music
Something else to be aware of when using an iPod in manual mode is that the "Do Not Disconnect" message will remain on the display until you physically eject the device: Safely Disconnect IPod

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How do I reinstall Indesign after my hard drive has been deleted?

After getting a hard drive back in working order you can either reinstall the software using the disks if you purchased disks, or you can download your software as a trial version and use your original serial number to activate it.
If the software is the latest version you can download it from Adobe's product pages.
If the software is an older version you can download the trial version of the software using the link below and then use your current serial number to activate it.
Be sure to follow the steps outlined in the Note: Very Important Instructions section on the download pages at this site.
http://prodesigntools.com/tag/ddl

My dad has dementia - does not remember his password. His hard drive has been erased. We need to reload Mountain Lion and can't figure out how to do it.

My dad has dementia - does not remember his password. His hard drive has been erased. We need to reload Mountain Lion and can't figure out how to do it. Internet recovery asks for his Apple ID and password. He has no idea. I have an Apple ID but have never bought anything through the iTunes store so it won't accept my Apple ID. I don't know if his computer is under warranty. He does not remember if he has Applecare. I tried reinstalling Leopard -- the computer originally came with Leopard -- but the computer screen goes grey and a message comes up saying I need to restart. He wants to give this computer to me since it's useless to him. What do I do to get a system on it again?

You will need to reformat the hard drive to go back to Snow Leopard or Leopard.
Does he have a Snow Leopard Disk? He should, as there is no way to go from Leopard to Mountain Lion without it. If you can find the Snow Leopard Disk, I'd at least start with that.
You will need to use Disk Utility in the installer to format the hard drive and get rid of the recovery partition.
Boot from the installer disk by holding down the C key on restart. When it boots, Open Disk Utility (Utilities menu, at least in Snow Leopard).
Select the Hard drive and then click the Partition tab.
Select 1 Partition from the partition menu.
Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format.
Name the drive (Macintosh HD is the standard).
Click Apply to partition the drive.
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Deleting a song from iTunes library and hard drive on Itunes 11.0

how do i delete a song from iTunes library and hard drive on Itunes 11.0 at the same time.

Hello CleveCo, Inc
And welcome to Apple Discussions!
At some point in time, you may have selected the option to prevent that dialog from appearing again when trying to delete tracks from your library. To reset all of iTunes warning dialogs, click the Edit drop down menu and choose Preferences from the list (on a Mac it is *iTunes -> Preferences* ). When the window pops up, head over to the Advanced tab and click the *Reset Warnings* button. Then quit iTunes and relaunch it. That do the trick for you?
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My computer was refreshed and the technician did not deactive the CS3 license first and the drive has been wiped. I have my serial number, how can I get it activated?

Hi pipper88,
You can reinstall CS3 and enter the serial number to activate the software.
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Keeping itunes library after hard drive has been wiped

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