Last iTunes update 10.2.2.12 deleted all music files and all artwork

Question

Within the last month I got a notice to upgrade Apple iTunes and Quicktime software which I did not thinking anything about it.  I have used myiPod since then but not in iTunes at all and no synching.  I have about 225 CD's loaded in iTunes plus some other music from Home Sharing that my son/daughter bought with our account in the iTunes store.  I recently got a new double CD requested for my birthday and decided to load it into iTunes and on my computer.  It had problems automatically recognizing the CD so I checked all the settings and they were correct rebooted my computer and one CD loaded not the other and had to reboot again to get the second to load.  But also I noticed ALL ALBUM ARTWORK was gone.  Both the album artwork I got from Apple and the Album artwork I loaded (the bulk of my CD's are older CD's so the Apple iTunes store does not have the artwork typically) was missing.  I thought that was a little odd but iTunes has done this before after updates but usually ONLY with the album artwork I loaded being missing.  In any case I tried Get Artwork via the iTunes sote and got error messages that Album artwork could not load.  I also then tried to load the artwork manually and iTunes music library rejected it.  Then I tried to play a song listed.  It said the song is not there.  Now all of my music is listed in my iTunes library, but apparently NONE of it is actually there.  I go to where iTuens Music Library and sure enough only the last 4 CD's are there.  Apparently the last Apple Update deleted all the music files, and all the artwork with it, yet still lists them in iTunes but they are nowhere to be found.  Before I go into my backup files on an external hard drive, it appears others are having this issue too, and I am wondering if anyone has actually got a simple fix from Apple or not.  . 

Answer 1

Follow up - I could not locate any of the files on my "c" drive of my laptop.  Realizing that I am gonna probably have to reload everything from my external hard drive backup I went ahead and just started the process.  I uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes software, which turned out to NOT be required at all as when I reopened iTunes all of the music files were again listed just as before but none of them were actually there or the artwork.  I then copied all the music files/folders over into the iTunes music folder and about 90% of them then showed up with about 98% of the artwork.  The other 10% just had to be matched up as the music was there but iTunes was not looking in the right location for it now, most likely different folder names.  So after about 6 hours I am back to having everything back on the computer and reorganized again.  I am now going to back up again (in multiple locations - 2 hard drives and I may add a flash drive backup too) and then do the inevitable scary Apple sync.  I find it funny that with other company's software that syncs, it actually syncs, where Apple sync software seems to look for items to delete from one source or the other during its sync. They really should rename it because it is not a true "sync".  In any case I was happy and surprised to find that about 98% of the artwork came through with the music which never used to happen in the past, so that saved a lot of time to say the least.  To anyone who ever does anything with Apple or Windows software updates, all I can say from years of experience now is backup, backup, backup, and backup prior to updating.