Missing music folder

Hey all,
well from the previous discussion it seems like I am out of luck but here goes.
I was having trouble with my hard drive or operating system and was going to attempt a reinstall of software. In an effor to not lose data I simply drag and dropped the applications folder to an external hard drive. When I tried to play a song in itunes I get a message the the file is missing, I have looked everywhere on both harddrives, including the itunes music folder which is empty.
Are the files gone? why would they be gone? are there any suggestions for finding the files?
mike

Hi Mike,
If you've only copied your Applications folder then your probably out of luck.
What you also needed was your Music folder if you are letting iTunes control your library.
Not sure what to suggest now, except when you do get it sorted you will backup your Music folder, won't you?
Regards,
Colin R.

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I'm having a huge issue with itunes locating my missing files..and it's too many for me to locate 1 by 1..It says I'm missing over 3,00 songs and They are all in my music folder..What can I do to fix this issue?

I'm having a huge issue with itunes locating my missing files..and it's too many for me to locate 1 by 1..It says I'm missing over 3,000 songs and They are all in my music folder..What can I do to fix this issue? I've looked at all the tutorials on youtube and none of it works. I recently got a new computer and I Back-Up all my music and itunes playlist and I import it on my new computer with the new itunes and I go to play a few songs, it says I'm missing them I locate a few but it's still like 3,000 missing and again they are all on the computer and in one folder..Please Help !

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Hi dones49,
It sounds like your issue here is that iTunes can not find the files for some of the songs you have brought into it. This happens occasionally even if the songs have not been moved from the location that iTunes places them on import or purchase. When you try to use the song, iTunes prompts you to find the file, as you have seen.
To find the file, use the information in this article to navigate through the iTunes media folders -
Locate and organize your iTunes files
If you are still unable to locate the files, you may need to download them from the iTunes store again, or rip them from your CDs. See this article for assistance with downloading your past purchases -
Download past purchases
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

Missing folders in iTunes music folder.

There are several artist folders missing in my iTunes music folder, but in the song info in iTunes it says the songs are located in the missing folders. What could the problem be??

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Due to lack of space on my c drive I decided to move my music folder to my d drive. After I done this I noticed all my music was gone from itunes so I decided to move the music folder back to the c drive to try fix the problem. All my music and playlists etc are still missing from itunes. Any suggestions on how to fix this problem???

A possible cause is a problem with the file places.sqlite that stores the bookmarks and the history.
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file
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redcore,
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When you change the location in preferences it tells iTunes to start, from this point on, storing new media files in the new location. It then presents you with the option to move any old files in their current locations to the new location. It doesn't move the library files which are not media files. Read the links below to understand how iTunes works because you are the one with the computer in front of you and are in the better position to understand how it stands as regards to iTunes files.
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
Now, did you keep the whole library on the external drive, or did you keep just media? From your description of the situation it sounds as if you kept the whole library there and when the external was not attached it returned to default location on the internal drive. What you should have done then was plug in the external drive, hold down the option key, and guide iTunes to the library file on the external. At this stage you could have dealt with the mislocated new files on an individual basis.
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Thank you.
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Matt

Any ideas? Anyone?

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Please help, I am baffled.
For the past 18 months I have used itunes with no problem. I have the My Music folder with the iTunes folder in my external hard drive. When I have the drive on itunes has had no problem seeing it, using it and updating my ipod. I have gone on tonight and it says the following message when clicking on the iTunes icon The folder 'iTunes' cannot be found, or created, and is required. The default location for this folder is inside the 'My Music' folder'
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Try this article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302398
If that doesn't help, you may want to contact the company that supports your computer, as when the My Music folder is deleted, it can be a lot of work to get it back.

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The Compilation directory is how iTunes organizes albums that Gracenote (CDDB) considers works of various artists or collections of songs from the same artist, but differing albums (like "Best Of's" or "Greatest Hits").
The CDDB is not always consistent, as some Greatest Hits are marked as compilations and others are not. This really irked me in the beginning as I was wondering why some of my albums went missing. At first I tried to manually reorganize and move the files, but it was cumbersome. I stumbled on the "Compilations" function and it made things much easier.
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That's why you have folders in your Compilations directory. Some you may wish to keep there, some you may want to move to a more appropriate place. This is how. Try moving some of them to their Artist's folder (if you have any that would qualify).
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-- Advanced/General: Keep iTunes Music folder organized (on)
-- Advanced/General: Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library (off) - change it back to 'on' after the song switch, if you want
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-- Click 'OK'
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Why don't all my iTunes Library songs show up in my music folder

I have a lot of music in iTunes (16,000 plus songs) and they are stored on a LaCie external hard drive. Just recently I discovered that when I click on the file folder where all the music is stored, only files starting with A through B are listed. I can play anything in iTunes ~ nothing is missing, but the list of music when looking at the file with Windows Explorer is incomplete.
The reason this is of concern is because I am trying to back-up my music to DVDs (just for safe keeping in case of a hard drive crash). I have tried to do this several different ways, but nothing has worked. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that maybe the directory of this large folder holding all my music files is incomplete or corrupted. If I run the Windows Back-up program on the folder, it acts as if only the A - B files are there and only creates a back-up of them. I know the rest exists because I can play them from iTunes. We are talking over 55 gigs of files that are not listed.
I am trying to back-up my library, but I think there is an underlying problem that is causing whatever method I try to fail. Is there anyone out there who can explain what is going on?
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How can I creat backup DVD's of 60 gigs of music?
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Is that not a way to relocate the files? In other words, I have 16,000 plus songs in iTunes and they are all playable. They must be on my external hard drive in the file I have named "Art's Music" (verified by the check you suggested in your first reply). Let's assume that I want to put them all on a different external hard drive (my C drive is not big enough). What steps should I use to relocate my entire library? The plan I had in mind was something I found at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
Is this going to work?
I am going to borrow a friend's unused hard drive for this and then put it back on my hard drve after I reformat it.
Dell Dimension 4600 Windows XP

How can I add songs to itunes music folder without them being duplicated within the folder (not on my hard drive)?

I have music files all over the place and want to put them all in itunes with no duplicates and get rid of all the rest. how can I do that? Some of my playlists are missing songs. I would like to move the playlist back to itunes from my ipod without having to put the songs in my media folder yet again! I have wasted so much time fooling with this. Really what I am trying to get at through all of this is to run the songs on the ipod through ivolume so they play equally.
Can anyone make sense of this for me?

It sounds like you have a few different problems.
To find all your music, try using a spotlight search. Type "kind:music" in the spotlight search (the magnifying glass in the far upper-right corner ) then choose "show all in finder". You'll end up with a window that shows all your music files, regardless of where they are on your hard drive. But don't move any files, because that may confuse iTunes (it won't be able to find files that you move, because - d'oh! - you moved them and now they're not where iTunes left them. That's usually how people end up in the kind of situation that you're in.)
If you want to let iTunes organize your music for you, make sure those options are turned on in the iTunes preferences (in the "advanced" section), then go to the "File" menu, choose "Library" and then choose "Organize library". That will put all your music in the iTunes Library folder (but leave copies of the originals wherever they were, all over your hard drive).
To find duplicates in your iTunes Library, choose "display duplicates" (or hold down the option key and it changes to "display exact duplicates" which might help in some cases). You'll still have to manually go through them to delete one of each duplicate.
Now you can start combining those three techniques - if you consolidate your music and let iTunes copy everything into the music folder, you'll know that iTunes safely has a copy of all your music in the iTunes Library folder. So you can do the spotlight search, and delete any duplicate files that are not in your iTunes library folder. Anything that's left over (that is, it's not a duplicate and it's not in the itunes music folder), you'll need to add to iTunes (try using the "automatically add to itunes" folder - spotlight search to find it - anything you drop in there will get added to iTunes without leaving a duplicate file). Then you can use the itunes "duplicates" feature to find the duplicates in iTunes and fix those.

Missing music folder

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