New hard drive - library missing?
I have just had my hard drive rebuilt and have tried going to itunes but it was missing so I have downloaded the most edition of itunes today. I cannot find my library on my rebuilt hard drive. My ipod is totally current with what was in my library, the question is can I sync my ipod and will my library and playlists move back to itunes? Cheers, looking for music in Canmore, AB
*can I sync my ipod and will my library and playlists move back to itunes?*
No you can't, in fact if you sync to an empty iTunes you'll lose everything on the iPod. Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual and use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Also when using most of the utilities listed below your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button: Managing content manually on iPod
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. If you have any iTunes Music Store purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod to a computer
The transfer of content from other sources such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However 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. Have a look at the web pages and documentation, this is just a small selection of what's available, they are generally quite straightforward. You can read reviews of some of them here: Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
TuneJack Windows Only
iPod2PC Windows Only
iGadget Windows Only
iDump Windows Only
iRepo Mac and Windows
iPodRip Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac and Windows
Music Rescue Mac & Windows
iPodCopy Mac and Windows
There is also a manual method of accessing the iPod's hard drive and copying songs back to iTunes on Windows or a Mac. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available at this link: Two-way Street: Moving Music Off the iPod
Whichever of these retrieval methods you choose, keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync. 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.
Similar Messages
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I got a new hard drive for my lap top and when i re-downloaded iTunes most of the songs in my library were missing. What do i do?
Your songs will only be where you put them.
Did you copy them from the old drive or your backup copy of the old drive, to the new one? -
New hard drive, itunes library on an external drive... why doesn't it see it?
My internal hard drive died, has to reinstall snow leapard on my older macpro. Even though I have pointed itunes to the library I want it to use in preferences, the library isn't seen by itunes. If I click on a song from the external drive, itunes suddenly finds the song and it is sees it. Is there any other way to do this? I have way too much music and video files to click on each one...
Well, I can say that the question is partially solved.... while most of my music library popped up, much of it did not. The only common denominator I can see is that the music I transferred off of disc may not have transferred over, only the itunes purchases? I can't see for sure. I am still trying to figure out how to get the new itunes app on my new hard drive to see everything without me having to click on every file thats missing. Let this be a lesson to all to back everything up on time machine. I thought that having my data on a seperate hard drive would be ok. Seriously wish I had used time machine.
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I have a new hard drive as my old one crashed. Everything seemed to transfer fine except for my entire iTunes library. It shows all of my old songs, but when I click on one it states "the song could not be used as the original file could not be found.would you like to locate it".
Either how do I locate it, and I've tried every trick I know, or how do I restore all of my songs from one of two sources. I have my old hard drive backedup on an external drive which should have all of my songs, and I have most of my songs on my old iPhone 3S which I'm using as a backup iPod.The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place. In the case of a library moved from one system to another there are also potential permissions issues. See Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links.
If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
See also Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2 -
Transferring Itunes data and Library to new hard-drive question
Hello,
First I want to state that I made a mistake when I transferred my music to a new bigger harddrive. My bad.
I look here for some guidance, I read this article after the fact: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive so it was too late for me and I got these "!" signs on all my song. I have over 5000 songs (not including podcasts, movie and TV shows.
I tried to move my library (succesfully) in my new hard drive so I could keep my laptop clean of all music.
I though I will be clever and replace the target links into the "Itunes Library.xml" and "Itunes music Library.xml" files. Well not so clever because I still have the issue.
My question: Does anybody knows what else should be done to fix this issue (if fixable)? I would try to avoid linking all my music one at the time by using the "locate" function that ITunes pop up when you try to start a song.
It is also too bad that you must do it one song at the time, I calculated that if I do 20 songs a day it's going to take me 250 days and more...
Thanks for any idea/solutions you may have
ThierryI though I will be clever and replace the target links into the "Itunes Library.xml" and "Itunes music Library.xml" files. Well not so clever because I still have the issue.
iTunes does not use these files.
They are created only for other apps to access the iTunes library.
Does anybody knows what else should be done to fix this issue (if fixable)?
See this -> iTunes Track CPR v1.3
"This script attempts to locate the files of so-called "dead tracks"--iTunes tracks designated with (!)--that you assume are not actually missing but are still located in the iTunes Music folder in their "iTunes File Order" (Music -> Artist -> Album -> file.xxx). Any correct files found will be added to iTunes and will replace the "dead track" in each playlist it appears in (except Smart Playlists). Most tag data will also be rescued." -
IPhoto events and pictures missing from iPhoto after restoring new hard drive and upgrade to iLife11
My iPhoto events and pictures are ALL missing from my iPhoto Library after I tried restoring my programs on a new hard drive AND upgrading to iLife11! Over the last few months, I upgraded my 2008 Macbook Pro's hard drive from a 250 GB to a 500 GB hard drive and since then have been manually installing and restoring programs and software. I decided to do things manually because I had problems with doing Time Machine backups/restores in the past, so before I upgraded the drive, I manually saved everything to a Western Digital MyStudio 1 TB hard drive that I had just for the purposes of a second back up. Anyway, I tried importing the pictures onto the new library, but couldn't find the hard copies at first, so that didn't work. I then tried deleting the iPhoto Library that came with new operating system, then copying my old backup onto the new hard drive...that didn't work either. However, when I right clicked on the iPhoto Library icon on my external hard drive (the original) and clicked on "show package contents," the folder not only contained the originals, but they were still organized by year and event just as I had them originally!
So, then I thought "why don't I try just importing the pictures directly into the new iPhoto Library!"
I tested it out, and sure enough, it worked! I then tried importing an entire folder (which, was actually the name of the event), and again it worked! So, I literally clicked and dragged my entire 2007-2009 library of pictures (which was about 35 GB) back into my iPhoto Library! AND, this only took about 30 minutes to download, enough time for me to write this post and the following instructions to Recap:
1. Open your new iPhoto Library
2. Go to wherever your ORIGINAL iPhoto Library is saved/backed up, then Right-click (or Control click) on the iPhoto icon
3. Click on "Show Package Contents"
4. Go to the folder called "Originals" or "Master"
5. Click and drag everything INSIDE the folder (not the folder itself) to your new iPhoto Library
6. DO NOT try Importing from inside iPhoto! For some reaseon, iPhoto can't see these images, but I promise, they're there!
I assume this could work on other iLife programs, but luckily I have MobileMe and my iCalendar updated itself, though I did have to do some tweeking...
Hope this helps other people out, GOOD LUCK!I'm re-posting the answer to this problem so I can show it has been answered:
Open your new iPhoto Library
Go to wherever your ORIGINAL iPhoto Library is saved/backed up, then Right-click (or Control click) on the iPhoto icon
Click on "Show Package Contents"
Go to the folder called "Originals" or "Master"
Click and drag everything INSIDE the folder (not the folder itself) to your new iPhoto Library
DO NOT try Importing from inside iPhoto! For some reason, iPhoto can't see these images, but I promise, they're there!
GOOD LUCK!!! -
Move itunes library to new hard drive
ok i recently got a new harddrive because i ran out of space on my old one. i have started everything over fresh and i want to take EVERYTHING from my old iTunes and put it on my new harddrive. One thing i have tried is taking the itunes>music folder and copied onto my ipod (enable disk use) and then put it on my new hard drive. well my problem is that i dont have the same number of items and its missing all of the ratings and play counts and any of the small details like "skip during shuffle". another problem is that all of my videos are under the movie category, which will take me forever to organize. please help me because i really do not want to organize my whole library again
Then you want to clone your original HD to the new HD. See below - same concept as moving between two computers, you just do it between two HDs on the same PC..
How to Copy and Move your Music Files from One Computer to Another
This is the conceptual framework with related and important links. Apply and adapt it to your specific situation and equipment resources.
The safest, quickest, and most optimal method to move your Library to a new computer is to actually clone the entire ‘iTunes’ folder (directory) structure, rather than just copying just the song files. By copying the entire ‘iTunes’ folder and all sub-folders, you capture not only the music files, but the all-important ‘iTunes Library.itl’ database file (usually located in the ‘iTunes’ folder), which contains all the data about your songs (Playlists, Ratings, Play Counts, Last Played, Date Added, etc). See: What are the iTunes Library files?
Install iTunes on the new computer. Then go back to your old computer and move (copy) the "iTunes" folder which usually resides inside your "…\My Documents\My Music" folder from the old computer to the exact same place (both Drive Letter and complete Path) on the new computer. When you open iTunes on the new computer it will look and behave exactly the same way it did on the old, Play Counts, Ratings, Comments and all!
NOTE: It is usually safer moving files between computers with the same version of iTunes!!
iTunes Files to Copy and Move to your New PC
1) All music files in their current folder structure (usually located in and under the ‘iTunes Music’ folder)
2) The Library database file: ‘iTunes Library.itl’ located in the ‘iTunes’ folder
3) The Library XML file: ‘iTunes Music Library.xml’ located in the ‘iTunes’ folder
4) Any XML playlist files you created for Playlist retention
5) The two iTunes.pref files (optional)
-- C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunes.pref
-- C:\Documents and Settings\<your username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer Inc\iTunes.pref
6) The XML file of Ratings, Play Counts and Last Played attributes saved from the main Library and created by Otto’s SaveRatings script (also optional, but recommended):
“Download this: http://ottodestruct.com/itunes/SaveRatings.zip . It's a program, just run it like any other program. Run it on the machine where you're copying the info from BEFORE you move the files to the new machine. Click the "Save Ratings" button and it'll create a ratings.xml file. Now when you move the files, move the program and this file as well. Then after you make your new iTunes library, run it again and click the "Restore Ratings" button. Voila, all your information is back in the Library. Well, most of it anyway, it's not perfect. It'll tell you what songs it couldn't figure out though, and there's usually not very many.”
Here's a list of methods to copy and move your music files from one computer to another:
1) Use an External Hard Drive (ExHD) to move the complete files and Folder structures from one computer to another (my preferred option). You can clone’ the entire ‘iTunes’ folder structure in one very easy step. Also great to have available for complete backups of your Library. External hard drives now run less than $100 for 200-250GBs of storage. See This Link
2) Directly connect the two computers....
- 2a) Connect them through a Router &/or Network
- 2b) Directly connect using an Ethernet cable: Straight for using at least one Mac; or Crossover for PC/PC Instructions here.
- 2c) Connect them via a USB-to-USB Network Bridge. Example here. There are various types out there (use Google).
....Then copy the files from one computer to the other.
3) Use the iPod as a transfer device, as this extensive Apple link explains. It will be a bit easier if your iPod has a larger capacity than your music collection, otherwise you will need to perform multiple copy/move transfers. This well written process also works fine while using any other data transfer medium (ExHD, Flash Drive, DVD, CD, Zipp, Jazz, etc.).
4) Burn several DVDs (at 4.7GBs each) with your music data files and folder structure, and load them onto the new computer. Re-writable DVDs are more cost effective (if your DVD drive can manage these types).
5) Burn 6x more on CDs (at 700MB each) than in #4 above and load the files and folders on the new computer. Re-writable CDs are more cost effective (if your CD drive can manage these types).
6) Use a larger USB Flash drive (1GB - 4GB) to move the files and folders. Best if the flash drive is larger than your Library, otherwise you will need multiple copy/move transfers.
These are links to various additional instructions on performing the transfer (read them all, but some listed steps may not be required depending on your specific situation):
Switch from PC to Mac Using the iPod
hudgie: Migrating iTunes for Windows to a new PC
How to copy music between authorized computers -
Hello. I have a Mac Mini operating Mac OS X 10.7.2. I recently had to move my iTunes Library to a new hard drive. I followed the directions on how to move the library and refind everything yet when I do so what comes up is a mere skeleton of what I had. I have had to hunt down my purchased Apps, Music and Movies and re-add them to the library. I also noticed in doing this I have multiple iTunes Library.xml files ... shouldn't there only be one? If so how do I clean this up without doing any accidental damage (i.e. how do I find the one that is being used and delete the rest?)? If I delete the others is there any risk of losing purchased content? Lastly syncing my iPads has become a nightmare as I get the "This iPad is currently synced to another iTunes library" message. Obviously something
It's hard for me to picture the exact situation. It sounds like you still have your library file on the internal but some files on the external, and maybe some on the internal, some of which are in the library and others not... By re-adding things after consolidating it may have made things into a hodge-podge. Yes, that article you referenced says: "iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder"with Media Folder being the emphasis. You probably should have just moved your whole iTunes folder. Still, moving the media folder as instructed should not have messed up the library. Did you make the mistake of starting up iTunes before the external drive had mounted fully and it then told you it couldn't find many files? How you proceed to sort it out will depend upon how much time you want to spend and how important things such as ratings and playcount are to you. I have not actually used the consolidate feature across different drives myself (and don't feel inclined to do so here to test ).
If you are in the USA you can download some previous purhcases with iCloud, but not all.
Here's a bit on what an iTunes folder should look like:
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]
Library files with graphic and explanation of different iTunes versions - http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13169517
Once you get iTunes working off the external drive it should just put new media to the external when you add it.
I have almost no experience with synching (I synched my neice's iPod, once, about 4 years ago). -
My PC hard drive died and I have replaced it. Need to import the music on my classic iPod, but get a message that it's synced with another library (old hard drive). How do I import the music onto the new hard drive? Senuti (one respondent's suggestion) is just for macs. I have no old hard drive to copy to the new hard drive (another respondent's suggestion.)
See this older thread from another forum member Zevoneer on different ways to copy music from your iPod back to your PC.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2417169?start=0&tstart=0
B-rock -
Playlists Missing After Install New Hard Drive and Upgrade to Win 7
My computer needed a new hard drive and I upgraded from Win Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium.
I am trying to get my Playlists back for my iTunes in my "Administrator" user account, after reinstalling iTunes and putting my music libraries back onto my computer.
(I had installed 32-bit Win7 OS myself, computer worked OK for about 1 day, then would not boot up; I took computer to shop, they said I needed new Hard Drive, and I gave them my new Win7 OS computer disks)
I am confused over whether I have 32-bit OS or 64-bit OS. They recommended installing 32-bit OS, I agreed, and believed that I had 32-bit OS installed; however, Computer / System Properties state "System type: 64-bit Operating System"
Prior to my installing Win7, I backed up the following onto my Western Digital "My Passport Essential Portable Hard Drive:"
("My Administrative Account"): Users / Owner / My Music
and
("My User Account"): Users / Yank / My Music
My "Administrative" and "User" user accounts contain different songs in iTunes.
If helpful, I could describe what is in each of these 2 backed-up music folders.
To get started, I copied both my "Owner" and "Yank" user folders in the C: User folder; however now I have "Owner," "Yank," and "Yank.Owner-Toshiba" folders in the C: User folder. I think I did this by creating a new Yank user account by creating a new account, not by my copying a folder into C: User folder. The Owner folder has a picture of a lock on the folder icon.
Because I had trouble merging My Music folders in the Owner folder, and I was confused, I copied everything that was in the Owner folder into a new folder in the Owner folder, "NEW OWNER FOLDER." I also copied my Owner Music folder into several places in my Users / Owner folder.
I also ended up changing the "iTunes Media folder location" several times, using iTunes "Edit / Preferences / Advanced tab / change "iTunes Media folder location". When I chose "Reset," it shows "C:\Users\Owner\NEW OWNER FOLDER\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media"
I've also played around with "Edit / Preferences / Advanced tab / 'Keep iTunes Media folder organized' "
When I open my iTunes, I have no playlists.
However, when I went to my "Yank" user account and opened iTunes for the first time, the playlists associated with that account were visible.
How do I get my playlists back on my Administrative Account, which is my main song collection and had many, many playlists?
Thank you.YAY!
I didn't try shift-start of iTunes, but I DID GET MY PLAYLISTS BACK BY FOLLOWING YOUR OTHER ADVICE:
I went to my external hard drive, went to my backup at Users / Owner / My Music / iTunes / and searched for library.itl
Four files with that name were found, with different dates.
I chose the most recent, dated just a few days before I made my backup to the external hard drive.
I copied it to my computer's hard drive into the following location:
C:\Users\Owner\NEW OWNER FOLDER\Music\iTunes
which overwrote the file which was located there.
When I opened iTunes, ALL MY WONDERFUL PLAYLISTS WERE THERE!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SOLVING THIS FOR ME!
CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW DISAPPOINTED I FELT WHEN I BELIEVED THAT I HAD LOST ALL OF THE PLAYLISTS WHICH I HAD CREATED OVER THE YEARS? Many of my playlists were composed of whole albums whose songs I had added to iTunes.
THANK YOU AGAIN SO MUCH! -
I have all my music on an external hard drive. I just transferred all my files to a new hard drive . How do I sync all my files with my itunes library without losing all my playlists etc and keep everything intact?
Launch iTunes with the Option key held down, click on Choose Library, and specify it. If the external drive doesn't contain the iTunes database files, create a new library there and import that music.
If the library contains any rented movies, they won't play on a different computer.
(109334) -
I have recently had to reimage my computer and installed a new hard drive - I had apple deauthorize all of my computers however now that I have installed Itunes everytime I hook up any of my "I" products it says that it cannot sync them because they are already attached to another Itunes LIbrary - The library was the one that was on my computer which had the Hard Drive crash so it does not exist anymore- Any thought on what I need to do? I am about to come unglued with all of this hubub! - Thanks for the help
It has always been very basic to always maintain a backup copy of your computer for just this occasion.
Use your backup copy to put everything back. -
I lost my iTunes library on my pc when the hard drive crashed. None of the data on the drive was recoverable and I did not have a backup either locally or on the cloud. Much of the music is from old vinyl and podcasts which are no longer available.
How can I get the music that resides on my ipod nano (4th generation) back onto the new hard drive on my pc.
I have been reluctant to install iTunes on the new hard drive out of fear that I will lose all the contents on the ipod if I try to synch to the new hard drive.
Help!No backup is a huge mistake.
You can redownload some itunes purchases in some countries:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store ... - Apple - Support -
My iPhoto Library (version 8.1.2) is 280GB (greater than 50% of my 500GB total storage memory on my iMac. It was too large for me to drag it to a new hard drive so the Apple geniuses did it for me. However they did not delete the Library from my iMac (that's my responsibility). I dragged it to Trash and when it started to move I clicked over to the new hard drive to confirm it had indeed been copied. I became nervous when I didn't see among the few files on this otherwise empty new hard drive anything that resembled a 280GB Library so I cancelled the migration to trash.
How can I be sure that my iphoto has been copied and that all my "metadata" survived in tact?the new backup drive
I thought the new drive would be your data drive to host the iPhoto library. Do you also use it for TimeMachine backups?
I am unable to search either in email as well as Finder. I AM able to search within iPhoto though, thankfully
Spotlight may still be busy rebuildig its index.
You could try to rebuild the Spotlight Index, if you do see no progress:
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes
I hope, other frequent posters will drop in. I have not used iPhoto 8.x in long time. -
New Hard Drive, No Access to ITunes Library on Old Hard Drive
My hard drive died yesterday, and no data recovery was possible, so I lost my ITunes library, which was made up mostly of songs that I had imported from my extensive CD collection.
I have no backup CD with the library on it.
I had hoped that I'd be able to transfer over the songs from my IPod to the new hard drive that I had installed today. I downloaded ITunes and attached my IPod, and received a message stating that my IPod was synced with a different computer, and only had the option to (1) Transfer songs bought from the ITunes store, or (2) Sync with the new computer and erase everything off of my IPod.
I read a few help articles about using the IPod as a hard drive, but I can't do that as I don't have access to the original ITunes Library folder.
Any ideas?
Mini Windows XPThere's an answer to your question but first it's time for a little lecture - if it makes a difference, I don't feel any better about this than you do. ; - )
I hope you take this unfortunate state of affairs as an opportunity to learn a very important lesson: Back up your iTunes library as soon as you can after resolving this situation because right now you are only one glitch of your iPod away from losing your music entirely.
Many people come to the Discussions having lost their music in just such situations and, believe me, it's not a happy time for anyone.
If you place any importance on your playlists and the data they depend on, make sure to include the iTunes Library files in your back-up regimen as well.
Anyways, that's the lecture. The answer to your problem should be found in Zevoneer's post .
Good Luck! But once you have the music back on your computer, remember:
Your music is valuable - please back it up!
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