PLEASE PLEASE HELP! finding and locating files..

Question

Hellooo!..
First of all, I'd like to start by saying that i am a DJ and music producer using Logic Pro 9.
..I have just spend the last 5 days organising my whole iTunes, adding albums, renaming, adding artwork and pritty much making sure that everything is bob on and perfect!
So last night i was nearly done and had pretty much completed the organising of my itunes; everything looks cool everything is labelled correctly etc..
This morning, being the absolute TOOL that i am! i (without realising at first) deleted every song in the iTunes Media folder, which i didn't realise was the default file directory for all my music. (i still have all my music files around the laptop they are not deleted, what has deleted are just the copys of the songs that itunes automatically makes and places into the 'Media' folder) Dont even ask how and why i did this or what was going through my mind! just one of those moments i suppose! So still i deepened my problem by emptying the Trash bin so everything had gone.
So.. obviously as you would presume, the dreaded ''!'' appears when i try to play a song and says that it could not find the original file and would i like to locate it? ..after emptying the recycle bin i downloaded some software that restores what you have deleted but this was no use as certain files were missing or corrupt etc so that idea was scrapped.
All of the music in my library IS on my macbook located in various folders a lot are in 'downloads' folder and alot are in another folder named 'Albums from old computer'
So all of my music is on my laptop but i really dont want to have to go through 2689 songs individually to locate them.
when i tried locating one, i found the file and this song was allowed to be played etc but it also popped up with 'Would you like iTunes to use the location of 'song name whatever' to find other missing files in your library?' ..amazed that it came up with this i clicked yes,but no files were found still :S even though many of the files are in the same folder as this song ive just located.. so this option seems to make no sense?
Basically im looking for a way for iTunes to either search the whole laptop for where the song is located or anything else that would allow them to be found and played. The reason i need this to happen is because the whole library is amazingly organised now it all still looks perfect but would also sound perfect too if i could play the effing songs!
I dont know if ive explained this clearley enough or what but i would really really appreciate it if someone could get back to me on this! This is 5 days work gone down the drain!
Thanks,x

Answer 1

Hi, FlyBeatz.
In your iTunes music folder, is there still a file called iTunes Library which has the word "Lib" under the iTunes logo? Normally iTunes has an "iTunes folder" which contains the above and "iTunes library Extras.itbd, iTunes Library Genius [all with lib under the itunes logo] and iTunes Library.xml.
iTunes lib contains the metadata, the info that says album, artist, tracks name. the music folder just has track1, 2 etc and the track name. You need the Lib file to make iTunes display the tracks properly. If this is lost or deleted then its the hard slog.
There is also a folder called iTunes music which contains the audio tracks filed under artist, then album[s].
If the iTunes Lib file is intact then you might be able to import all the music files back into the one folder and have iTunes recognise them as before the great delete. Make sure its the same name, and file structure or 'tunes will get confused. It also puts a lot of stuff into the various artists or compilations folders when it shouldn't, so watch that if you get discrepancies.
You'll need to create a separate folder for each artist, then inside that, create a folder for each album [or track] and copy the audio files into the appropriate location. Then open iTunes and see if it recognises the library correctly.
Warning. If this doesn't work - and iTunes is not a great piece of software for this kind of repair- it could make things worse.
Another option. Do you have time machine enabled? If so, simply reset the computer to a time [say 2 days ago] just before you did the delete. If TM is running automatically, it usually backs up every 30-60 minutes automatically.
I'd also suggest running time machine before attempting my first suggestion in case that solution makes things worse, then you simply restore the machine to its current [somewhat scrambled] state.
Third option is to ring apple tech support and ask for an iTunes expert to help you.
Which you may have already done.
If none or these - or someone else's - solutions don't fix the problem then its the long hard slog.
I've had to do it with over 120G and 200G of wavs more than once thanks to iTunes stupid behaviour, so I know where your at.
Good luck with it fellow Logic Pro user.
Scorpii.