Power cut / itunes update leads to itunes memory loss :-(

Question

I am running a mac mini only 6 months old with 2.5ghz intel I5 Core.
Where i live we suffer many power cuts. Everything was working fine with itunes, but now itunes is having real issues with locating many of my files.
I have around 260gb in music altogether, and after using itunes for many years, i have spent a lot of time making smart playlists to organise everything just the way i like it. All my favourite songs i have spent time giving them 5 star ratings so Itunes knows to put them in the "My Top Rated" smart folder.
I keep my music on an external 1Tb hard drive. Itunes knows where the folder is located via preference settings.
After a recent spurt of power cuts, followed by an unrelated external had drive failure (only movies), i went back to my mac and discovered that around 30% of my music was missing. This was indicated by small exclamation marks placed just to the left of the individual track names in itunes.
Off course, the first thing i did was panic, but my fears were soon put to rest, when i checked the master file on my extrenal hard drive where the itunes folder is located, the files were still there.
When i try to play the selected file, the message :- " the song "______" could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"
i have 2 main issues here:-
1. Itunes will only let you locate individual files at a time, if i have to locate 30% of 260gb, i will still be till next year.
2. when i follow the option to locate, find the file and click open, Itunes crashes after hanging some time.
I can dump all itunes indexing files and copy my master itunes file (all 260gb) onto another drive, then delete itunes application and reinstall, but i will loose all my playlists and 5 star ratings. I am also concerne about song degradation which can happen when copying files. I have many Flac converted files which are 320kbps.
I have read on the apple.com itunes windows forum that there is a script to locate missing files, is there a similair method for mac?
Is there another method for Itunes to reindex the complete folder where the music is located without loosing smart playlists and 5 star ratings?
Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

If iTunes is busy saving the library file (which it does frequently) and there is power loss then the file can become corrupt.  This can cause links to be broken, and if the library file is corrupt enough it will cause iTunes to freeze.
Your solution is to back up your library (especially the library.itl) frequently so you have good copy from which to start, and buy a power source backup.  The other things about which you are asking are not real long-term solutions giving the conditions you describe.
There isn't any script for repairing links on Mac. You can check Dougscripts web site.  There was one there but it wasn't highly successful from my reading of it.  iTunes itself has a minor repair links feature built into it whereby if you find one link it will ask if you want to try to find others based on the same criteria.  If that isn't working then that's as far as it goes.
I'm not too clear what you mean about song degradation in copying files. Yes, any file copying can theoretically cause error, but there are also error checking routines.  Still, even just leaving files on a drive can cause errors as sectors suddenly go bad.
The main problem you have is computers are not designed to survive frequent abrupt shutdown.  Macs aren't too bad and last night we had a sudden shutdown twice and my computer started up fine both times (hats off the Apple). You need to deal with that problem and your iTunes will not corrupt as frequently.  I have been using my library since the early 2000s and never once had it go corrupt on me.