Songs Disappearing from iTunes

I did what I said above and unmarked several albums (all tracks). I synced to iPod with no issues. In this case it's removing tracks from my iPod only. Then I remarked the same tracks and synced once again. No tracks were deleted during the process.

I notice in the 10.6 release notes that they've "improved" how album art is managed. Perhaps my process is messing something up. My next experiment is to go back to my wife's computer and remove the tracks, then re-rip them and then reassign the album artwork. I generally get better album artwork for all of my albums, either my directly scanning my own cds or from albumartexchange.com so this is part of my standard process. I'm wondering if re-assigning the album artwork is contributing to the issue; the clue was that the tracks that were deleted from my computer still existed on my iPod, just without their artwork.

I guess I'll find out after my next experiment. As of now, all of the tracks on my hard disk are in place, and everything is synced properly. The tracks that were missing artwork on my iPod now are pretty again. 🙂

you sir are the ****. anyway to recover the playlists from when the files were deleted?

Where are all six audiobook CDs that I just imported 2 weeks ago? They have vanished from iTunes 10.5.5.

HELP!

My playlists were not really affected because the song remains in iTunes, it just gets deleted from the hard drive. I have since updated to the 10..6.1.7 version and it still behaves the same way.

Hello. I have just bought an iMac, but that is not really relevant as I havent even opened the box yet. I have been playing songs through my iTunes from my old PC this morning (7 year old Dell desktop with Windows XP) and was thinking about moving all my music to my iMac. Running through my library getting rid of songs I don't want, which I have done a couple of times in the last few weeks, I noticed some albums I had previously ripped from a CD had the exclamation mark thing and would not play as could not find the original file. I hadn't even touched these. Looking in my iTunes folder, complete albums had disappeared!! I tried syncing my iPod a few times and not much happened, the songs are still there and play OK on the iPod, but are completely gone from my PC. I am no computer wizard and I got scared and pulled out the internet in case it was some virus or other, but it seems this is a wider issue across all platforms!! I don't know when this originally happened, as I don't play music off my PC a lot, but it's very disappointing to find. Seems there is no answer other than to reimport the albums, however I may not have all the CDs to hand. I am worried it is going to keep on going and evetually delete everything. Not sure what to do!! I find it hard t believe there has been no news or feedback from Apple about this!

I did not have the problem until the 10.6 update. I have been working (as shown by the various posts here) to try to isolate the root cause, and so far have not had much luck. The latest cd I riopped when over to my iPod 100% and then the files on the hard drive were completely erased, even the album folder was gone. That was the first time that had happened.

Songs on the iPod will not sync "back" to your PC. The iPod sync process is one-way, which is Apple's way of preventing you from easily giving a copy of your entire music library to someone else simply by syncing your iPod to their computer. Same for iPhone and iPad. There are some 3rd party tools or scripts that will allow you to retrieve music files from your iPod if you really need to, but I've never used them.

I tried going back to 10.5 and found out that my libary would no longer work. I could use the older version of my library, but I've ripped about 850 songs since the last update (yes, even with the deleting problems) and don't feel like going through that again. <sigh>

So I may have figured out my problem, and it has nothing to do with iTunes. Well, not directly anyway. iTunes is still responsible for deleting the songs but I think the issue was caused by an incorrect time setting.

Background Info: I keep my media files on a network file server (device) made by NetGear. It's a simple home RAID disk cabinet. I have two of these devices, each with redundant disks. I have my iTunes configured so rip / save files to this device.

A bit over a month ago I purchased an upgraded unit. It had larger drives, but more importantly it was a faster CPU and had more memory, so the overall performance upgrade was very nice. That's where my iTunes library lives now.

On or about the same time I upgraded the system software for both units to the latest version.

All of this was done, and I never noticed any issues with iTunes. So I discounted that this might be part of the problem.

However, if you've been reading my (frequent) updates to this thread, you might remember that as a test I used iTunes 10.6 to rip a few discs to my wife's computer to see if I could recreate the problem. I could not, as everything worked. Yet on my computer it was still happening. In fact, the last test I ran involved ripping a single cd and them immediately syncing to my iPod. The entire CD was deleted from my library, yet every one of the songs got copied to my iPod.

Fast forward to this morning. I have a backup script that runs on the NetGear device at about 2:30 am, and I get an email from the script showing that the files were successfully copied. The files are stamped wtih the date and time of the backup. Now some time back (weeks ago) I started noticing that the backup times were off by one hour, but I chalked it up to a daylight savings time issue and didn't bother to investigate. This morning my backup files were stamped as August (which is wrong) of 1992 (which is not only wrong, but really, really wrong). After some investigation it seems that the NetGear time service was messed up. I reset to a different time service, and not only did the 1992 date get corrected by the hour difference was fixed as well.

Hmm, I thought to myself. Was iTunes getting confused because the songs were ripped an hour in the future? I decided to run a few tests. Keeping in mind that since I first encountered this problem, I have never been able to successfully rip and then sync a full disc. Always some seemingly random number of songs would get deleted. After fixing my time server, iTunes worked perfectly.

I have no explanation for this. But I would suggest that if you're storing your iTunes media on a different computer than what you're syncing from, that you carefully check to see that the time settings are the same on both machines. Later on (when I'm bored) I will go back and "break" the time setting on my NetGear storage device once again and test some ripping, just to see if the problem comes back. But for now things seem to be working.

Go figure. Never would have figued this out without the "1992" screw up from NetGear this morning.

I did two things when I decided to digitize my 250 CD library and use iTunes as the database...

1. Make Multiple Backups Of All Media

2. Make Multiple Backups Of All Library and Support Files

and third; any media that I buy without "hardcopy" I consider "volatile".

This is "consumer software" folks, and we are more sheeple that "client."

Caveat Emptor.

My problem is a little bit different. The songs disappear from iTunes, but they're still on the hard drive.

When I try to drag them back into my iTunes library, they STILL don't appear. iTunes will play them just fine, but it won't show them on the master song lists. Weird!

Well I guess you can chalk me up for another baffled Itunes user. So My Music folder is located on an external 1 Tb Hardrive that is attached via USB to my Time Capsule. I have relocated my "Itunes Music Folder" to this location.

It was working with zero issues for about a month. I was able to access the music via two Mac's, My TV, and My PS3 which is attached to another TV. No problems getting to any of the music.

Then all of a sudden one day I go to the folder to move some of the music to my Android. The music is gone. I go to my Itunes and I am able to play EVERY single song. I right click to "Get info," and it indicates it is still in the same location. I right click the "location" to go to it.. and it goes directly to the folder like it's looking for the music.. but it never stops looking and the music never shows.

I am now unable to view the music in the folder from the TV/PS3 or either MAC. Yet, I can still play the music via Itunes.

It's about 50 gb worth of music.

One last note.. I upgraded to snow leopard about a week ago. I have a strong feeling this has something to do with it.. but I can't figure out what exactly.

I am also stunned that this has ZERO fixes after going on for so long.

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi..

Mexicali,

I had some trouble finding my files the last time I upgraded my system.

Have you tried repairing the permissions with Disk Utility and simply rebooting? I know it's kind of basic, but that helped me out that last time.

Just so you now.. year and a half I am having this same issue. Did you ever come up with a resolution?

I will give it a try.. I am not sure how repairing the permission would help though. I can play the music via itunes.. I just can't get to it or even see it for that matter. Even if I search for .mp3 nothing comes up except for a few scattered .mp3's I had on my machine.

A solution to my tracks disappearing from the library list?

Yeah, it was as simple as quitting iTunes and starting it up again. Everything magically reappeared. Go figure.

I wrote that to RC178. I am not having trouble with the tracks disappearing from itunes.. I am having trouble with the tracks disappearing from the folder in which they are contained.. yet still play. Craziness.