Songs Disappearing from iTunes

I have absolutely no idea why repairing the permissions helped me, but it did. Honestly, a lot of this stuff feels like voodoo to me.

So how do I repair the permission to an external hard drive?

Mexicali30 wrote:

So how do I repair the permission to an external hard drive?

You don't need to.

Select the external in the Finder then right click - get info.
Scroll to the bottom and tick Ignore permissions.

UPDATE:

Well I was unable to change the permissions on the actual folder.

What I have done to temporarily fix my problem. I did two things and am not sure which one fixed it yet. I enable my iMAC to view all hidden files. I also removed the external hard drive from my wireless TC and direcly connected it to my PC. Well when I enable the MAC to view all hidden files nothing happened. The next day when I was removing the external from the TC and connecting it to my MAC nothing was happening. I was unable to view the External HD at all. So I did a reboot. Upon reboot I was able to view all hidden files AND the external. I went straight to the music folder and there it was.. all my music. My itunes still played from that external just fine and I was able to move the music on/off the folder if need be.

I was happy.. and tired.. so I haven't attached the external back to the TC or I haven't disabled showing hidden files on my mac. One of those two were the solution.

Thanks for all the help and feedback.

Jumping back in to say for what it's worth, iTunes started deleting tracks on syncing again today. I checked all of my earlier issues (mentioned previously in this topic) and the time seems accurate, and I could not find anything else out of sorts. Really frustrating.

Hi, I am having the same problem I can't seem to find a solution I am putting songs into Itunes and they just disappear from the itunes folder but the song is still showing in the itunes menu with a ! mark this is really frustrating as all my music that I love is disappearing...can someone help or even some ***** from apple...I am running vista on my laptop using a external hard drive.

please help as these files can't just disappear its impossible.

David

Same problems here except that in addition to my ripped music some of my older music purchased from Itunes has also disappeared from my hard drive. However, everything in still on my ipod and the titles show up in itunes.

I don't use a server in my setup. All the Itunes music is stored on the local machine.

Same problem here too--just discovered a bunch of my music that I purchased from iTunes has disappeared. ***? Any answers from Apple?

I am having the same problem as well. I upgraded to Itunes 10.6.7.1 a few weeks ago. I have two PC laptops that I use, one for general use, and one for DJing. I manage my itunes on my main computer, and basically clone my library before I have a gig, so that my itunes folder (which serato reads for my playlists and stuff) is identical to the computer I use daily.

I noticed recently, that i'm getting the grey exclamation points on tracks that I definitely did not delete. When I look for the files, they are completely missing from my external hard drive. Some tracks are also copying themselves. But the tracks I am looking for, GONE. No trace. They remain on my ipod, because I haven't synched in a while, but they are no where to be found on my hard drive. Luckily I had backups of some of the files, and were able to just drag them into itunes, and it's like nothing ever happened, but not for all of the tracks. And it's annoying to find new ones every time I open Itunes. ***??!?!?

Why are we getting no answer as to why this is happening, and why isn't there a fix???! This is wedding season, and I hate to look for a track and find that it is missing for no reason at all, when I am doing a gig. Or just in general.

I am having the same problem 😟

same problem here with the latest iTunes version... Songs just disappeard in Finder???

Well, I spent about an hour on the phone with Apple today to see if they knew anything about my missing iTunes songs. The consultant had me try several things and nothing solved the problem. After talking with a higher level several times, he said that none of the songs were on my hard drive any longer and that I must have deleted them. He then said that the only thing I would be able to do would be to reload them. I said that I would first download the songs that I had purchased and see if they “stayed” or if they would disappear like they had before. What is interesting is that as I clicked on the download from the iTune store, I could not download them since it said that that song was already on my computer. The ! (meaning that it was not there) did show for that song. I tried several times and was not able to complete the download. I finally deleted the song and then downloaded it from iTunes. That time it showed up without the !.

What I found interesting is that the only song (outside of the two iTunes that I had just downloaded) that showed up in the iTunes folder was one that was a free download from Amazon. Now I am wondering if iCloud has something to do with the missing songs.

How do you get Apple on the phone? I can let them connect to my desktop and watch the songs disappear as I sync to my iPod...

Dave Rathbun wrote:

How do you get Apple on the phone?

Calling them usually works. (See Contact Us at bottom right of every Apple page)

But iTunes support is email only.

-> https://expresslane.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.do?PRKEYS=PF4

For what it's worth, the latest update to 10.6.3.25 has addressed this issue for me. I have carefully tested all of the various scenarios that were causing me problems earlier, and none of my tracks are being deleted.