Q: Songs Disappearing from iTunes

For what it's worth, way back in the earlier days of this thread I posted that for me the trigger event was checking the "reduce bitrate when syncing" option. I turned that off and haven't had the issue since. Two days ago I made a complete back-up of my iTunes folder, turned that feature back on, and synced to my iPod. Several thousand files were deleted during the process. This was the only process running on my computer, and the songs were clearly there before I started the sync because they're on the back-up.

Granted I am using an older version of iTunes, so I don't expect a lot of sympathy. But in my case I have clearly identified the culprit, and I can recreate the issue. At some point I will upgrade to the latest version of iTunes and see if the same issue exists.

A while back I decided/theorized that missing songs were causing iTunes to fail syncing to my iPad. It would get stuck at 'waiting for changes to be applied' (that's a whole other discussion thread like this one). Things have been pretty good in that department since the last update to iTunes or iOS8 (don't know which), but yesterday a sync got stuck at 'waiting...' for about 3 minutes. I thought I was doomed and was going to have to restore everything (which takes my 128GB iPad hours). Just when I was about to cave it started going again, but iTunes decided my iPad was missing about 1400 songs and it copied them over. The iPad went from 17 to 12GBs left, so it really copied them. No duplicates. Don't know when they "disappeared", but at least the sync finished. I've still been keeping a manual backup of the songs in iTunes. Haven't noticed anything missing lately. Yet.

Dave Rathbun wrote:

 

For what it's worth, way back in the earlier days of this thread I posted that for me the trigger event was checking the "reduce bitrate when syncing" option. I turned that off and haven't had the issue since. Two days ago I made a complete back-up of my iTunes folder, turned that feature back on, and synced to my iPod. Several thousand files were deleted during the process. This was the only process running on my computer, and the songs were clearly there before I started the sync because they're on the back-up.

 

Granted I am using an older version of iTunes, so I don't expect a lot of sympathy. But in my case I have clearly identified the culprit, and I can recreate the issue. At some point I will upgrade to the latest version of iTunes and see if the same issue exists.

I am on iTunes 11 and I have Convert to lower bit rate when syncing option selected and I don't lose any songs...

I have seen a few other scattered reports that seem to implicate that option, but I'm sure there must be other factors involved. I wasn't able to reproduce it when I tried.

tt2

tt2, I remember you were one of the folks attempting to help me back when I first posted. I remember you saying you weren't able to reproduce the issue, and simply assumed there was some other factor from my environment that was also contributing. It could be my library size (over 60K tracks), my destination (iPod classic 160GB model), the fact that I'm using an external NAS to store my library (Synology Disk Station), my operating system, or the fact that my computer points east and my monitor faces north-west. The only thing I can say is that I went well over a year without a single missing track, at which point I decided to run my experiment. I backed up my complete iTunes music folder, turned on the "reduce bitrate" option, and set my iPod to sync. The process ran overnight due to the number of songs that iTunes needed to process. The next day I looked and there were thousands of MP3 files missing. The weird part is there wasn't any sort of discernible pattern. In some cases only one track from an album remained, in other cases only one track was deleted.

I may have mentioned it before, but if you have something reproducible, you could sign up for a free Apple Developer account and make use of Apple Bug Reporter. They don't generally talk back, but they do claim to read everything. It would be useful to know exactly which build of iTunes you are running now, and if the symptoms are the same when using the latest version. NAS storage may possibly be a factor since iTunes is unlikely to be tested with it directly and the file systems don't always behave exactly like local storage. There was an issue with iOS app syncing and NAS a few builds ago.

tt2

Not saying it doesn't happen. Just that is doesn't happen to me.

It could be my library size (over 60K tracks), my destination (iPod classic 160GB model), the fact that I'm using an external NAS to store my library (Synology Disk Station), my operating system, or the fact that my computer points east and my monitor faces north-west.

The north-west thingy is the most likely cause , however, NAS is the best bet. Plenty of problems with iTunes & NAS in the forums...

60K tracks and iPod I suspect are completely irrelevant as others with no iPod have seen this issue

It seems a little complicated for me to do what you are saying. I wish I new how to restore just the tracks I am missing without creating duplicate titles. Can you help me with some ideas for a system that won't require a ton of hunting and resorting? I love Apple products, but this missing titles and duplicate titles across communicating and syncing with the cloud and multiple devices has become really frustrating.

Do you know why tracks get removed from my hard drive? I know that I did not do it.

SO why, genius do you think that others have problems? Suddenly the same thing has happened to me. A little testing, i.e. creating a Yosemite bootup disk with new song files causes the same hidden file effect. What constructive advice do you suggest, genius?

stigmus wrote:

SO why, genius do you think that others have problems? Suddenly the same thing has happened to me. A little testing, i.e. creating a Yosemite bootup disk with new song files causes the same hidden file effect. What constructive advice do you suggest, genius?

Why are you asking me for advice and being rude, doofus?

Did you bother to even read my posts?

NAS is the best bet.

It started happening to me today also. Last night I was checking into iTunes rip destination setting and I changed it and then changed it back to what I thought was its default setting. I also had just attached an Apple keyboard (just throwing that in there). Today I defragged my hard drive (which I usually never do) to free up some space. Shortly after, tracks on iTunes started dissappearing! It seemed to rapidly increase, and started with the most recently added folderrs (from as far back as three weeks ago), but also some random songs. I readded many albums back by dropping and dragging them back from my hard drive. But they seemed to keep dissappearing and FAST. So I LOGGED OUT OF ITUNES, and closed the program (iTunes). When I reopened iTunes 20 minutes later, all the vanished songs had RETURNED. BTW, I am on a PC.

My songs dissapeared on my phone and the solution was quite simple. I'm sure this doesnt relate to your problem which i'm sure you figured out by now since it was in 09, but for anyone else that is having this problem of missing songs on your iphone; heres the solution:

Go to Settings

Scroll down to "music"

Turn on "Show all music"

Ok, I am missing a significant amount of music from my iPod Classic (80G), and some of the music is cut off.  In addition, there are some albums that are not even on iTunes either!!  I had to restore the iPod since it wasn't charging properly and it prompted me "to connect to computer." What GIVES!?!?!?!?!?!?  Does Apple not like my taste in music!?!?!?!?!?  Is Jobs putting his $.02 in from up above!?!?!?!?!?

VERY FRUSTRATED HERE!!

PS I am running Windows 7 with a PC.

Your music should have been in your iTunes library, and that should be backed up also. An iPod is too easily lost, stolen, or damaged to be the sole repository of your content. If you have restored the iPod then any chance there might have been to recover content from it will have gone. See Corrupt iPod classic and check the status of your iPod's hard drive. It won't last for ever. Any pendings or reallocated sectors noted may well be the damaged parts of songs that will not play.

tt2

The worst thing software can do is lose data. My mom's iTunes deleted random tunes and now I found myself in the same situation. It stinks, it s_ucks and I'm angry