iTunes library corrupted after iPod crash

What did not happen is your iPod causing the loss of songs in your iTunes Library. Sync is one-way, from iTunes to the device. Although information about a song (such as last played and song rating) is transferred back to your library, nothing about the process should cause the song to go missing.

What is more likely to have happened is that the songs in your iTunes Library were already missing - and when you connected your iPod to iTunes the Sync with your iPod revealed this fact.

To explain what could have happened, consider the following: your songs are not "in" iTunes. All iTunes does is catalogue the songs that you add to it (they then become part of your library). The files for each and every song are on your computer - and iTunes knows where. However, if the file for a song is moved, renamed or deleted (or the path to the file is renamed or deleted), iTunes will lose track of that file and be unable to play the song or to copy it to your iPod. Each Sync requires that iTunes knows where the original file for each song is located.

Two things to do now:

1. 1. work out how the files could have gone missing (did you do any housework that may have deleted or moved the files?)
   2. try and find the files

To find the files, see if they are still anywhere on your computer. Usually, the filename is very similar to the song title. So the song Saloon Dreams has a filename of 05 Saloon Dreams, where 05 is the track number on the album. In my song's example, its full path is Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\<artist name>\<album title>\<song filename> (or, for a various artists album: Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Compilations\<album title>\<song filename>. Note that compilations is a folder name.

If you cannot find the original file for a missing song, you will have to go back to your original source:

• • for CDs - re-copy from the CD
  • for purchases from the iTunes Store - sign into your account with the iTunes Store and download your past purchases from your account detail
  • for purchases from other online stores, re-download the songs again from your account with that store

By the way, for future reference, iTunes can only Sync with one library at a time, so your attempt to correct the iPod issue with a different iTunes Library (your work PC) was not going to work. You would probably have seen a warning message telling you that if you synchronised your iPod with that iTunes library, all the songs on your iPod would be deleted from the iPod.

I'm unable to explain why the songs are missing but as stated, I do not believe that it was the Sync between your iPod and iTunes that caused the songs to go missing from your library.

I'll leave you to recover the missing songs as best as you can, but I will offer a few tips to secure your music for the future:

• • don't try to synchronise an iPod (or iPhone, iPad etc.) to two or more libraries (i.e. your home and work computers). It won't work and you may lose songs from your device. Apple do offer Home Sharing, although I think that it is aimed at family setups rather than one person
  • once you have your library in as good as state as you can get it (i.e. you recover all or most of your lost music, or even just some of it), use Windows Explorer to make and maintain a backup of all of your music on an external drive. That should protect you against any future device failures. Your iPod etc. is not a backup
  • consider moving on from Windows XP. It's an outdated operating system and as a consequence, your iTunes programme is not up to date and may not offer sufficient protection against anything that might be an issue. In addition, some models of iPod and iPhone will no longer communicate with iTunes on Windows XP
  • do not use your work computer as a location for your iTunes Library. It will cause you problems if (or when) you leave that company. We've seen several discussions here from people who have left their job and then discovered they've lost access to their music