iTunes keeps losing songs

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Level 1

5 points

iTunes keeps losing songs

I have 11,500 songs in my music library (since 2005). ITunes says it cannot locate 5400 of them.

What do I do?

I am getting the ( ! )(the song could not be located because the original file could not be found) with about half the files I try to play. I don't have the time to search for all 5400 files. And Spotlight is totally useless in this regard.

What do I do? I have time machine backups, but the last time I tried to restore from backup I lost ever single file in iTunes.

I don't want to do that again.

iMac1.83 GHz CoreDuo, Mac OS 10.6.8

iMac (17-inch Early 2006), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 28, 2012 11:24 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 14, 2018 1:08 PM in response to felixds

Open iTunes, go to 'File', then 'Library', then 'Organize Library', check 'Consolidate Files' and click OK. This relocates all of the media inside iTunes which exist in the iTunes folder (~/Music/iTunes/); but will take some time.

Don't worry none of your media is lost, nor will be. If you had not deleted or moved the media from the iTunes folder, then you will recover all of your songs.

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Answer 2

Oct 29, 2012 6:59 AM in response to felixds

There could be many reasons for that, from your hard drive dying to something changing the names on files or folders. Do you have iTunes set up any differently from being on a single, internal hard drive with all default settings? Subscribe to iTunes Match? Any other information that might be useful?

Have you run Disk Utility and verified the hard drive with your library?

You say Spotlight is useless. Why? Is it not finding the files? If that's the case then simply re-building the links won't work because the files themselves are gone.

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Answer 3

felixds Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 1, 2012 12:12 AM in response to Limnos

Apple replaced the hard drive about a year ago:it is set to the default settings and has 25GB (of 150gb) free space. Do not have iTunes Match.

I ran Disk Utility twice the day before I posted above:it fixed a few (5 or so) disk verification errors none related to iTunes as far as I can tell. I run Onyx once a month, the last time being yesterday.

Spotlight cannot find the name of the artist or the name of the song. If iTunes creates a file with a different name than the song, how can I EVER recover the files?

Thank you for your response. I am now going thru my entire iTunes library and deleting the songs that it cannot find. Deleting over 5000 songs from a library of 11000 is not why I bought a Mac. I'm now down to 4500 or so but it is a long process. Is there any software to help me find these lost files?

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Answer 4

Nov 1, 2012 12:59 PM in response to felixds

Spotlight should find them if they exist on the computer. My Spotlight (OSX 10.4) will find text I have used in labeling tracks in iTunes even though it isn't part of the file name. My file could be named x5j4lk9C.mp3 but if I have "Dire Straits" in the tags it will find it.

To remove dead track entries: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=removedeadsuper - Super Remove Dead Tracks

eliasfromnewyork: Consolidate will only re-locate (in terms of moving, not 'finding again') files iTunes knows exist. It will not find files that have broken links, and certainly not find files that for some reason have been deleted from the computer.

If the files are truly missing from the computer they will have to be recovered from whatever original source. If they are on the computer but the link to iTunes is broken, that uses a simpler procedure (but we need to know which applies).

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Answer 5

felixds Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 15, 2012 10:41 AM in response to Limnos

Thank you for your help Limnos. I did use spotlight to find one artist's name: it yielded 18 hits for her name. Then i did a search in itunes and got 88 hits. What seems to happen is that iTunes creates a link to every song, but if that song or file is later removed (as when my hard drive crashed), iTunes still rembers the link, but can't locate the file, regardless if it is where it is. Dougscripts "Super Remove Dead Track"helped me remove all the dead tracks that had no corresponding file connected to it. It looks to me like the only way to remove music files is through iTunes: if you use the finder to remove files to the trash or move them anywhere, or if heaven forbid you disconnect a hardrive, iTunes will get all squirrelly and forget everything it ever knew. there are still a number of unanswered bugs like how a Patti Smith cd got stuck inside of Brahms German Requiem or how a Bob Dylan track got put inside a sountrack recording of Les Miserables? Some files make no sense at all and other than doing a file by file search I have still not found a way to locate every file. but 90% is pretty good. Thank you so much .....go Vikings

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Answer 6

Nov 15, 2012 10:59 AM in response to felixds

iTunes does not look directly at your files until you try to do something with the file (such as play it). It uses a database where it keeps a record of which files you have added, where the file is (or should be) and many of the attributes (tags such s artist). If you remove a file with Finder, iTunes does not know this if all it is doing is looking at the database. It isn't until you try to then play that file it suddenly realizes it is no longer there. The same goes for moving it (there are exceptions but unless you manually manage your music they don't apply). If you delete entries or want to move files you should let iTunes do it.

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