iTunes update 11.1 deleted all 5GB of my podcasts

I just had this exact same thing happen to me. Lost all of my podcasts. OSX 10.8.2, iTunes 11.1.

This is so incredibly frustrating. I'm looking at some of my daily podcasts and there are CLEARLY huge chunks missing. iTunes clearly just went on a podcast murdering rampage. Some podcasts had a year+ of content deleted while another just lost a month and yet another was reduced from 100 episodes TO ONE.

Why on earth would they not have fixed this before updating? Some of these podcasts I have no way to get back, making it even more maddening.

And the "Add Folder to Library" thing didn't work because the episodes were flat out deleted off of my hard drive.

I had my library on a separate hard drive fyi

Ditto.

It's called a LIBRARY for a reason. It's not a link to a cloud which can go away at any time.

Yeh, so - hundreds of GB of podcasts gone after updating to iTunes 11.1

And HT2562 is not relevant here - it was written nearly a year ago, for an entirely different issue.

If somebody from Apple could please post HOW PODCASTS WORK IN ITUNES 11.1, we'll all be able to work out how to proceed.

Please.

Here are some instructions to downgrade your iOS back to iOS 6, which is the only way I've found to solve this issue:

0. Make sure you have a backup of your phone FROM iOS 6! This process will reset your phone to factory before restoring it, and you won't be able to restore it using an iOS 7 backup! You will also need to know the Apple ID and password for the phone's primary account, your backup password (if you set one - see if "Encrypt backup" is checked on your phone's "Summary" page.) DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU DON'T HAVE ALL THREE OF THOSE THINGS!

1. Download the old iOS version you need - this is a fairly large file, about 1 GB in general. If you've got a GSM (AT&T or T-Mobile in the US) iPhone 5, you can get it from http://appldnld.apple.com/iOS6.1/091-3403.20130502.Xerz1/iPhone5,1_6.1.4_10B350_ Restore.ipsw and otherwise, you can find it on that same site, but you'll have to look around. 5's can run 6.1.4, 4s's and older need 6.1.3. Note that there are different versions of iOS for GSM and CDMA (Verizon or Sprint in the US) networks, so make sure you get the right one. Save this file somewhere safe.

2*. Put your phone in DFU mode. http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/DFU_Mode contains instructions to do that. Note that you must already have iTunes open to do this.

3. When iTunes notices your phone in Restore mode, click "OK" and it should pull up the restore page for the phone. Press Alt (or Option for Mac) and click on "Restore iPhone..." You must press Alt/Option, or this part won't work.

4. That will open an Explorer/Finder window. Point that at the old iOS .ipsw file you downloaded in step 1. That will restore the iOS 6 software, which will take a few minutes, typically.

5. Once iOS is restored, iTunes will prompt you for the primary's AppleID and Password. This is to prevent theft. Enter them.

6. You can then restore your phone from a backup or set it up as a new phone. I made a local backup before I installed iOS 7, so I restored from that - hopefully you did the same, but anyway, you're best served restoring to your newest iOS 6 backup. Note that this will not allow you to restore an iOS 7 backup! Obviously, if you have a backup password, you'll need to enter it here.

7. Your phone will auto-sync. You can stop that if you want and sync it later, when you've added your podcasts back, or you can let it finish if you want.

8. You now have a phone running iOS 6 again. You can join me in downgrading back to iTunes 11.0.5 and waiting for Apple to fix this show-stopping podcast bug.

*Step 2 is necessary if your "Restore iPhone..." button is not present or grayed-out, as mine was. If it's not the case for you - if your "Restore iPhone..." button is there and operable, you can skip step 2 and procede to step 3 by Alt-clicking on that "Restore iPhone..." button.

I'm fairly sure the reason for this is a due to a mismatch between options to Keep all episodes in iTunes and Keep all unplayed or some similar option on your device when the new option to Sync podcast subscriptions, settings and stations has been enabled. I lost all played episodes of all podcast series that I synced to my devices. 😠

Series that weren't synced were left untouched. iTunes still records both my default option and series specific options to Keep all episodes. iTunes doesn't manage my media folders. The deleted episodes were not sent to the recycle bin. 😕

I'll file a bug report later, but in the meantime here is the recovery process, assuming you have a backup of the deleted files...

1. Restore copies of all the deleted podcasts to the Podcasts folders from your backup.

2. Restore a copy of the pre-upgrade library from the Previous iTunes Libraries folder.

3. Rename the current .itl file with the suffix (BAD), then move it into the Previous iTunes Libraries folder.

4. Remove the trailing date from the library file restored in step 2.

5. Start iTunes, go to the Podcasts section.

6. Uncheck the option to Sync podcast subscriptions, settings and stations then click Continue. This should prevent a repeat of the deletions.

7. On your devices you may also want to change the Episodes to keep to All in Settings > Podcasts and then again with the settings for each subscription in the app.

8. If, like me, you updated a whole bunch of apps before realizing there was a problem, you may find the restored library has multiple broken links to any apps that you updated. Use File > Add Folder to Library and select your Mobile Applications folder. Accept the offer to replace older versions with the files you are adding. iTunes may prompt that certain files cannot be updated because it can't find the file to add. Keep a note of these as it looks like this happens when both the old & new versions would be given the same file name and iTunes unhelpfully erases the file that it is supposed to add. You can delete any remaining broken entries, close iTunes, then reopen and download from iTunes Store > Purchased > Apps > Not on this computer.

If you don't have the episodes to restore then at least visit iTunes > Preferences > Store and Uncheck the option to Sync podcast subscriptions, settings and stations before attempting to redownload any older episodes.

tt2

I called for support and the folks at Apple Care were baffled as well telling me that there is a possbility Podcasts are managed from the iCloud now and should surface due to the servers being overly taxed. When I questioned why it would automatically delete content stored locally - especially since I had an awful lot of podcast content (way more than my iCloud compliemtary storage) I didn't quite get a streight answer.

Hopefully this is a bug and they'll quickly release an update. Everything was fine as is before that awful Podcast app - why they insisted on it I'l never know.

Yes, this is just insanely ridiculous!

I noticed that iTunes was running VERY slow for the last week or so, and then suddenly realized that 200GB of my Library had dissappeared!!!! Not just dead links in the iTunes library, they had been deleted from the drive too!

The files were on a dual redundancy NAS and no errors and no other data missing, just the ones used by iTunes. Luckily I have a recent backup and am restoring the whole directory, but not sure if the same will just happen again.....

First thing I will do is disable the "sync podcast options" since that appears to be the main culprit here, but its unbelievable and unacceptable that Apple can release such a destructive version of its software! I've been in IT for more than 30 years and NEVER heard of software this bad! No messages, no errors, no indication that its even deleting the files, or why its doing so!!!

Do Apple not even bother to test their software before release now?!! It's obvious that its a big and destructive bug, since so many people have been effected, why can't you pick this up in testing BEFORE release, and not release software that just thinks it can delete our files without even telling us!

This new sych option seems a ridiculous setting too! It doesn't indicate exactly what settings on what devices it is syncing, and in particular doesn't say how it handles setting conflicts either!!!

I personally know that my iTunes auto delete settings were not at fault, and in about 70% of the podcasts, the actual subscription was deleted too! not just the files!

we idiots have given iTunes full access to out precious music and video libraries, trusting that Apple will not accidentally delte them. Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I certainly have had my eyes fully opened, and will keep a VERY CLOSE eye on this old and unstable app in the future!

My first total restore of the Music directory resulted in iTunes starting and being so busy it looked hung for about half an hour. All it was doing was once again deleteing loads of my Podcasts, and leaving me with about 5 subscriptions and 10 files, from an origianl 100 subscriptions and 1000 files!

I tried to follow turingtest2's instructions, but the screens I see don't match his picture, and I was only able to disable the "sync" option in Preferences.

I am restoring the directory again and hope that the "sync" change will fix the problem, but not being familiar with where the iTunes preferences are stored, I may be overwriting that setting by restoring the full Music directory. Perhaps someone can tell me where the preferences are stored so that I can avoid this?

Mr Mount, aktx and many others have exactly the same problem, and it can't be fixed by just trying to add the items back into the library if the files have been physically deleted from the drive, as already responded to the condecending "read the instructions precisely" message of ElisaSD

Thanks turingtest2 for the detailed instructions that fixed your problem. When reading them and trying to follow on my Windows system the image is not the same and the instructions not totally clear, espcially the placement of the BAD Library version, and the deletion of the date which I don't see.

As another step in resolving this problem, I checked the settings on both my iPhone and iPad, but they were set to "Keep All". I then deleted the Podcast App from iPhone and iPad, since it seems related to the problem, and I don't use them for Podcasts (I use the Apple TV).

Following my second total restore of my Music directory (including the iTunes library files that are in the iTunes Directory), I started iTunes again.

I got a popup message saying could not connect to iTunes Store (occasionally happens due to network traffic) which may also be a reason why iTunes did not immediately lockup and start deleting Podcasts as in my first attempt above.

This time I went quickly to preferences and noticed that the iTunes Preferences must be kept in the iTumes directory or Library file, since the STORE "sync podcasts", and Advanced "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" were both once again enabled.

I quickly disabled both of the above options and saved preferences.

Restarted iTunes and checked that the settings were still disabled.

Disabling Advanced "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" was probably unecessary, but it may have prevented iTunes from locking up at the start and deleting the files again.

I disabled this for another reason too. I now totally mistrust Apple and their software, and definitely do not want any of their programs rearranging or in any other way messing with my file system.

Everything seems to be back to normal now. I will re-post if the problem returns.

I cannot believe Apple. I want to scream. I want to yell.

They make good hardware, so even though I know they are arrogant SOBs, I drunk the Koolaide and bought their devices.

Then this.

Nearly 3000 podcast episodes.

Gone.

Many I can never get back.

All because they thought it would be good to enable cross-device sync BUT NEVER ACTUALLY TESTED IT. Apple, did you ever think to consider that deleting thousands of podcasts due to an automatic sync rule might YOU ADDED not be a good idea!?!?

I've got an old backup, but I was downloading Podcasts on two machines so a single hard drive failure wouldn't cause me to lose both. Didn't think I needed to back them up from iTunes itself. Many I can never get back. My mistake for trusting the worse music program manager in history. Only reenforces how much I hate this company.

Are you running Windows 7 and is the library on an internal drive? If you are lucky you may find that there are Previous Versions of the Podcasts folder saved by system protection features in which case you may be able to recover some of those lost files. Right-click the folder and see if you get a Restore previous versions entry in the context menu.

tt2

turningtest2, thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately, while I do have that feature enabled for my primary drive, it's not there for the secondary drive that the Podcast folder lives on. I'm pretty sure I've got an old backup that should get me most of the old stuff I didn't want to lose, but not sure, need to dig into my backups to find out.

I'm clearly frustrated, and this is not my first experience with iTunes "helping" me, although I was probably more frustrated than I should have publicly demonstrated. But dammit, Apple, this is a really big bug, and it's affected people for over a year, and it still exists. iTunes should never, ever, delete content without first asking the user. Ever.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

ironfokker wrote:

.... iTunes should never, ever, delete content without first asking the user. Ever.

Agreed. Best of luck.

tt2