iTunes Music Disappeared

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Level 1

10 points

iTunes Music Disappeared

Hello

I recently got a new laptop and was setting up iTunes on it and for some reason all of my music disappeared from the Music folder.

I have my iTunes library saved on a 3tb Seagate Backup Plus drive that I have connected to my desktop computer and is shared so I had this drive mapped on my laptop. I installed iTunes on my laptop then went to the preferences then the advanced and set the library location to the shared iTunes folder on the USB drive and checked the keep the library organized and to copy into the iTunes library but for some reason none of my content was showing up. I closed iTunes and re-opened it but still no content was showing up and I had went through Windows Explorer and verified that the shared folder was accessible and it was. Finally I manually went under the File menu and added the iTunes folder and then everything except my Music was showing up and when I went back to Windows Explorer and looked in the Music folder it was empty, no sub folders and no music.

I have always hated iTunes and have found it frustrating to work with but this takes the cake why in the ^$&#^ would it delete my music?

Anyone else ever had this problem?

Is there anyway to get this back because I didn't have another backup of my music and I had several hundred songs if not a thousand and I am just sick over this. Did I say I HATE iTunes, what a piece of crap software.

Thanks

Posted on Nov 25, 2015 8:25 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,761 points

Nov 25, 2015 8:44 AM in response to _Skull

iTunes doesn't necessarily play well with networked content. If any of the content is on a Apple device see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device. Otherwise if the device is locally connected to the desktop then look for a recovery tool that can normally restore the deleted files unless the space they used has been overwritten. Start here: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm

Assuming you meet with success see Make a split library portable and Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy.

tt2

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Answer 2

_Skull Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 27, 2015 11:43 AM in response to turingtest2

Fortunately I found a backup copy on an older USB drive that I have forgotten about so I did get all of my music back but, I usually have 2 or 3 copies of all my important data and I keep a USB drive with this data in my fire proof safe so if we ever have a house fire I wont loose everything but I would still like to know what caused this because all of my Movies,TV Shows, Books and my iPad apps were still all there it only deleted my Music. As for a backup setup I also use SyncToy and have used it for a few years and have found it to be very handy but as I said this was a new laptop that I was just setting up so I hadn't gotten this far yet with it. My normal Workstation that is my main computer I don't have iTunes installed on it but my previous iTunes library was stored on a USB drive connected to my workstation which I had shared and mapped to a drive letter on my new laptop but for some reason iTunes didn't like this but when I go to Windows Explorer the drive is accessible with no problems or errors and I even tried coping large files across the connection to see if for some reason the connection was being interrupted but I a had no problem doing this.

I still don't like iTunes it is a very cumbersome program to learn and just doesn't seem to work very well. I wish Apple would re-think this program and make it a little more stable and easier to use. They also need to take a look at Kodi (Formally XBMC) and set the Apple TV iTunes library this way. The fact that you have to have the computer with iTunes and your library on it turned on with Home Sharing turned on in order to be able to access your iTunes Movie and TV Show is completely stupid you should be able to access these directly from a networked drive from the Apple TV.

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