I have NO idea what just happened. I was adding some files to iTunes, everything went well. I closed iTunes. Came back to it not 10 minutes later and when I opened it up, all my playlists were gone. Most of the music had a "cloud" next to it. Every column was in a different place. I'm at a loss as to what to do now. 5500 songs, 45 playlists, gone.
Any help is GREATLY appreciated.
JamesD1957 wrote:
But I am surprised that there were no responses.
It can be a matter of timing. If your thread isn't at the top of the heap when someone who has a solution is looking it can quickly get buried. Here is the link I'd have given if I'd seen your post earlier: Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash. See the advice therein on making a backup.
tt2
I still don't know why the file was damaged, but I was able to use a backup from 2 weeks ago. It was the library, and it rebuilt the library from that time. Any thing I had done since was lost, but that was much better than rebuilding from scratch. I had to figure this out on my own, and I guess I'm all the better for it. But I am surprised that there were no responses. I know it's not a "paid" forum, but it would seem others have had this problem.
I just checked my iTunes folder, and in () it has the word damaged. Lovely. I backed up my PC to an external hard drive about a month ago, so there should HOPEFULLY be something there that I can use. I checked previous libraries, and the most recent was 09/2017. Weird since I'm constantly using iTunes.
Is there a way to restore from a device? I have everything on an ipod and an ipad. Very afraid to hook one of them up at this point.
By the way, I'm referring to the iTunes library on my PC, not my iPad. I have no idea why this is showing up in ipad. And I also have no clue about how to restore from the external hard drive. As you can tell, I'm extremely frustrated and helpless in this.
Yep, timing is everything. And thanks for your response, as you are the one, in my opinion, who is the most helpful on these boards. I did learn a bit by going through it on my own, such as the fact that the "library" is mostly just the framework, and doesn't contain the actual files. I thought it was an "all in one". And I also learned that it isn't that large, in my case maybe 3mb. Easily backed up on a flash drive which stays handy at all times. I do back up my hard drives about once a month, but I'm probably going to increase the frequency of that.
In all, this was a very scary eye opener. I still don't know what caused the damage to the library file. But instead of having to do weeks of work to get it back, it only took a couple of evenings.
Thanks for all the help that you give EVERYONE on these forums!
Jim
You're welcome. 🙂
tt2
playlists all disappeared / everything is different
