my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

» Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE   » Community   » Film-Yak   » iTunes -- Missing Files! (Page 1)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2

Author Topic: iTunes -- Missing Files! Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-18-2004 08:49 PM                     Mac OS X 10.3.2 iTunes 4.2 Suddenly thousands of songs (from over 550 artists) have gone missing from my hard drive. The folders are all there but the actual files are gone. Fortunately, nearly everything was backed-up but I'd really like to know what caused this so that I can avoid it in the future. Has this happened to anyone else?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 02-18-2004 09:07 PM                     Have you burned any of the AAC-format files to CD? Doesn't iTunes limit where the files can be played and how many times you can burn them to CD before they "expire"?  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 02-18-2004 09:09 PM                        Sounds like iTunes is policing your system. It determines what is pirated and what isn't and gets rid of the pirated stuff. OK maybe (hopefully) not. I have noticed that unless you set it up otherwise, iTunes really sucks. If you are listening to a song and press the DELETE key, it will not only delete the song from the playlist, but from the drive as well. The way iTunes manages its files is horrendous. Did you do a hard drive search for ".mp3" and see what comes up? 10.3 is a really goofy OS and it can do odd things like that as well.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-18-2004 09:31 PM                     You can only burn the same songs/playlists to CD 10 times but, AFAIK, if you rearrange the playlists to make new ones (even if they are all the same songs in a different order) you can burn them another 10 times. I have heard about some problems where iTune's LIBRARY files get corrupted or lost but I have never heard of an instance where the MP3 or AAC, et. al. files get deleted. (Unless you accidentally delte them yourself... I don't think you did that, though.) The library file is different than the actual music files. It only helps iTunes keep track of which songs are on your computer and the playlists you have made. If iTunes tells you it can't find your music, the library file may be corrupted. Trash it and iTunes will create a new one the next time it runs. You'll have to tell the program where all your music files are and then you'll have to rebuild your playlists from scratch. The most common instances where iTunes loses your music is when the files reside on a different volume/partition than the iTunes App. It can also occur when you reinstall/update the program. Since iTunes now lets you make MP3 CDs as well as audio CDs backing up your files SHOULD be a lot easier. If you have an iPod you can also recover songs back to your HD from the iPod... PROVIDED you downloaded the songs to the iPod from the same computer in the first place.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-18-2004 09:39 PM                     I use iPods so I don't burn CD's too much anymore. Besides, I have yet to make a CD with music I downloaded from iTunes. As far as that goes, I think the restriction is that you can burn 10 CDs of an entire album. Beyond that, you have to rearrange the songs. Something like that. In any event, it doesn't apply to my situation. Interesting idea about the "iTunes Police" but I ripped these songs off my own CDs. Also, these songs were still present in the iTunes display. Only the actual files had disappeared. I suspect it is a problem with iTunes but here's something to think about: Assuming there is a problem with the hard drive, what is the likelihood of hundreds of folders being emptied without the folders themselves disappearing, too?  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 02-18-2004 09:44 PM                        Repair permissions. Run fsck -y Run your daily, weekly and monthly scripts. Replace the damaged johnson rod.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-18-2004 10:04 PM                     My "johnson rod" is damaged? I can replace it? How cool! For real? Very important fact that I forgot to mention: I discovered a folder called "lost+found" which contained a handful of iTunes files (in numbered folders). Not even close to what was missing, tho. That "lost+found" folder makes me believe this is an iTunes "glitch gone wild."  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-18-2004 11:20 PM                     Oh, yeah! One thing I forgot to mention. If you want to recover songs to your computer from your iPod, don't forget! If you have your iPod/System Prefs set to "Auto-Sync" your iPod and computer every time you plug it in to the FW port, things can be added or deleted before you get the chance to recover the music! Turn that feature off before you start the recovery operation!  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-18-2004 11:21 PM                     The hard drive has now crashed. (There is a backup.) What could have caused my main drive to crash?  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-19-2004 01:42 AM                     What tells you that it's a HD crash and not a system conflict of some kind? Have you tried booting up in Safe Mode? (Hold the SHIFT key down upon cold boot.) It will force a file system check and will boot up with minimum system and allow you to troubleshoot the problem. Check out this page at Apple.com for info on troubleshooting startup issues. If that doesn't solve the problem you may need to use Disk Warrior to check/repair the hard drive. Apple's Disk Utility only performs basic checks and repairs. If that doesn't solve the problem, an erase/re-install operation is in order. If that doesn't work, your HD may have, indeed, crashed. In that case, you'll probably have to send the computer back to the Mother Ship unless it's a problem you can handle yourself. PS: When it comes to disk diagnostic & repair utilities, stay away from Norton! It's well known to fuck up more computers than it repairs. TechTool Pro is another option but public opinion leans toward DiskWarrior.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-19-2004 02:07 AM                        Geez, after slogging through the above posts, I'll just stick to my good olde CD player and/or Victrola.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Brown Film Handler Posts: 91 From: Newcastle, NSW, Australia Registered: Jan 2000 posted 02-19-2004 06:55 AM                     A couple of good sources for all things i-tunes and i-pod... iPodlounge iPod Hacks Sounds like your database file is corrupted. You should be able to reimport all the music if you can find the original DB file and trash it. Steve Brown  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-19-2004 07:45 AM                     It's not a database issue because the files really did disappear off the HD. I'm pretty sure that the drive crashed because it made funny mechanical sounds. Click, Click, Drrrrr, Click, Click, Drrrr...... It started making those sounds after I had restored the missing files. iTunes was in the middle of importing & analyzing the files when the crash occurred. I quit iTunes and was about to try again when I got the first of two error messages. The first one 'dimmed' all my open windows and told me to reboot the computer, which I did. Then I got the second message saying that I had inserted a drive that could not be read! That was the external FireWire drive. The system drive is okay. The drive with the iTunes files is an external drive. Come to think of it, I had to replace the iTunes drive last year; this is my 2nd HD for storing the MP3s and AACs; it's only about 6 months old. Could the FireWire case be to blame? It was common to both drives.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 02-19-2004 08:32 AM                        quote: The first one 'dimmed' all my open windows and told me to reboot the computer, which I did. That is a "Captain Panic" or "Colonel Panic". This is when the captain or colonel which is at the core of your system screws up. Usually it is an external peripheral issue, though Microsoft's Entourage e-mail program also bothers the captain/colonel. Maybe your external hard drive is screwed, or at least the firewire port. I've seen external firewire drives destroy ports before. I avoid external firewire drives like the plague that can be.  |  IP: Logged Mike Olpin Chop Chop! Posts: 1852 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Jan 2002 posted 02-19-2004 12:58 PM                     I had a Pyro-1394 drive kit that destroyed one of the ports on my iMac. When it did this it also destroyed the bridge, and the drive itself. Anyway, If your 6-month-old external drive came from a reputable company, It should be under warenty.  |  IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1  2

Printer-friendly view of this topic

Hop To: Select a Forum: Category: Operations -------------------- Digital Cinema Forum Film Handlers' Forum Large Format Forum Ground Level Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets Category: Community -------------------- Film-Yak Film Handlers' Movie Reviews The Afterlife Bob Maar's Joke-A-Thon Category: Classified -------------------- Equipment and Supplies Wanted/For Sale Help Wanted/Seeking Employment Category: System -------------------- Software Beta Testing Forum

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.