Removed Music by iTunes ??

[Taiyo]

Am using the new Mac Pro desktop and the latest El Capitan with iTunes 12.3.2.25 and discovered three days ago that a folder i have been putting recorded music, from an online site, into for the past 5 years, organized by year, month, etc, is now empty except for the index. Five years of music gone! This music was NOT in iTunes in any manner nor did i intend it to be as it needed much editing. How could that have happened? Using the title from the index i searched the iTunes library but it does not appear to be there ... where would i look for this music? How do i keep this from happening in the future as i continue to record music? All help appreciated.

[kirkmc]

I don't see how iTunes could have removed it, if you say it wasn't in iTunes. No idea what happened, but it's yet another reminder that you should have backups of everything on your computer.

[Taiyo]

I don't see how iTunes could have removed it, if you say it wasn't in iTunes. No idea what happened, but it's yet another reminder that you should have backups of everything on your computer.

I agree but it is the simplest answer to missing music. iTunes moves albums and pieces of albums that are in iTunes all the time, so, although the missing music is not in iTunes, it is on the same HD, hence my assumption. I have no explanation how over 80 albums collected over six years went missing. And as the backup is a clone copy, those folders are also empty. Sigh, i'd hoped you could shed some light on this problem with hints of where to look for missing music ... neither spotlight nor HD search yield results ... sniff, i think the music is gone.

[kirkmc]

I've had individual tracks disappear from my iTunes library, and from the media folder, but never anything that's not in the iTunes library. iTunes really doesn't have access to them, unless you added them, at some point, without iTunes copying them to its iTunes Media folder.

 

Have you run any disk repair software? It could be that you have disk corruption.

[Taiyo]

Humm, disc corruption ... 'tis a new computer, only two months old, still-corruption happens. Thanks for your help Kirk, i'll let you know if i ever locate the missing music.

[Otto Nikolaus]

I've had individual tracks disappear from my iTunes library, and from the media folder, but never anything that's not in the iTunes library. iTunes really doesn't have access to them, unless you added them, at some point, without iTunes copying them to its iTunes Media folder.

 

Have you run any disk repair software? It could be that you have disk corruption.

I agree with Kirk. If the music was never in iTunes, then how would iTunes be able to delete it? Where were these files? If they were on the Mac Pro's boot drive then every time you run the computer, more of the files will be overwritten and you will never get them back.

 

Do you really have no backups of files going back 5 years? Where were they before you got the Mac Pro?