Missing iTunes Library

[Neil McAdam]

Hello

I am writing this hoping anyone knows a way to recover a missing or damaged iTunes library.

I have used iTunes for many years and am a serious music lover like may of you out there and over the years have been able to acquire a collection of about 80Gb along with many playlists, one that is about 10 yrs in the making.

I have a slightly older MacBook running version 10.6.8 and have iTunes 11.4 (which is saying is the latest version, however in my quest for answers I have seen that the current version is 12.2?), and so the other night I had to restart my computer and when I re opened iTunes I noticed that my entire music collection was missing except for the music purchased from the iTunes store (which is all greyed out and requiring me to download them again). All my playlists are gone as well as the column/view layout has been reset to a very generic setting. Another weird thing as well is, now when I open iTunes and only see the music purchased from iTunes, at the top of the side bar next to music, movies and TV shows it has a little cloud symbol. Is this something to do with iCloud, Apple music or iTunes Match? I'm not up to speed in that department.

 

I checked the iTunes folder in my computer and all the music seems to be in their folders, so is it that iTunes isn't able to read the library file? In the iTunes folder there is a file that says iTunes library (Damaged), however there is also files that say the following.....

iTunes Library.itl

iTunes Library.xml

iTunes Music Library.xml

iTunes Library extras.itbd

iTunes Library Genius.itbd

 

Unfortunately the most recent library back up was in 2014 (lesson learnt), so I would really prefer to fix the problem and recover the old library I had going.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope someone is able to help.

 

Cheers

Neil

[Otto Nikolaus]

Hello

I am writing this hoping anyone knows a way to recover a missing or damaged iTunes library.

I have used iTunes for many years and am a serious music lover like may of you out there and over the years have been able to acquire a collection of about 80Gb along with many playlists, one that is about 10 yrs in the making.

I have a slightly older MacBook running version 10.6.8 and have iTunes 11.4 (which is saying is the latest version, however in my quest for answers I have seen that the current version is 12.2?), and so the other night I had to restart my computer and when I re opened iTunes I noticed that my entire music collection was missing except for the music purchased from the iTunes store (which is all greyed out and requiring me to download them again). All my playlists are gone as well as the column/view layout has been reset to a very generic setting. Another weird thing as well is, now when I open iTunes and only see the music purchased from iTunes, at the top of the side bar next to music, movies and TV shows it has a little cloud symbol. Is this something to do with iCloud, Apple music or iTunes Match? I'm not up to speed in that department.

 

I checked the iTunes folder in my computer and all the music seems to be in their folders, so is it that iTunes isn't able to read the library file? In the iTunes folder there is a file that says iTunes library (Damaged), however there is also files that say the following.....

iTunes Library.itl

iTunes Library.xml

iTunes Music Library.xml

iTunes Library extras.itbd

iTunes Library Genius.itbd

 

Unfortunately the most recent library back up was in 2014 (lesson learnt), so I would really prefer to fix the problem and recover the old library I had going.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope someone is able to help.

 

Cheers

Neil

You have not lost your music, although iTunes has clearly lost its links to it. It looks like it couldn't read the library file so it created a new, empty, one. A good start would be to get the timestamps (Created, Modified, and Last opened) for the files you've listed. Do you also have Album Artwork, iTunes Media (or possibly iTunes Music), and Previous iTunes Libraries folders in the iTunes folder? What are the timestamps for the files in the Previous folder?

 

Do you really have no backups? Your HDD could fail at any time, you might drop the MacBook, and it might get stolen if you take it out anywhere.