Where's my I-Tunes library?
April 24, 2009 8:34 AM Subscribe
Help me rescue my wife's I-Tunes library! Details inside ...
A couple of months ago, my wife's old computer died, so I pulled the heard drive and transferred our personal data over to our laptop. My wife's I-Tunes library was too big to fit on the laptop hard drive, so I copied it to the external hard drive that we usually keep plugged in to the laptop.
This morning, my wife was syncing her ipod and suddenly realized that her library was not displaying in I-Tunes.
Relevant facts:
1) Her ipod seems to still have some, but not all of her library on it.
2) I thought I-Tunes was set to keep the entire library on the external drive, but looking at it now, I see that only the original songs from the old computer (about 83 GB) are sitting on the external drive, while the library database and the recent additions to the library (about 3GB) are sitting on the laptop C:\ drive.
3) In the I-Tunes folder on the C:\ drive is a 3MB file titled "I-Tunes Library (Damaged)" last modified around 8:00 this morning. There is also a new 30KB "I-Tunes Library" modified around 10:30 this morning.
4) My wife sometimes unplugs the external hard drive when using the laptop in different places in the apartment. This morning at 8:00 she had the laptop on the couch (unplugged from the external drive), and it's possible she did something with I-Tunes at that time (downloaded a podcast or something).
5) We're running Windows XP.
My wife is absolutely obsessed with her ipod and uses it all the time. Please tell me it's possible to fix the library so that she can have access to both her old material (currently sitting on the external drive) and the last couple of months additions (currently sitting on the C:\ drive). Bonus points for telling me how to fix the setup in the future so that the entire library is sitting in one place and this sort of problem can be avoided in the future.
Thanks in advance!
A couple of months ago, my wife's old computer died, so I pulled the heard drive and transferred our personal data over to our laptop. My wife's I-Tunes library was too big to fit on the laptop hard drive, so I copied it to the external hard drive that we usually keep plugged in to the laptop.
This morning, my wife was syncing her ipod and suddenly realized that her library was not displaying in I-Tunes.
Relevant facts:
1) Her ipod seems to still have some, but not all of her library on it.
2) I thought I-Tunes was set to keep the entire library on the external drive, but looking at it now, I see that only the original songs from the old computer (about 83 GB) are sitting on the external drive, while the library database and the recent additions to the library (about 3GB) are sitting on the laptop C:\ drive.
3) In the I-Tunes folder on the C:\ drive is a 3MB file titled "I-Tunes Library (Damaged)" last modified around 8:00 this morning. There is also a new 30KB "I-Tunes Library" modified around 10:30 this morning.
4) My wife sometimes unplugs the external hard drive when using the laptop in different places in the apartment. This morning at 8:00 she had the laptop on the couch (unplugged from the external drive), and it's possible she did something with I-Tunes at that time (downloaded a podcast or something).
5) We're running Windows XP.
My wife is absolutely obsessed with her ipod and uses it all the time. Please tell me it's possible to fix the library so that she can have access to both her old material (currently sitting on the external drive) and the last couple of months additions (currently sitting on the C:\ drive). Bonus points for telling me how to fix the setup in the future so that the entire library is sitting in one place and this sort of problem can be avoided in the future.
Thanks in advance!
Response by poster: Unfortunately, the XML file was modified around the same time as the new library database file, and appears to be missing most of the original content.
The most recent library backup (assuming you mean the database file in the "Previous Libraries) folder is a bit over a week old, which means it wouldn't include the audiobook my wife just paid for and downloaded today. If I restore from last week's library, can I recover that audiobook?
I was wondering if I could just copy the folders & songs from the C:\ drive (the recent additions) back to the external hard drive and then re-import everything from that drive. Would that screw up the DRM on her recent purchases?
posted by tdismukes at 9:48 AM on April 24, 2009
The most recent library backup (assuming you mean the database file in the "Previous Libraries) folder is a bit over a week old, which means it wouldn't include the audiobook my wife just paid for and downloaded today. If I restore from last week's library, can I recover that audiobook?
I was wondering if I could just copy the folders & songs from the C:\ drive (the recent additions) back to the external hard drive and then re-import everything from that drive. Would that screw up the DRM on her recent purchases?
posted by tdismukes at 9:48 AM on April 24, 2009
tdismukes: To the best of my knowledge (I don't buy DRMed content), you can just import the files. I accidentally copied some DRMed stuff from a friend, and when I tried to play it, iTunes asked me for his password to authorize my computer. Since I presume you know your own iTunes password, this should be doable.
posted by themel at 2:09 PM on April 24, 2009
posted by themel at 2:09 PM on April 24, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
You can try to import the old iTunes library XML file, though my girlfriend claims that this was imperfect (missed some manually grouped compilations, and maybe a couple of album covers).
I ususally prefer to shut down iTunes and just overwrite the original library with the backup, though I've taken to making backups of the entire iTunes folder.
What caught me recently is that the iTunes folder seems to have moved to the "My Music" folder from its original location with 8.1.
posted by themel at 8:51 AM on April 24, 2009