Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iTunes 10 deleted my library. How do I get it back (I have time machine)

F

felixen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
881
113
Hey,

I just updated my iTunes but it appears it deleted my library. This sucks because I have spent HOURS upon HOURS sorting it, renaming crooked song titles, finding covers and all that stuff. I used time machine to back up my computer like 5 days ago, but I can't figure out how to use it. I wish I could just select that given day (when I made my last backup) and make it turn everything back to what it was back then.

How do I do this exactly? I don't care at all if I have to go back to the old iTunes (obviously they will fix this eventually!) - I just want it to look like it did a few days ago.

Please help!

Thanks
 
Baby Mac

Baby Mac

macrumors regular
Jul 28, 2010
178
0
Kentucky
I will take a stab at this. I would think that your changes would have been made to the files themselves. Try dragging and dropping a folder with media into the new Itunes library and see what happens.
 
F

felixen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
881
113
Alright I'll try when I get back home. But I guess I will have to select most album covers again. I have a lot of albums that iTunes cannot find the cover for so I did it myself. Isn't it possible to just restore my whole computer to a few days ago with time machine? Its also a pain that I've lost my playlists
 
F

felixen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
881
113
well it only saved the information I had typed in (album name for instance) on some files. I really want to get my old stuff back. I don't care at all if I use iTunes 9 or 10 to be honest. Can anyone please help me out? Like I said I should have whatever I need since I took a time machine backup a few days ago.

Thanks!
 
F

felixen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
881
113
Thanks guys. Great stuff, great stuff..

if I open Time Machine, go to Music folder and locate my iTunes folder, does that folder then contain EVERYTHING I had in my library prior to this awesome glitch? If so I wanna restore the iTunes folder and drag it into iTunes hoping that will work. If that doesn't work I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do. It'll be hours upon hours of work down the sink
 
F

felixen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
881
113
old-wiz said:
Excellent reason for having both a clone (CCC or SuperDuper) AND Time Machine. With a clone you can just copy it back.
Click to expand...

What is that exactly? Software or hardware?

Thanks for the Timemachine 101!

As for why I think it deleted my library, well, I figured it out. I was kinda slow on this one I guess, but I have some stressful days :)

See I installed iTunes 10, opened it to check the changes but I noticed I had no content at all in there. Then I tried dragging an album from my Music folder into iTunes to see if it had saved my changes to it (album name was incorrect originally) to see that it was only saved on some of the tracks.

THEN a few days ago I was thinking how stupid can I be, located the iTunes folder and dragged the whole thing into iTunes. Only thing that was different was that some albums werent in a "group" if you will. Like if I have 20 Nas songs from various mixtapes and such, I will always edit the album name to "Nas" to keep them together on one album. But now they appear as 20 albums (I can see that in cover flow cause there are 20 pics of the same Nas image I use as cover), but all you gotta do is mark them, right click, info and select to save them as one group/album.

So its all good now :) I did google right away when it happened and I saw other people having trouble with iTunes 10 too
 
O

old-wiz

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2008
8,331
228
West Suburban Boston Ma
To clone a drive means to make a bootable copy. CCC and SuperDuper make a bootable clone of your boot disk on an external HD. I'm very fond of this as it makes it super easy to switch back if you get a bad update or do something really stupid. I have an external HD that contains a SuperDuper clone. Before running software update or installing new software I refresh the clone HD then run the update. If the install or update produces a mess or doesn't work I can boot from the clone and recover a great deal faster than you could with either re-install or time machine restore.
 
M

mangrove

macrumors 6502
Jul 10, 2010
440
0
FL, USA
felixen said:
What is that exactly? Software or hardware?

Thanks for the Timemachine 101!

As for why I think it deleted my library, well, I figured it out. I was kinda slow on this one I guess, but I have some stressful days :)

See I installed iTunes 10, opened it to check the changes but I noticed I had no content at all in there. Then I tried dragging an album from my Music folder into iTunes to see if it had saved my changes to it (album name was incorrect originally) to see that it was only saved on some of the tracks.

THEN a few days ago I was thinking how stupid can I be, located the iTunes folder and dragged the whole thing into iTunes. Only thing that was different was that some albums werent in a "group" if you will. Like if I have 20 Nas songs from various mixtapes and such, I will always edit the album name to "Nas" to keep them together on one album. But now they appear as 20 albums (I can see that in cover flow cause there are 20 pics of the same Nas image I use as cover), but all you gotta do is mark them, right click, info and select to save them as one group/album.

So its all good now :) I did google right away when it happened and I saw other people having trouble with iTunes 10 too
Click to expand...

Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper are software downloads. I use CCC-it is free.

Agree with the clone backup advice. I have an iTunes library of 120GB ripped from CD's I have owned. So for me, I also keep off site clones + backups to be safe.

The bootable backup can be very important. Recommend you think about this for the future by just buying a small drive. I bought 40GB SSD's for this which were from OWC and they are fast as heck. I liked them so much I now use them as my normal drive #1 (in addition to having an identical backup) and use either platter drives or other SSD's for the #2 drive in my 2009 and 2010 client minis as opposed to the server mini which already comes with 2 drives. Just thought I'd mention this in case you did not know those differences.
 
billib

billib

macrumors member
Apr 23, 2009
93
0
USA
Apples own "Disc Utility" located in your
Utilities folder also makes Bootable clones.
You may or may not find CCC or SD easier
to use than Disc Utility.
 
F

felixen

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2009
881
113
that sounds really cool actually. I will definitely look into that. But since it clones everything, doesn't that mean I should have an external HD with the same amount of space as my Mac?
 
billib

billib

macrumors member
Apr 23, 2009
93
0
USA
felixen said:
that sounds really cool actually. I will definitely look into that. But since it clones everything, doesn't that mean I should have an external HD with the same amount of space as my Mac?
Click to expand...
You would need it to have a tiny bit more space as your minimum.
Many people get a very large external HD and partition it. One
partition for your Time Machine and maybe several more partitions
for several more clones. I had a problem a while back and my oldest
clone which was clone #4 was the one I ended up using. My advice is
get the biggest and fastest HD you can afford.
 
M

mangrove

macrumors 6502
Jul 10, 2010
440
0
FL, USA
billib said:
You would need it to have a tiny bit more space as your minimum.
Many people get a very large external HD and partition it. One
partition for your Time Machine and maybe several more partitions
for several more clones. I had a problem a while back and my oldest
clone which was clone #4 was the one I ended up using. My advice is
get the biggest and fastest HD you can afford.
Click to expand...

Agree with that wholeheartedly. Just got some bare Seagate Momentus 7200 500GB drives for around $50 each. An enclosure is then needed, but I also use another method lately.

I got a Voyager Q from OWC in FW800. You just insert any drive (2.5 or 3.5) into the top of it and go do your thing. Then when finished just pull it out and label/date it. It makes all this backup sooooo easy, and due to this, I tend to backup more regularly than I did before getting it, which has to be a good thing.
 
billib

billib

macrumors member
Apr 23, 2009
93
0
USA
A docking station is a wonderful idea.
Thermaltake makes several Docks that
are typically less expensive than OWC's
well made Docks. I picked up a referb
from Thermaltake for less than $20.00.
The version I bought is USB only but
I use it for quick, down and dirty things.
Get on their mailing list. If your intention
is to boot from your Dock on a regular
basis then the OWC is the way to go.
 
M

mangrove

macrumors 6502
Jul 10, 2010
440
0
FL, USA
billib said:
A docking station is a wonderful idea.
Thermaltake makes several Docks that
are typically less expensive than OWC's
well made Docks. I picked up a referb
from Thermaltake for less than $20.00.
The version I bought is USB only but
I use it for quick, down and dirty things.
Get on their mailing list. If your intention
is to boot from your Dock on a regular
basis then the OWC is the way to go.
Click to expand...

Agree. I wanted the fastest so I opted for the OWC Q model which has FW800. I seem to remember their USB2 model was around $28, so $20 is a good deal. They now even offer a USB3 model, but time will tell when that's widely available.
 
D

diogeron

macrumors newbie
Sep 18, 2010
1
0
"upgrade" to iTunes deletes entire music library

The same thing happened to me when I made the obvious mistake of "upgrading" to iTunes 10. Not only that, when I plugged in my iPod, it deleted all the songs from my iPod. If this is an "upgrade", then I'd hate to see what happens when somebody is out to undermine the product.

QUOTE=felixen;11000021]Hey,

I just updated my iTunes but it appears it deleted my library. This sucks because I have spent HOURS upon HOURS sorting it, renaming crooked song titles, finding covers and all that stuff. I used time machine to back up my computer like 5 days ago, but I can't figure out how to use it. I wish I could just select that given day (when I made my last backup) and make it turn everything back to what it was back then.

How do I do this exactly? I don't care at all if I have to go back to the old iTunes (obviously they will fix this eventually!) - I just want it to look like it did a few days ago.

Please help!

Thanks[/QUOTE]
 
S

sajjadalishah

macrumors newbie
Sep 20, 2011
2
0
Restore Old iTunes Library


Close iTunes
Navigate to %User%/Music/iTunes/
Rename iTunes Library.itl to iTunes LibraryOLD.itl
Navigate to %User%/Music/iTunes/Previous iTunes Libraries/
Copy newest iTunes Library file (e.g. iTunes Library 2011-11-01.itl)
Paste copied file into %User%/Music/iTunes/ (where you renamed file in step 3)
Rename file you just copied (e.g. iTunes Library 2011-11-01.itl) to iTunes Library.itl
Restart iTunes
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom