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Help! Urgent! Accidentally deleted all movies!

T

TheSeagull

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 13, 2010
57
0
Hi,
I just lapsed and in trying to delete one movie through iTunes I accidentally removed all my movies :( There's about $100 worth on there and I really don't want to see them gone, I have ssh enabled on my Apple TV is there anyway to get them back? The speed of the deletion makes me hope that they aren't fully deleted, I don't have the movies on my iMac you see.
 
Did you check your trash? You also might check your iTunes folder's Movies folder. Normally it is at something like:

<your home folder>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies/

You may have just removed them from your list but not deleted the actual files.
 
SilentPanda said:
Did you check your trash? You also might check your iTunes folder's Movies folder. Normally it is at something like:

<your home folder>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies/

You may have just removed them from your list but not deleted the actual files.
Click to expand...

Yeah, check the trash. When you delete stuff from iTunes it will just put the files in the trash, unless you tell it not to when that dialog box pops up. So unless you emptied the trash, your files should still be there.
 
I deliberately deleted the files from my iMac and emptied the trash, it's the Apple TV they were accidentally deleted from when it synced. :( Is there a trash in the Apple TV?
 
TheSeagull said:
I deliberately deleted the files from my iMac and emptied the trash, it's the Apple TV they were accidentally deleted from when it synced. :( Is there a trash in the Apple TV?
Click to expand...

Well, if you deleted the originals but kept them on the ATV, then synced the ATV, those files are lost. You might be able to try some magic hackery, I suppose, but it probably won't be easy.

Why did you deliberately delete files you wanted to keep?
 
spice weasel said:
Well, if you deleted the originals but kept them on the ATV, then synced the ATV, those files are lost. You might be able to try some magic hackery, I suppose, but it probably won't be easy.

Why did you deliberately delete files you wanted to keep?
Click to expand...

I wanted them on my Apple TV but not on my iMac. I wanted the iMac's hard drive to be free and that's why I bought the Apple TV. I've e-mailed iTunes support anyway, they've been nice in the past anyway and refunded Close Encounters when I complained about the quality.
 
TheSeagull said:
I wanted them on my Apple TV but not on my iMac. I wanted the iMac's hard drive to be free and that's why I bought the Apple TV.
Click to expand...

Then you bought the Apple TV for the wrong reason because that's not how it's designed to work.
 
TheSeagull said:
:confused:
It's like an iPod Video that connects to your TV but you can stream if you want to isn't it?
Click to expand...

That's pretty much it, but you forgot the part where if you sync your iPod and the content on it is gone from the syncing computer it's removed from the iPod as well.

That's exactly what happened with your AppleTV.
 
FileSalvage recovered MOST — not all — of my lost music files when I did something similar. It's $90, though, so if you have $100 worth of movies… it may not be worth it.

http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1

(I am not affiliated with whatever company makes FileSalvage, by the way.)

I suppose you've learned this lesson now, but: get an extra hard drive and set it up as a Time Machine backup. TODAY.
 
Geez...there are more than a few people out there trying to use their ATV as storage for their movies while deleting files from iTunes. A MAJOR problem just waiting to happen...as the OP has found out.


I was surprised to see another poster doing this within the last few days, but I guess it's more widespread than I thought. :confused:

Why, oh why aren't people using a backup external?
 
gmcalpin said:
I suppose you've learned this lesson now, but: get an extra hard drive and set it up as a Time Machine backup. TODAY.
Click to expand...

Actually not going to help in some of these situations as the folks doing this have chosen to store these movies on the ATV to free-up space on their MacBooks...etc. the only solution for them would be to host iTunes from an external...probably attached to the USB port of AEBS....keeps the MB from being constantlt attached to an external.
 
I'm not trying to be mean here, but it should be pretty clear that this is not how you are supposed to use your Apple TV. You are given the choice to either SYNC or STREAM your content. Both of those imply that the original copy should remain on your main computer.

In case there are others out there contemplating "freeing up some space on their Mac" by trying to use their ATV as a storage device, DON'T!!! Like one of the other posters alluded to, there have been at least two people posting to these forums in the past two days with similar problems from doing so.

The general rule of thumb is that if you want to keep a file, you should, you know, keep it.
 
mstrze said:
Actually not going to help in some of these situations as the folks doing this have chosen to store these movies on the ATV to free-up space on their MacBooks...etc.
Click to expand...

What? If the OP had a Time Machine backup he/she would have been able to restore the deleted movies immediately. Any movie you’re adding to the Apple TV you would have had to copy to your computer first, which Time Machine would have backed up.

mstrze said:
the only solution for them would be to host iTunes from an external...probably attached to the USB port of AEBS....keeps the MB from being constantlt attached to an external.
Click to expand...

That’s another unsupported method, and not recommended because it’s 1) not reliable (particularly if you’re doing over it Wi-fi only) and 2) you’re transferring twice the amount of data across your network to complete one task (External drive to AirPort to Mac, Mac to AirPort to Apple TV).

If you’re going to do that — at least store your iTunes library file locally on your Mac.

spice weasel said:
I'm not trying to be mean here, but it should be pretty clear that this is not how you are supposed to use your Apple TV. You are given the choice to either SYNC or STREAM your content. Both of those imply that the original copy should remain on your main computer.
Click to expand...

I don’t get it either. Nowhere in the Apple TV’s setup or support documentation does it even mention doing anything like what the OP did. It’s not like iTunes says, “STORE” your movie content on the Apple TV. “SYNC” and “STREAM” are fairly self-explanatory. And what happens if your Apple TV drive dies?

It’s an iPod for your TV folks, so treat it like one.
 
jaw04005 said:
What? If the OP had a Time Machine backup he/she would have been able to restore the deleted movies immediately. Any movie you’re adding to the Apple TV you would have had to copy to your computer first, which Time Machine would have backed up.
Click to expand...

Agreed. You are indeed correct that the movie will have originally been on the internal and therefore would be on the backup.:D

I suggested the alternative (via wireless hosting on AEBS) based on my incorrect thinking that this was the poster who had a Macbook (remember there have been multiples recently doing this same thing). Since TheSeagull has an iMac, I do see no reason why the iTunes library couldn't be hosted from an external attached either via FW or USB.

But for God's sake...don't buy only one drive and run both TM and host your iTunes library from it. One drive for Time Machine, the other for hosting iTunes. Always, Always ALWAYS have a backup!!!
 
what i dont get is why apple did away with the manual managing. when i got my 2g ipod I used to rip cds drop em on the ipod and delete em. Every ipod I got id turn sync off and just do it like that. the few times ive messed with music on my iphone I had to create playlists and everything else. lot of hd space wasted to mirror everything.
 
I made this same mistake recently and after loosing tons of content I finally implemented a full fledged NAS system for backing up all of my computers and having the space to store my itunes content...

I'm not trying to be mean here, but it should be pretty clear that this is not how you are supposed to use your Apple TV. You are given the choice to either SYNC or STREAM your content. Both of those imply that the original copy should remain on your main computer.
Click to expand...

It happened to me like this: I was completely out of space on my macbook and every time I opened iTunes it would start to attempt to copy hundreds of Movies and TvShows FROM my AppleTV TO my MacBook: resulting in out of disk space errors, sluggish performance and additionally bringing my WiFi-G network to a complete stall for any other purpose. I even tried to connect an external drive and let it copy there, a week later and it was still copying... (Yes, I know using an ethernet connection would have been somewhat faster but the ethernet port on my MB had died).

POINT IS: People that use their AppleTvs to directly download content on their TV, do tend to see the device as holding the original copy; thus your use of the phrasing "remain on your main computer" is flawed. Yes, yes, we should all back up and I learned that the hard way, but Apple should really allow you re-download anything that doesn't show up in your library, you have already paid for it, why can't you download another copy in case of loss?

Furthermore: I don't remember the AppleTV HAVING to be sync'd with iTunes to function... In fact I was even thinking about buying my completely computer illiterate father an ATV so he could download movies whenever he wanted.

Just my 2C for why people can, and will inevitably do this...
 
TheSeagull said:
Hi,
I just lapsed and in trying to delete one movie through iTunes I accidentally removed all my movies :( There's about $100 worth on there and I really don't want to see them gone, I have ssh enabled on my Apple TV is there anyway to get them back? The speed of the deletion makes me hope that they aren't fully deleted, I don't have the movies on my iMac you see.
Click to expand...
Do you happen to be using either local (TimeMachine) or cloud based backup... or ideally both? Time Capsule supports deep versioning, so you should be able to get your files restored.

For cloud based backup, I know that Mozy supports 30 days of versioning, and crashplan supports unlimited versioning.

If you are not using something like above... I strongly recommend that you set this up going forward.

/Jim
 
If you go into iTunes, and uncheck the box: "Copy files ........", iTunes will store your files where ever you want it to and will create a link back to these files. I do it all the time. I store my music on my MBP while storing videos, tv shows, etc... on an external drive. I can stream or copy them directly if I choose.
 

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The kind iTunes music store staff allowed me to redownload all of my movies :) I'm just trying to recover my ripped DVDs now rather than ripping them all again. Yes I know I should backup but I don't have an external with that much space, I'm now going to get a 1TB external though. Does anyone know why Apple doesn't allow just manual drag and drop with Apple TV like you can for an iPod? I hope for that in a future update...
 
Does anyone know what happens to content that is purchased on the Apple TV and which is available for purchase ONLY on the Apple TV (there are literally thousands of HD movies that fall into this category -- they can only be purchased from the Apple TV and can only be viewed on the Apple TV)? If iTunes allows you to sync these movies back to your computer then what prevents a user from viewing these on their Mac/PC after the purchase (do you get an error message when you try to play them on the computer)? However, if iTunes does NOT allow you to sync these types of files (for DRM reasons) then how can you possibly back up these movies (since they would only exist on the Apple TV)?
 
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