iTunes Deleted 99% of my music and all playlists.

[Conorworld]

OK. I am not very technical but I know I did nothing wrong. I turned on my computer today and had my iPhone 4S plugged in to the computer's USB. When I went to iTunes 99% of all my music was gone, ALL my playlists were gone, all my movies, folders such as Top 25 played songs, Purchased folder etc were gone.

Now for a moment I thought all my music was gone off the computer but looking at how much space I had left on my computer was the first confirmation that the music was there and then I checked the iTunes folder in my Music and it was all there.

I have no idea what happened. I did nothing to do to the computer but I had a suspicion that I may have a virus when I found two iTunes related files in my Trash that I never put in there and never knew about before. Their names are:
iTunes Library Genius . itdb
iTunes Library Extras .itdb

I was wondering if anyone knows what happened and how do I recover my files and playlists. I had everything sorted and now I don't have it. I downloaded a significant amount the past three weeks and forgot to back up for a while.

HELP!

Stats:
Macbook Pro 17" OS X 10.6.8
2.2 GHz Intel Core i7

 

[Conorworld]

Might I add, while my phone was synching, all my apps were deleted too.

 

[Consultant]

iTunes did NOT delete anything.

Did you had a time machine backup?

Apple can help you better, since you have iPhone 4S, which is under warranty. Reach them at www.apple.com/support

 

[Conorworld]

I hadn't backed up in a few weeks as I was busy and traveling.

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Now it is saying my Time machine disk can't be found

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Now it is saying my Time Machine Disc does not exist

 

[GGJstudios]

I did nothing to do to the computer but I had a suspicion that I may have a virus

You don't have a virus. Macs are not immune to malware, but no true viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any since it was released 10 years ago. You cannot infect your Mac simply by visiting a website, unzipping a file, opening an email attachment or joining a network. The only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which cannot infect your Mac unless you actively install them, and they can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install. Also, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion have anti-malware protection built in, further reducing the need for 3rd party antivirus apps.

Mac Virus/Malware FAQ​

 

[Fishrrman]

"I hadn't backed up in a few weeks as I was busy and traveling.
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Now it is saying my Time machine disk can't be found
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Now it is saying my Time Machine Disc does not exist"

So much for Time Machine as a reliable backup scheme, eh?

There are better ways to back up and I'd like to introduce you to one.

It looks like you already have a "backup drive", that is, an external hard drive of some sort.

What you NEED is different software. Here's just what you need:
http://www.bombich.com

It's called CarbonCopyCloner and it's FREE.

What CCC will do is create a BOOTABLE BACKUP of your internal drive (or any other drive or group of folders/files) onto an external.

Once the backup is done, you can periodically update it, so that your backup will always be a "clone" of your internal drive (or at least identical to it the _last time_ you backed up).

And it's bootable, and in "plain old finder format". That means you can just plug in the backup (even if you don't boot for it), and it will mount on the desktop and all your files will be in front of you to see -- and copy over whatever you need.

And if you have a problem with your main drive -- such as you try to boot up and the computer won't boot (possible problem with hard drive) -- you just plug in your cloned backup and boot from that, and get going again in a matter of minutes.

The only downside with CCC is that you have to remember to run it (I understand it has automatic "scheduling" but have never used that myself). But once you do that, you are vastly "better protected" against disasters (such as the one you're having NOW) than you are with Time Machine. You see how much TM is "helping you" right now.....

 

[GGJstudios]

What you NEED is different software. Here's just what you need:
http://www.bombich.com

It's called CarbonCopyCloner and it's FREE.

I completely agree.

The only downside with CCC is that you have to remember to run it (I understand it has automatic "scheduling" but have never used that myself)

You can use a calendar schedule or, if you don't always have your external drive attached, have it automatically offer to backup whenever you attach the external drive.