Here’s what happened - I keep my iTunes music on an external hard drive, which I connect to our laptop when I want to sync my iPod. Last night I downloaded new podcasts into iTunes, forgetting that the hard drive wasn’t connected to the computer. I don’t remember if I connected the drive, and then synched my iPod, or vice versa, but either way my library got messed up. iTunes could “find” the new podcasts in the library, but not everything else. I did a little diddling around with the library, consolidating it, and various other little things, but it still didn’t seem to be working well.
So, out of frustration more than anything else (I know, it was late, I was tired, and I shouldn’t have been mucking about without a clear idea of what I was doing), I deleted all of the files in the “iTunes” folder on the local hard drive. I relaunched iTunes with the hard drive connected, went to “Add folder to library”, and selected the “iTunes Music” folder on the external hard drive. This successfully brought back all of my music, podcasts, etc. back into my iTunes library, and all seemed right with the world.
Except…my playlists were gone. Every one of them. They are still on my iPod, since I haven’t synched it since the library reconstruction, but I can’t find any sign of them anywhere on my computer or the external hard drive. I assume that they were contained within one of those files I deleted last night (which should still be in the recycle bin), but I haven’t been able to determine which one.
Anyone know where they might be hiding, and how I might be able to get them back?
I think the file you’re looking for is called iTunes Library.itl. It should be in that iTunes folder you trashed. To get the playlists back, quit iTunes, then replace the new iTunes Library.itl file with the original one from the trash. Then start up iTunes and you’ll see if my advice hopefully didn’t make things worse.
zbuzz is right. You need to restore the iTunes Library.itl folder. It is supposed to sit alongside the iTunes Music folder. Another tip is having iTunes use an existing library. Hold down the Control key when starting iTunes and you will be prompted for the location of the library folder.
ETA: You should also restore the other files that were in the iTunes directory. Some of them hold album art and other metadata.
Thanks for the advice. I’ll give it a shot tomorrow and see what happens.
Cleophus, I didn’t do an exhaustive look, but my album art and such seems to be intact. I did notice that after my “restoration” that the columns on disply were back to the defaults, so I suspect that is more of the metadata that I lost.
Hell, worst case scenario is that it gets no worse than it is right now. First thing I do though, if my playlists re-appear, is I’m exporting them somewhere where they’ll sit relatively safely.
I restored the “old” iTunes folder and files that I had previously deleted. My playlists came back, and iTunes looked like normal. However, when I would click on virtually any song (with a couple of exceptions), iTunes would say that it couldn’t locate the song. I went into the “preferences”, made sure that it was pointed to the external HD for music storage, shut down iTunes, and re-started. Everything seems to be fine now.
I’m not sure precisely what happened, but I’m not going to question it. Everything seems to work now. Thanks for the help.