iTunes Tragedy

[cactusfan]

here's the story, any help appreciated:

i'm using a mac, G5.
computer froze. restarted. once the desktop was up, immediately opened iTunes. only a window came up with something i don't recall exactly, but basically looked like it was searching for the library. i then saw that the external hard drive, on which all my music sits, had yet to mount, so i hit 'cancel' on the window, not wanting poor itunes to search for a library that wasn't yet there.

then itunes opened anyway, only it opened as though it was the first time ever. all factory settings back to normal, no songs, no playlists, nothing. nothing! i immediately restarted in the hopes all would be better. no luck. same deal. tried to find anything in itunes to restore things, no luck. finally went to 'add to library' to reload all 40+ gigs of music sitting in the external hard drive library, which went fine.

except there's still none of my many playlists, no song info (i.e. play count, etc), nothing at all except the songs, which as far as itunes is concerned have just been added for the first time.

so. any idea where all the playlist etc. info is stored and how i can get it back? and also: what happens when i plug my ipod back in? it's only a 30 gig ipod, so it would access a special playlist (now gone) to know how to update.

thanks for any help...

[bluecaravan521]

I think that the information is stored in a data file called iTunes Library- that might help you.  I used spotlight and I found not one but several versions of my library- so there has got to be some sort of backup system in place.

[cactusfan]

yes, i've got those files. clicking on one simply opens itunes. the other is a text file. perhaps that is where the info is... but then how to get that info into itunes?

[mattstick]

File > Import, then choose the XML file.

You could also just re-import the audio files if all else fails.

[tet]

hmm, it does sound like the iTunes Music Library file got corrupt.  this has happened to me only once, and luckily i had a backup... not sure what to recommend, other than trying to rebuild the library manually (i think you hold in Option when you open iTunes?)

[cactusfan]

i imported the library file-- which kind of worked. except that file was apparently created when i moved the library to the external hard drive about a year ago. so all the playlists that came up are from a year ago. i guess that file does not get automatically updated?

[tet]

hmm, guess not.   the library file usually remains in   (home directory)/Music/iTunes/  , so that is likely the one that is most up to date.  if you already did an import, that will likely have overwritten it.

just as a tip, i would strongly recommend updating to Leopard now and using Time Machine to keep a constant backup of your system.  my hard drive failed in my G5 last week and it saved all 220 GB of data i had on my boot drive, which was invaluable.  it's easily worth the upgrade cost as well as a new external HD.

[cactusfan]

yes, that time machine thing is clearly a good idea...

thanks for helping out, everyone. +k for all.