Some time in the last week, the one machine that I haven’t backed up recently, my old Windows 2000 box that more or less just runs iTunes, decided that corrupting my iTunes library sounded like a lot of fun. Backing the machine up hasn’t been a priority because the music itself is backed up locally (and soon to S3) and has virtually nothing else of consequence on it that isn’t already backed up (it just runs iTunes, remember). Regrettably, I hadn’t considered the iTunes library itself.
The last snapshot I have of said library is from June, just prior to my transition out to Maine for the summer. I never used the ratings seriously, and I’m not terribly concerned with the playcount and so on, but I’m really hoping I don’t lose all the CD playlists I’ve created between now and June. Some were really good – I swear.
Unfortunately, it seems like that’s what going to happen. I tried loading the corrupted library according to the instructions here and iTunes refused to recognize it. Worse, I can’t even view the *.itl file itself, as it won’t open in a text editor – so it’s not like the library export where you could recreate it by hand in a worst case scenario as it’s just an XML file. One odd thing: even after refusing to load the library, iTunes still had several thousand tracks listed; just incorrect metadata (added date and so on) and no playlists whatsoever.
The couple of folks I’ve asked the question to so far have expressed sympathy for my plight, but had little in the way of answers. What of you, O Great and Wise Lazyweb? I turn my lonely eyes to you.
matt m says:
January 10, 2007 at 10:19 pm
When I changed the drive letter of the network share where I keep my mp3s, I just renamed the .itl file, started up iTunes and then picked File…Import and pulled in the “iTunes Music Library.xml” file that was living in the same directory as the .itl. Playlists survived. (note- i did a search and replace on the xml file to change the drive mappings while itunes was closed, but that doesn’t really apply to your case)
This is with the latest iTunes and WinXP.
The little bugger is takes forever determining gapless playback information on my 17000 tunes. It takes ages to do that to a network drive, even though it’s on a gigabit switch to the server. I couldn’t get it to complete on my laptop over wifi- I had to plug it in.
Nearly as annoying is that the ipod itself kept taking the same drive letter as my network share, which is why I had to change the drive mapping.
James Governor says:
January 11, 2007 at 5:09 am
i am pretty sure Jerome ran into that bug a couple of times – his library would suddently disappear. problem is he is on vacation to brazil for a month. if only he had blogged it… he had to reset one file i believe… it was a somewhat straightforward fix once he worked it out. but not being an itunes head i didnt pay full attention.
sogrady says:
January 13, 2007 at 12:11 pm
matt m: tried this, and unfortunately my playlists seem not to have survived. no idea why. i’ve done the manual drive letter replace dance before, though, and that worked fine.
James: i may be a unique case here, because i’ve tried pretty much everything suggested and nothing’s worked yet. most unfortunate.
Andrew says:
March 20, 2008 at 10:23 pm
After an ages of hunting down the solution to this problem I found it here: http://hifiblog.com/past/2006/05/11/howto-move-your-itunes-music-while-preserving-library-data-when-you-dont-let-itunes-manage-your-music-library/
I think the article on the above link will fix the issue(s) mentioned above.
All except for one that is. I had the same problem above trying to open the .itl file. Notepad couldn’t do it because it was too large I guess? My computer kept locking up. I ended up going to download.com and grabbing “Boxer.exe” (a text editor). I dont’ think it matters which text editor you get, as long as you’re using something more powerful than Notepad (assuming you have a really large .itl file like I do). Anyways, after getting a better text editor (i dind’ thave to buy it or anything) I was able to follow the instructions on the link above and all appears to be well in the universe again.