iTunes dumped my library

I've had this problem before, but managed to reinstall the 20,000-plus songs from my iPod. However, it was stolen from me since the last time this happened. How can I do this now?

damn homie

Well, it's all on an external hard drive, but I really don't want to have to go through right-clicking and doing "Play With > iTunes" 20,000 times.

I'm pretty sure you can add a whole folder to the library through itunes itself. I'd try that.

A new folder of all the stuff, you mean?

I don't know if you can do that straight from the external drive, but presumably you can at least transfer the contents of the drive to a folder on your hard drive.

How to do?

OK, I think I've got it.

just set your library preferences to your external hard drive, make sure "copy to library when adding" isn't checked, then drag your primary folder holding your library onto the "music" tab in the sidebar of itunes when it is launched and it will add everything. it will take a while though.

OK, thanks much. I've been trying with "Add folder to library," but after it copies for a while, iTunes shuts down with nothing preserved.

It went down again, damn it. Is there anything I should do? Just shut down all other programs except iTunes? Will that help?

that is weird, do you have an older computer or not very much memory?

2003 computer, could prolly use more memory. Or less songs.

Drag the folder containing all yr tunes onto the "library" header on the left side of iTunes, as akm said. Make sure "copy into library" is unchecked too. I mass transfer files into iTunes all the time this way; granted it's on Mac, tho.

I've done this now. I've noticed I have another folder elsewhere that says "iTunes Library (Damaged)." Does this have the art I'd already chosen and play counts and such? Should I figure out a way to sub this one in instead?

The problem here is that the metadata that ties songs to artwork to playcounts to whatever is damaged, and there's no easy way (that I know of, at least) to reconstruct this metadata. The best thing now is to be glad you have yr tunes back and do regular backups of yr entire library when iTunes is not running.

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/

BOOKMARK THIS URL IF YOU USE ITUNES AND HAVE AT LEAST FIVE DIGITS OF SONGS, and you are using WINDOWS.

This page saved my life when I had to move my entire (manually managed) mp3 library from one computer to another.

Hopefully, this will help you, Rickey... but only if you have Windows.

In brief though, iTunes always checks a local "ITL" file which is a binary version of the listings of all your music, where the files are, the playlists, and all that. BUT, if it can't read the ITL file, it will default to a parallel XML file along the side that it updates along with the ITL. The XML file, I think called "iTunes Music Library.xml" or something like that. Anyway, to migrate, you have to purposely corrupt your ITL file by deleting it and making it a zero byte file. This forces iTunes upon launch to recreate the ITL file based on the XML file. The trick is to do a big search/replace on the path to all your songs in the XML before you relaunch iTunes.

disclaimer: Not responsible for anyone who tries this and fucks it up, etc.

iTunes is such a piece of fiddly memory-grubbing fucking shit. I simply do NOT understand why people use it. Is it really the only game in town if you have an iPod?? Nobody's come up with anything better?

ILM answers me this, can I use MonkeyMedia to sync my playlists and purchased media with my iPod? Or is that an Apple/iTunes proprietary thing? If the former, I'm switching as soon as possible.

Don't ever purchase anything containing DRM, problem solved.

Linux has plenty of iPod thingoes that work very well so Win & Mac should too.

(not with DRM content though obv)

Throw away all your Pink Floyd from middle school, and replace with Joy Division tunes.

Then it should work fine.

(Sorry, just kidding. Good luck.)

iTunes is such a piece of fiddly memory-grubbing fucking shit.

Currently, my iTunes RSIZE is 35M. I have 5G in this computer. "Memory-grubbing", I dunno. I mean, welcome to the 21st century.

There are 14 processes with larger RSIZEs, the largest of which by far are two instances of vmware-vmx.

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/314/picture1nl6.png

Not everyone has 5 gigs of memory. Your top 3 processes use more memory than my laptop has total.

AppleMobileDeviceHelper.exe: 7Mb
AppleMobileDeviceService.exe: 1.3Mb
Ipodservice.exe: 1.2Mb
iTunes.exe: 47Mb
Ituneshelper.exe: 3Mb

Page/swap usage is ~150Mb

In summary: bfw

Each, I should say.

Java swallows about 2x that in live and swap just to run a to do app. For perspective.