Is Vista eating my music?

Got a weird one.

I've recently started changing all the titles of my songs in Itunes. Along the way I binged a little at Amazon's mp3 store. So I got back to editing today and decided to listen to some tracks I'd downloaded on the first. The first two are there but the next....say 20 plus are not.

When I download a track I move it over to my desktop. I then make an edits to it. I then back it up to an external. Then I drag to my My Music folder. From there I drag it to Itunes. It's worked with no problems for thousands of songs.

I did a key word search in Itunes, the external folder and My Music and they don't show up. I'd already tried scrolling through manually.

I tried a search through the START MENU and was referred to a shortcut. I click and a song will play but when I follow the shortcut it takes me to my MY MUSIC folder but the song is nowhere to be found.

I'm totally baffled right now. Any help would be awesome.

 

Launch itunes, then Edit and Preferences.

Go to the advanced tab and look under "general" to see where its pointed to your music folder location

 

C:\Users\Slappy san\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music

 

Copy that into 'Run', and see if there is any music in that folder. And what is the size of the Itunes Music folder ?

 

No music....just podcasts.

 

What is the size of that folder ?? (iTunes Music)

 

7.63gb
,,,,,,

 

Does the size of the folder relate to the no. of songs you had in that folder ?
(Or is it less, that what it actually should be ?)

If so, check 'show hidden files and folders', and uncheck 'hide protected system files', in 'Folder Options' > 'View' tab.

 

Not even close. I have over 23gigs of audio alone.

 

gobble gobble.

 

Download Recuva and scan the drive containing the iTunes folder. If the files were deleted, they should show up.

(But you mentioned, they still play in iTunes ?!)

 

No the last bunch of tracks that I downloaded and edited are MIA. My previous music is ok.

I think it's a Vista issue as opposed to an Itunes one.

 

This similat to what is happening to my friend's external HDD, she is using Mac and her files started going missing. Have you tried checking the condition of your harddisk? It may be related to that... I am using Vista and my music never suddenly disappears...

 

Hopefully you didn't just make shortcuts instead of moving/copying the file from place to place, and then delete the original
That's one reason I refuse to download music - that and the fact that nothing beats bringing home a new cd and popping it in for the first listen, reading the covernotes as I go.

 

That's just it. It's not just one thing. The music dissapeared from an external, the notebook and Itunes.

 

I didn't do that. I can ask Amazon to make the music available and redownload if necessary. I just want to make sure the music doesn't just disappear again.

I don't miss physical cds. All I did lately was bring the cd home, rip it and toss the cd in a closet. So few cds have more than 4 or 5 tracks worth having anyway. It's a waste of money and space.

 

iTunes has a long history of disappearing music files. This problem is certainly not due to vista, but due to some bugs in iTunes.
You should be able to recover your music by running a system restore (MAC users have been able to recover their music files using Time Machine Backup), or try consolidating your iTunes playlist.
You could also try recreating the iTunes library or open up the library files, and see if they give any info regarding the destination of the music files.

(Also try a system search, including hidden; system and non-indexed files)

 

It's not Itunes.

 

I'm not sure I'm convinced of that yet either. iTunes has a history of funny behavior, and I'm not a fan of it. Also, while I've never bought & downloaded music online I have plenty of ripped music and I've never had it disappear (I do not use iTunes).

 

I am rebuilding my index. Hopefully this will do some good.