One of the scariest things in my life happened to me these last few days. In the process of trying to sync my iPod Mini (the oldest in the collection), my entire library disappeared. And I don’t just mean just from iTunes but they were somehow deleted from my hard drive and not even in the trash. Yup – GONE!! I talked to someone in support at Apple for about 30 minutes to try to figure out if they got moved or hidden or what but after searching and discussing with higher level techs, she told me all the music was gone and explained to me how I could at least get back the music that was purchased from iTunes.
We’re not quite sure what happened except that when I tried to sync the Mini (first time in a few weeks), I got an error message that said something about disk space on the iPod not working correctly (can’t remember verbage). I’ve had an iPod spin out on my after about 2 or 3 years of regular usage so I figured that was what was going on and tried to restore the device a few different ways to see if that would help and it didn’t so I restarted the computer and went on my way doing other things. Sunday, when I tried to sync my iPhone, iTunes opened with no music in it so I thought that was odd but whatever…when the library didn’t open in the few ways I knew to try, I just reopened all the music on my hard drive back into iTunes. I have about 1300+ songs (that doesn’t include videos or podcasts) so I knew it would take a little while, especially since it needed to get all the cover art information from the web but I didn’t think it would take ALL DAY! No matter, at the end of the day I closed all the applications and shut it down (or so I thought).
This morning, after my “run” and about an hour of playing in the yard (I’m getting rid of the bushes under the front window – details for another post), I cleaned up and started up the iBook but it just woke it up, with a message telling me that it couldn’t log out because iTunes didn’t close properly. Okay…I saw that everything was closed so I shut the computer down, did a few things on “The Internet” with the Dell and went out to work. Tonight, when I came home and started up the iBook and iTunes, it was empty again! 😦 And there was a message about the iTunes Library being damaged so it would have to start a new library for me (again!!). Okay, fine. I went to try to see if there was an old library I could open (no luck) then went to start the process of getting all the old music on the hard drive (external) back on iTunes again…and I found that folder COMPLETELY EMPTY!!! No kidding…empty like a teacher’s bank account a week before the end of the month. Oh geez! That’s my lively hood. So, I called Apple, they walked me through a few things and as I said earlier, no luck. It is GONE.
“Do you have your library backed up?” she asked. “Not for a while and I have no idea where those disks are,” I answered. You see, I’ve not been the best at labeling disks when I burn them if they’re back ups or something similar. And my home office is a WRECK and I’m surprised when I can find anything in there. But, luckily, I had backed up my entire library in mid-May and the DVDs were sitting right on top so most everything is recovered. *Whew* I just have to figure out what I’ve purchased since then but between that music being on my “big” iPod the iTunes Store does make that easy so I should get those back, too.
Point of all this? Back up things that are important to you. Technology can fail you periodically, even if you know what you’re doing with it. That is all.
Love you, mean it!
~C
Benford's Musings 
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