Please be careful – iTunes 7.0 might delete files and folders in your music folder, even if you have switched off automatic management! This turns out to be really nasty if you have set the music folder to something like E: or C: !! As I did on my PC. Au revoir, my precious downloads … 
Want to see a demo? I have recorded a Youtube.com video of iTunes in Action (deleting files).
The previous week was quite exciting. It started with great news from the Apple keynote, like the new iPod nano (which I had just bought the same night). The new Nano requires iTunes 7, so I bit the bullet and updated my PC from iTunes 6 to version 7.0. Everything went fine. At least it seemed so…
It was during the weekend when I realized that a lot of my downloaded files oddly had vanished from my drive E. At first I thought, ok, maybe I accidentally deleted them by my own. Fine, no problem, so I downloaded the files again. Waited until download was over. Double-Checked by opening the files. Everything was fine. Guess what, the next day all of them were gone again.
As it turned out, the culprit was iTunes 7. This f*g version has a nasty bug (among lots of other issues!). By using FileMon from SysInternals to log all file operations on drive E:, I found that iTunes, just after startup, scans the folder which is set as “Music Folder” in the preferences. That’s ok so far. But here’s what not: The setting for automatic management was switched off, yet iTunes 7 didn’t care. It ignores this setting and does some strange kind of sync, which might result in files and folders getting deleted.
Back in the times of iTunes 5, I had the music folder set to “E:”. I switched off the automatic management, so the music folder (drive E:) was simply ignored. iTunes 6 behaved as expected and I just forgot about these settings. Along comes iTunes 7 which has changed this behavior. iTunes 7 always syncs the music folder (E: for me) in a very strange way: all new files and subfolders that were or will be added to this folder after the iTunes 7 installation just get deleted when iTunes starts. It’s kind of scary.
I have filed a bug report to Apple. But this behavior is so nasty and data loss might be huge. So I decided to report in my blog as well. God (Apple) help us all!
Daniel said
Why not just use iTunes 7 on your Mac? Most bugs are only present on the Windows XP version.
Kevin Tracy said
HOLY CRAP! The same thing just happened to me! Tell me what you did (if anything) to get your music back.
I noticed that the files appear to be gone, but I haven’t gotten the space back on my hard drive.
maba said
Kevin, I could restore only some files by using a tool named R-Studio, which is commercial, but I think there also exists some freeware tools for “undeleting”. For me, the files and folders were removed, i.e. space was released and the sectors would end up eventually getting overwritten by new allocations.
Mikkel said
Daniel: It does the same thing for me on my Mac. I’ve copied the files back from my backup drive 4-5 times now! I hope it’s a bug that gets fixed fast, as otherwise iTunes is completely useless to me.
Nehemiah said
I just got my 2000t and all of my songs are skipping in iTunes, and I cant figure out why. If someone could help me out and tell me how to fix this I would really appreciate it because its driving me crazy. Thanks for the replys.
Mike said
Happened to me about 3 hours ago lost almost all my TV Shows, my Music, Pictures, and Movies from my Powerbook on OS X 10.4.8 and the latest iTunes version.
Sent an email to Apple no response so far
Stu said
After the third time I had to use an undelete client to restore my files I started to get suspicions that itunes had something to do with it.
This is getting increasingly frustrating, but thank you for the article and the confirmation of what I suspected.
geno said
this fucking itunes7.0 did it to me as well. i lost about 30 gigs of music. you can get it back by using undelete about $30 or winundelete $50. i pissed!!! i noticed that all files have been renamed. are they going to be renamed back after i restore them?
nigel said
please keep this thread going! ive lost a few gigs of stuff because of this i-tunes bug. are there any freeware devices i can use to restore them? (recomendations) i a little afaid that using a defrag tool may just wipe the files as they are possibly corrupted. i have the files on an external drive does that make a difference?
Paps said
Same here! Just lost 50 gigs of tunes! F**K Itunues, hated it anyway.. Will probably not buy an ipod next time!
Pablo said
Same here, with a twist. iTunes doesn’t actually delete the file, it leaves the file where it should be, but the file now weighs in at Zero kb. It took all my iTMS downloads and a slew of additional music, in all, about 30GB.
P*ssed is an understatement.
Brian said
Same thing happened to me. I installed iTunes 7 for the first time today and lost 6 gigs of mp3s on my second hard drive, but it didn’t delete any of the mp3s or .wav music files on my primary hard drive. Does anyone have a solution to this?
Adriano said
It has just happened to me… I downloaded Undelete Plus (free) right away from http://www.download.com and successfully recovered all files… From now on I am pointing iTunes to monitor an empty folder and managing everything manually.
Nathan said
Same here as Pablo – any fixes yet? LOST RARE S***! Running OSX…
asia said
what if you accidentally delete itunes when you try to download the new version, and you cant get to the music you once had, and every time i try to download the new itunes it doesn’t wrok it always stops at 99% and my computer freezes.
Jenny said
It would have been really nice to find this a few days ago. I just lost everything. Over 5,000 songs. I had all of them saved to E:
Miles VdE said
Just Discovered this behaviour yesterday, Hopefully just after my backup !!!
Using OSX and Itunes 7.02
I’ll install the latest version 7.1x and hope it has been fixed !
I am a Apple Fan since Apple II, but this is really SHEAT Steve !!!
Annoyed said
It happened to me, I wouldn’t be so annoyed if I didn’t lose a few albums I ripped from a scratched cd’s bought in Europe years ago. There is little chance of getting it back now.
*hitting head against brick wall*
Jason said
This might be a little low tech, but I figured I’d wait until they fix it and then upload all the songs from my ipod. I was lucky enough not to have connected them before I noticed the problem
Florence said
Has the problem been solved in iTunes 7.3.2? I think this is just happening to my computer. My library was saved on a second hard drive G. Please let me know!
Thanks. F
Dee said
yep same thing has happened to me just bought the new video ipod and tada thought it was great only had it a week, and somehow my received files, my music files, and my picture files have deleted and empty! tried restore prgrammes no joy! think i’m just gonna give my ipod back, really want my photo’s back! this is on windows xp if any of you guys know please let me know
Andria said
I lost over 600 songs..i know that is not alot, but one day just opened iTunes and EVERYTHING was gone..completely empty. Is it a sure thing to buy undelete software? will this get my library back to how it was before?
wayne said
Hey, i am not alone, great . each time i have downloaded new ichunes software i lose randomnly selected albums from my music folder. its freaking annoying to me as i know its not my stupidity that causes this, any suggestions?
Jenny said
fj;aklfja;!!! This just happened to me and I’m pissed. Granted I should have backed up my music but it deleted a ton of stuff from my ipod.
caitlin said
just happened to me last night… 5000 songs magically disappeared, but my hard drive still shows that the space is being used by 22 gb of music plus the other stuff i had. i’m massively heartbroken and really shocked that apple, in all its self-promotion and commercials trying to prove it’s better than PCs, has not fixed this problem by itunes version 7.5. steve jobs owes me $4950.
sam said
this still hasn’t been fixed? it’s been an effing year already.
mattywix said
does anyone have a solution to this? Same happens if itunes is closed and I use the windows file explorer and click on a file to listen to it – itunes takes the file and removes it …file vanishes from disk (I searched!).
memetech said
Boom. Christmas day. All gone. MF
magnj said
I lost 12 CD’s I ripped to FLAC on my H:/ drive, which I at one point, pointed iTunes towards to see if it would play FLAC. But ALSO A whole shitload of pictures which I was playing in a sideshow earlier.
Unfortunately I tried to use windows restore and undelete is not working
Steele said
just happened to me,SOO PISSEDI collected these songs for the new ipod classic i was going to buy!downloading undelete now*fingers crossed*
peter said
Does anyone have a solution to this yet? This fucking piece of shit deleted a bunch of files including all my pictures.
Nick said
Oh sh*t! I thought my 8 year old deleted a few songs. But I just checked today and noticed about 8000 songs gone. Do you know how long it takes to rip 8000 songs from my CDs into iTunes? About 4 months of late nights and weekends and lots of patience. This isn’t counting $500 worth of purchased songs.
I am so pissed! Apple better have a fix for this pronto.
Yama said
I’ve always hated iTunes…which is why i never got it. Winamp is now compatible with iPods, I hear…
Withnail said
Same thing happened to us – over 1,000 songs gone, including 104 purchased from iTunes store. No explanation – files missing from hard drive. How can this software do this? It’s illegal. If Sony sold TVs which got up in the middle of the night and threw all your DVDs out the window they’d be bust by now.
Colin McGookin said
Just updated to iTunes7 on prompt of software update and on opening it find it has lost my entire music collection including hundreds of £ of downloads, this is outrageous, especially since looking at above comments Apple must have known for weeks that this was happening.
Stu Platt said
And me, gutted, had a load of playlists set up that took ages.
Still got my files but gotta start all over again.
They really need to fix this – quick !
Marcus Howell said
iTunes 7.6.0.2.9? Still has the same f*ing problem. For me it’s a majority (but still a random assortment) of recently-ripped mp3s. And it’s every time I restart the computer.
Winamp? Sounding better and better to me right now.
iTunes Silently Deleting Songs - graysky said
[...] listed, but with an “!” next to it, and the actual file is gone. Others on the web have witnessed similar problems with iTunes 7, often times with far worse consequences. My set up is not exotic; all the the files [...]
Rhys said
FAGGIT ITUNES DELETED SOME SONGS…
I HAD 1000 SONGS AND THE NEXT SECOND I HAD 965?
BUT ITS TOO FUCKIGN HARD TO FIND WHICH ONES EVEN DELETED -.-’
JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCKKKK!!!
SO MAD.
Enwezor said
This has been happening to me for ages. Songs just seems to disappear all the time. Luckily, I’ve still got all my CDs and I’m planning to build a Home Media PC upon which I will NOT use iTunes. I hate that piece of s*** software!!!!!
liklibo said
Does it do that to iTunes 7.3 too? And when it deletes your file, does it still play the song in iTunes? Because I’m not sure if this is the problem with me. I am also battling a spyware issue at the moment and Windows recently “deleted some corrupted files” from my hard drive. So when I logged onto my computer I looked through my music folder, and all my files R-Z are GONE, wtf! Odd thing is, iTunes is still playing the song even though it’s supposedly gone from my disk. (I tried the search feature, and I also looked at the file info on iTunes, and it showed me which folder the file should be in, but it’s not in there.)
So do you think it was iTunes that deleted my files?
liklibo said
(cont.)
So I don’t even know whether or not it was iTunes that “deleted” my files.. god this is so trippy.. it sucks to have spyware/adware at the same time.
Luckily I backed up my music files..
How To Back Up Your Personal Computer « LifeSpy with a G9 said
[...] install that deletes data files. (Apple once accidentally released a version of iTunes that could delete all files on a hard [...]
mike said
just updated to the latest version of iTunes after I was prompted to do so upon opening the shit ass software, so of course I did – who doesn’t want bug fixes and the latest and greatest version, right?
wrong. same story as the other poor bastards who lost their music they spent months importing from CDs – i figure at 30 hours a week for 2 months @ a modest $20/hr., those iTunes fuckers owe me $4800. i lost 55 GB of music just by updating to the new version – does anyone test this shit or do they just roll it out and see what happens? WTF??!!?? such bullshit. spent 1-1/2 hrs. on the phone with some dumbass call center person and my music library is still fucked. tried a system restore several times, still fucked. how do they get away with this shit? someone owes us an apology, reimbursement for our lost time, and a swift kick in the ass.
Karlie said
All my songs were deleted off of my i-pod nano when i was charging it. I have no idaea how that happened. Firts my pictures were delted now my songs. Does anyone no how to fix that?
Karlie said
O.K. If you had the same trouble that i just had…this is what you should do to get them back on your i-pod nano. first you right click on you i-pod (ex: Karlies I-pod) second you find I-pod options. Then your i-pod has all of its songs back on it!! i finally have my songs back!! hope it works for you!!
John Joseph Adams said
If you happened to open itunes and discover your music was gone before you synced your ipod (as I luckily did), try downloading iGadget. That’ll let you download your music off your ipod and back onto your computer. I’m just doing that now, and it seems to be working fine.
Hot Black Magazine » How To Back Up Your Personal Computer said
[...] install that deletes data files. (Apple once accidentally released a version of iTunes that could delete all files on a hard [...]
Peter Watcyn-Jones said
Same thing happened to me last night. Suddenly 5 folders disappeared form my hard disk. Is it only windows that has this problem? Any other software you canuse with the iPod?
Joe Wilson said
Gaaah! This just happened to me also, last about 18gigs of music. At least 9 of those gigs I won’t be able to get back as a bunch of the CD’s were stolen a few years back >_<
Still no fix I take it? System Restore didn’t do jack (was a wildshot anyway)
Becky said
Oh my gosh, why hasn’t apple fixed this! I’ve just bought all these new songs and didn’t back them up and now they are all gone. I’m so annoyed. Surely this issue should be made known to the people of the world. It waists peoples money and apple doesn’t even care! Its so selfish! well, I’m certainly never using this version of itunes again!
HeatherH said
Wow, I’m glad to see that I’m not alone – I lost more than 1,000 songs when I accepted an iTunes update yesterday. The song titles still display in iTunes, but with the “!” next to them, and the files themselves are gone. Add to this the fact that none of my remaining library will load onto my brand-new 80GB Classic (even though it’s recognized by iTunes and seems to be syncing), and I’m seriously considering jettisoning the whole Apple line. My sanity’s not worth it!
Jennifer said
This is a bitch. 16 GB lost thanks to iTunes. Many of which I no longer have the CDs to. I’ve, along with others, have lost 100’s of dollars worth of music thanks to this “Bug” that apparently Apple failed to mention in their “Is this okay to download” statement before we all downloaded it. Who do I bitch to about this? You’d think Apple would have already fixed this by now.
Joey said
This isn’t a bug this is a feature. Only seems to be happening to AAC files and not to mp3 files. All the stuff I lost was AAC files that I got from newsgroups, anything I got from ripping my own CD’s was OK.
Kathy said
I am just coming into this fray after discovering that nearly all of my itunes stuff is gone, I think it was because I just “upgraded” to the latest version in response to the automatic message. I am not a techie, but I had probably 50 or 60 CDs worth of music and hundreds of Audible books there. What do I do? Thanks anyone who can tell me.
Tom said
And what about non-music files? I had a very important TextEdit file on my newish iMac that has completely disappeared since I upgraded to iGoons, er, iTunes 7.6. I have always liked the program, mostly, and hadn’t noticed any of these devastating shenanigans until today…Now I’ve lost almost every single music file AND, for some odd reason, this text file that had p/ws on it. I thought maybe it happened when I was in 2nd Life and the Mac ’softly and suddenly vanished away,’ ie., turned off instantly as if the power had been pulled. But now I read about iTunes 7, and I’m upset and confused!
So, what is it now…nothing? Just nothing? No explanation from Apple or way to fix or…anything? I’ll try the workaround s/w mentioned above (if it’s Apple, not PC), but I hold little hope….
JD said
It seems I’m the latest one to join this sad club of people who have lost their music on iTunes. Just like some of you have mentioned, it appears I can still play some of the songs but then some of other songs which I had on there are totally gone! I had over 11,000 songs on iTunes and it now shows I only have 2800!! We should start some kind of petition, get it signed by all who are experiencing this problem and make this public NOW! What a ripp off! I was lucky enough to notice the problem before connecting my iPod and I also have most of my music physically stored on cases, but I’m still pissed at Apple!
Robert said
Welcome me to the club! I just installed the latest iTunes on my 64-bit Windows boot (on a dual-boot) and pointed it to my iTunes library on F: drive. Woosh! A whole bunch of songs, mainly mp3 rips off of my hundreds of CDs, gone. Any way to count/see which songs are no longer available?
I’ll need to copy these back off my 80GB iPOD. yay – great being anal.
And then I’m going to copy my 5000+ songs somewhere as backup to avoid this in the future.
A class action suit or large petition sounds like a couple of good ideas. This type of idiocy costs people time AND money. Like any of us has much of either. Steve, you fucking imbicile, stop doing this shit! (that was my rant – I’d like to get him in a corner to brow beat him into submission).
B.Lo said
I just lost 20GB of music
I have never been happier!
I am about to throw my brand new macbook Pro out of the window!
FUCK ITUNES, FUCK FUCK FUCK!
brandon said
Can you run a earlier version of itunes without this happening? I just had to restore my comp to get my music back, but I still need something to manage my ipod shuffle, and I dont have itunes at all.
Jay said
WHAT THE FUCK… I JUST LOST 40 GIG OF MUSIC… HOLY FUCK!!
I downloaded Itunes 7 and then connected my ipod. It said it couldn’t read shit from the ipod and asked me to use the restore feature…
MOFOS… WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK..
MAD AS HELL..
Trustworthy said
*Sighs Heavily*
Same for me. Same for me. But it didn’t do it silently…no. It was BOLD about it.
I’m clicking on songs to play them and the next thing I know about 20 songs just delete right before my eyes. Then it starts going bezerk! Huge chunks of music-gone, gone, gone.
It took all of my songs. All of them. I tried restoring the computer. No such luck. The stupid thing gave me back the folders with nothing in them.
Who’s pissed? I’m pissed. Any solutions yet?
Matt said
Over 4,000 of my 6,200 songs, GONE. Happy birthday to me.
Fuck you Apple.
Matt said
I bought about 10 new CDs, ripped them with Itunes (installed on a new Vista laptop), and went to resynch my Ipod (for the first time since I had installed Itunes on this laptop). It says it has to wipe my Ipod and resynch to this new library. Ugh, but ok.
Only 1800 songs synched. Out of my 6190. Look at the drive where my music library resides and most of it is GONE.
Thought I had lost approximately 4300 of my 6190 song library AND random other files on my external drive, accessed over a network. Random crap; personal programming projects, all kinds of downloads, installs, patches, in completely different directories. I noticed that the drive was still showing the space as being used, so I rebooted the computer the drive was physically attached to, and voila, everything’s back.
Itunes is OFF my computer now; I hear Winamp’s got Ipod support now? Yay for winamp!
Amanda said
Yep…same thing happened to me. fucking retards.
Rockstar said
Something LIKE this has happened to me.. One day I came on to the computer, and there was NOTHING in my iTunes. Nada. Zilch. Everything was still on my iPod, and some of it still in files, from before I even had iTunes. But EVERYTHING was gone from iTunes. If anyone figures out how to fix this…
Jay said
I had posted earlier befored on April 16, 2008 @ 6:01 am (Read above). Well, guess what, it did the SAME thing to me yesterday. I lost my 40 gigs again… bottom line, i-tunes 7.0 sucks royally!
I am reverting back to itunes 6.5 today. Read this for the steps to do this. It looks like this downgrading solves all problems that came with upgrading to a f***ed up version of 7.0.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=642274&tstart=0
Hope this helps. I am not upgrading my itunes until they come with a newer version.. a$$holes!
Jay
Tom said
Just bought a new Ipod to replace one I left on the plane and some plane cleaner now has. I needed to upgrade to Itunes 7.6 according to Apple. I not only have lost my music…. Everything else is gone! I think it is still on my computer and am working with it now to try to rebuild. I think apple leaves this stuff in to screwwwwww Windows users who don’t have Macs. Not to mention Windows Vista Premium s?><#$$%^&EoUOU%$!)(!!!!!!
cj said
hey guys, same thing happening to me. just noticed it last weekend when about 7 albums i had just added to my itunes library were removed. i added them all back and thought that it was just a temp bug, yesterday my itunes library stood at 4200 songs and i got on this morning and its at 4194 songs. iTunes is randomly deleting my music and i have no idea of how to stop it… i’m using windows XP, but im gonna revert back to 6.5 today. screw iTunes and their monopoly!
JJ said
So I’ve been having this problem for quite some time now as well. Odd part is, for me anyway, it seems to only effect non-iTunes Store songs. Anything I’ve actually purchased from iTunes seems safe. All my songs from cds that I’ve imported or other MP3s that I’ve imported from cds prior to iTunes, seem to be the target of this magical delete routine inside of iTunes. Oh and I’ve ran into this in Windows, MAC, with my library on the same drive, with it on a different drive, and pretty much in a bunch of possible configurations.
It just has me wondering, is this more something that Apple did on purpose than an actual bug? That would tend to explain why it’s gone almost 2 years without being fixed. I mean, if you think about it, I could see it being a way to drive more traffic to the iTunes Store. You have an MP3 that you didn’t buy from iTunes, it ‘magically’ gets deleted, then Apple’s possible thought process is, oh you’ll just click on the convenient icon for the Store, buy it and re-download it.
I’m sure this all sounds very ‘conspiracy theory’ like, but it also has a possible ring of truth to it too, depending on your point of view. So my question is, who’s actually had this happen to *purchased* music?
Carrie said
It’s ridiculous, it’s par for the course, and it doesn’t surprise me in the least.
What I have noticed, though, is that the songs that are being deleted are the songs I’ve had on my old computer and have transferred over. Songs purchased from Itunes are still there, as are the songs I’ve ripped from CDs.
I guess the moral of the story is to make FREQUENT backups.
Andy said
Yep itunes and apple sure do suck!
It just removed all of my itunes purchases over the last 2 years – so just out of spite i went thru every purchase on my itunes account and reported a problem saying that they deleted them. I know it won’t bring my files back, get a resolution or reduce their profits but they can waste their time reading them as I have wasted mine trying to find the files. They aren’t getting any more of my money that’s for sure.
Jason said
Same problem here guys, I’m sort of comforted it’s not just me. I thought it had something to do with the Windows reinstall I did a couple of weeks ago, but thinking back it was before then. Suddenly many of the tracks in my itunes library had “!” next to them. I now find I seem to have lost 4K of the 8K tracks I had (which were always saved to external hard drive anyway)
What is most irritating is that it has done it totally randomly – all the old album folders are still there, but with either nothing in or M3U files which are useless! Also lost all the random ungrouped tracks that were just generally in My Music folder. WHat I don’t get is that when you right click on Properties, it’s still saying there are 8K files there?!?! THey MUST be there somewhere??!
Andy said
UPDATE
Full respect to itunes and in particularly Beverly of itunes store customer support. I received an email from her saying that as a ‘once only’ action she would re instate my purchases so that I could download them again. She did that on Saturday morning and it took me most of the day to do so.
Then I realised that I missed a number of my order numbers off so I wrote back and told her so – and fair play she reinstated the rest of them, I have just finished resintating 166 of my previous purchases. Some were not available and I think I’ve lost them forever but heck full marks for trying to get me back to my pre itunes removal state.
I will now use itunes again – but only with a FULL back up each and every time I download.
So if you’ve lost purchases – my advice is use the itunes reporting to tell them so and you never knwo as a one off you might just get a second chance! Good luck all
bella said
any suggestion to solve the problem???
JayarAHL said
Ok… this just happened to me and I’m surprised by the number of people reporting the same thing! It deleted all my recent purchases, including TV shows and movies. Good thing I had most of it on my iPod. I’m running Recover My Files to see if it can find my old files again. This better work!!
Stuart said
I am furious this just happened to me. I’ve avoided updating the itunes software, but finally gave in and installed version 7.6.1.9. (I don’t remember which version I previously had). A huge number of my songs have just disappeared. I am furious. Itunes has lost a customer.
Otacon said
I just updated to 7.7 And it deleted all of my top rated music completely from my hard drive. I did a search, nothing. Recovery didn’t even find the files. I don’t think they’d have been overwritten, but they certainly didn’t show up. Can’t iTunes be sued or something for stealing our money?
HATE ITUNES said
Itunes deleted all the my custom mix stuff i made, I am 1400 kms away from my computers was charging at my sisters she has the small ipod and it synced her garbage onto mine this is just Poor on Apples behalf Itunes is Sub standard Mainstream Garbage its been uninstalled and downloaded a copy of Anapod
Buggy it works sync options are off i like it lets me copy too it and off it ITUNES IS A WASTE OF SPACE
Andy Wedge said
Wow!!! I was thinking of getting I Tunes as I have a shed load of MP3’s and CD’s that are waiting to be converted. Been using (happily) Windows Media Player up till now but I thought it was about time I hit the 21st Century. Thanks for all your advice everyone. I am gonna stay in the 20th century for now.
Michael Chylinski said
Man oh man. If I say anything bad about an Apple Product here at my house I just get dirty looks and they think I am a freek! I rant and rant about all the things that are legitamtly wrong with MAC and how their stuff functions. It promises way more than it delivers.
I backed up all my iTunes files using iTunes and now I can not get thru more than 1-2 DVD’s before it just stops working. I am burining a new set now hoping it’s somehow the DVD’s I used. But I believe it’s just Apple. It is a profit source to delete files and not have them back-up. You gotta buy them again.
Tilbutski Fekker said
You know, i wished i had never touched this damn thing, from past experience i knew it was pants. I thought ‘ c’mon, surely they sorted itunes by now’, only to find 35Gb of music – some of which i played on- ‘vanished’ from my external HD. it seems though that only mp3s have gone, not any other file type….
either way, this is just criminal.
as it is i have downloaded a file recovery tool – peretologic- (at my expense) which is presently restoring some of my ‘lost’ files. i could smash that f”£$%^& ipod into a thousand small bits.
keep clear folks.
Chris said
Yup this just happened to me! 7000 songs vanished of my hardrive but the space is still being taken up!! I had purchased songs on there as well, and they also got deleted! Everything got taken off my iTunes!
People say Microsoft are bad!
Apple aint doing themselves any favours
Richard said
I just gave in to upgrading from 7.1 to version 7.7.1.11
and lost the entire contents of my C:\temp folder.
This had a lot of random personal files of limited importance,
but to take the liberty to mass-delete contents of our
hard drives, especially in my case files that have nothing
to do with iTunes is unthinkable and arrogant.
How could developers be so stupid to release a product
with a mass-deletion “feature” coded into it?
Seeing that this problem has been going on for almost
2 years and had to be well-known by Apple is so
grossly negligent. There have been many version
updates released but they have chosen to ignore
this problem.
iTunes remains a dangerous product not worth
the risk of using. I have lost all respect for Apple and
will never use iTunes again. They don’t deserve our business.
Mitch said
What makes no sense to me, despite program problems, which happens to every single programmer eventually, is that Apple has made absolutely zero effort to fix this problem.
What the hell?
That’s stupid. And bad business. As it appears above, just by adding up everyone’s amount of lost songs, on this page alone customers have lost something like ninety-six THOUSAND dollars.
I hope Apple pays every penny.
Ana said
OH my god this just happened to me.
im so pissed half the songs in my itunes got deleted!!
its so annoying now i have download them all over again!!
Scott said
This just happened to me on version 8. Lucky for me I have backups, but I’m shocked this has been a problem since 7.
Firebladeboy said
Yep, still happening in V8 on Macintosh. Unbelievable!
Darren said
Ok looks like this has been happening for a few years
Wish apple put a fucking warning when you installed itunes that your songs will probably get deleted..
this is fucked, music is my life, and it just deleted half of it.
no where on my computer, its just gone.
T said
its criminal if you consider they are making money from people who are repurchasing songs. report this to the better business bureau imo.
Rikko said
I thouhgt already Iam going to be mad or so. More or less often, I saw the ! next to the song and I never could understand that I should have delete this for real.
What I found out is, this happens more often, when I add albums to iTunes. But it deletes in a random schamatic. Songs I heard days ago, or not during the last half year. They got def. deleted fom my harddisk. And I did not do any iTuns updates so far. Iam with version 7.7
Its still hard to believe, but has Apple maybe code this into iTunes ?
Is its just a big bug?
Fu*ck, Iam not happy anymore with my iMac.
clearwafflejones said
The F**K!!??
I was just looking to listen to something.
It’s not there.
This isn’t the first time, but I sorta forgot about it.
So I go looking around at forums and found this one.
It’s the oldest, longest running, and still going.
As I’m reading, I think about listening to something else;
Something I was just reminded of.
Surprise, it’s not there.
It’s not in iTunes.
It’s not in any folder.
Sometimes, the titles are still in iTunes.
But they have that stupid, blue exclamation point to the left.
Sometimes, the titles aren’t in iTunes.
But the files are still on the hard drive.
I can’t take it anymore.
I’m using iTunes v.8 osX 10.4.11on a g4 titanium pb.
This is a sick joke.
I remember I didn’t mind using winamp back in the late ’90s.
Found a wrapping program that allows one to use winamp on mac.
But it only works if you have an intel-based mac.
WTF??
My anus isn’t that big so this is starting to hurt…
Jaymie said
I have a Mac and a PC both with version 8. I”ve copied the original cd’s and called apple to get all the protected songs I’ve lost from iTunes reinstalled fresh. It deleted about 450 songs then it goes corupt, no music, blank library. It’s even erasing songs off my iPod. I was on the phone with an Apple tech for about 50 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong. She kept telling me iTunes is incapable of erasing songs. Well it’s done it on 2 seperate computers. She kept saying it was my computers that are corupt. Ummmm how can a PC and Mac both be corupt in the same way doing the same exact thing with software that is”incapable of erasing the songs?”
Jaymie said
I saw that one of the above posters metion winamp. I downloaded it w/the iPod pluggin, hit find music and voila all my missing music is now on winamp!
If you could only see how wide my grin is. I can get rid of that F-in itunes.
roflcopter said
Serves you to buy i-crap from the i-crooks.
Get a pc, and ban from your mind words like “third party app by apple or microsoft” and stick to freeware.
Leath said
Hmmm looks like I am going back to winamp.
I knew I wasn’t losing my mind when I couldn’t find songs I know I had ripped.
WTF Apple. Seriously. 2+ years of this crap.
Harry Flashman said
I have just bought an 80 GB Ipod classic and have installed Itunes. At first I allowed it to “rename my files”. I let this run for a minute but then changed my mind and clicked cancel. Later I went to a music folder I have called “Beatles” where I have every Beatles album. Half the files were gone. Luckily they weren’t completely removed, but rather copied and renamed to a folder called “The Beatles”. This is annoying but I can live with it.
Today though I checked my music folder for some other artists and lo and behold they are gone!!! The folder is still there. The artwork still there but the files are missing. I have searched my computer to see if they have been renamed and moved somewhere else but no. After a thorough search I came up with nothing. This is bizarre. I am not sure how much I a missing yet but at least a few albums. I have now copied my entire music folder (all 42 GB) to another folder as a back-up. I am not very happy about this.
Glenn Becker said
Not sure whether this is the same problem. I had been storing music files on a 500GB external drive and all was well. But today there’s some stuff missing / not found in iTunes … when I try to look at the files by digging down in “My Computer” (am on Win XP) I get a popup saying the folder is corrupted or unreadable.
Am going to see what happens via Linux.
MADness said
OMG! I seriously hate it when my stuff disappear! All my playlist just gone and they mean a hell lot to me… Does anyone know how to restore all the missing files???
Stephanie said
Happened on my computer too. It’s like they just dissapear out of nowhere. On day the files are there, the next day there gone. I am very upset. I have to make sure that I now copy everything to a disk right after every purchase. I hope itunes version 8 is better, but I am not getting my hopes up. I hate that our world is controlled by all of these money hording companies:( Good luck to you all.
Jimmy said
Ugh. Just happened to me. It’s been going on for about 6 months. I’m running OSX on my Mac Mini, and my files are on an external drive.
Time to check out songbird.
Ragathorn said
got me to too.
Another one bites the dust
FUCKING APPLE RETARDS, WASTING MY TIME AND MY MONEY
Ari said
Hi thanks for the info, my itunes only deleted one file at a time now thousands. Thankd for sharing your experience, i was about to upgrade to 8 but now that that wont help I will revert to 6.4 as Jay said.
Good luck everyone getting your music back.
henry cooke said
i wanted to add music from my ipod to my computer, but all the music got
deleted off my ipod when i tried this…..
how do i get this music back!!
SN8P said
eerg! well, years ago i switched from WinAmp to iTunes because of the amazing Library Management and I hated the new WinAmp…
Well life means change and so I think about switching back to not loose any more music! (btw. WinAmp has many new and really fantastic features.)
…so just one more thing to say… ‘bye Apple, bye iTunes!’
lauren said
well the same thing happened to me and everything was deleted but not on my ipod thank god but how do i get them back im not plugging my ipod into the computer i dont want to loose my stuff so someone help….!
spun_ said
yap…same here. 20gb of music. Back to windows..the world should know about this
Me said
I too have had this issue with itunes. So much so that I have not used it for well over a 1 1/2 years due to this issue only. I notice some common issues, library on external hard drives, stopping processing in the middle… I do not have mine on an external hard drive, but a network drive. Of my 60,000 songs at the time that itunes said I had, realistically I only had 53,000. No one else using my systems so I could eliminate that as an issue. That is 7,000 songs. One thought that has crossed my mind was if the drive was running out of space it may delete songs? I can not recall if my drive was close to being full or not. Anyone else have any input? Also with 8.1 out now, I was wondering if anyone had the courage to test it out who has experienced this issue. Honestly, I will not be testing it out. To much to lose. Personally I have been using media monkey. Songbird still lacks the power to handle such a large library. I make due. Miss itunes, but whats the point in using a program if it deletes your files?
PIX said
Well, i’m glad i’m not alone here…
Here i was thinking Itunes 7 had the best presentation and all…
They better fix this bug because i’ve had to reset my whole libary 3 times now in a space of 2 days!
What is this?!
Flip this is annoying thanks alot APPLE!
You suck balls i lost so many songs this can’t happen again.
If they can’t fix this i’m a delete this mutha no need for this crap to be deleting my songs yo…
*sigh*
MCM said
me too…
this is quite bad.
i wonder if it is the result of a deal Apple has with the RIAA.
i used to use windows media player exclusively. i changed over to iTunes and the first iritating feature was the way iTunes renames songs. It destroyed in one fail swoop my entire music archive that i had been working on since the mid 90’s. everything was named wonderfully. one second with iTunes and it was all rearranged.
then i started noticing complete discographies missing…
as the CEO of a major music blog and news outlet, I had hundreds of gigs of music from my personal archives. they were renamed instantly. and over a period of time, iTunes deleted them.
thankfully i have all of the physical copies, but the work to put them back to the digital state i had them, i am not looking forward to.
apple fix this – NOW!
CCEber said
Wow, I thought I was completely losing it. After contacting Apple and IOGear for the external drive with no possible leads or acknowledgement, my friend found this. I lost my music almost a year ago, but then it stopped. I’m on iTunes 8 and it just happened to me again. In front of my eyes, I played a song and it suddenly disappeared from the folder. It was playing in iTunes and sure enough upon rebooting, the song can no longer be found. Another piece of music deleted forever. It’s painful to restore all these again…what’s the solution and why does Apple make this so hard?
colinrichardson said
Just updated to itunes 8.2 and not almost all of my music is gone. Like most of you above, I keep my music on an external drive (which has not been backed-up in a long time. I cannot understand why someone would create software which is so capable of being so destructive. I’m about to tyr to undelete everything now, hopefully it’ll work. I think I might try to get away from apple/iphone/itunes as soon as possible.
Tony Abdollahi said
Colin-
I have read your post regarding the affect of iTunes 8.2 on your music. I am an attorney and in the process of approaching Apple regarding consumers who have lost music on iTunes. I may be able to help obtain compensation. Please let me know if you are interested. You can reach me at 415-609-1312 or tonyabdollahi@gmail.com.
Thanks.
Tony
Gazoo8597 said
After recently purchasing an iPhone & installing iTunes, I too have lost countless music & video files on my external hard drive. I’m pissed, and it appears that there’s nothing I can really do about it. There are no solutions to recovering the lost files, no desire or requirement to compensate me for forever lost time or data… That REALLY pisses me off, but…… there’s nothing I can do about it. That just so wrong…. lol! WTF??
Tony Abdollahi said
HELP FOR CONSUMERS WHO LOST MUSIC ON ITUNES.
I am a California attorney investigating the affect of iTunes software updates on the deletion of music and other media files. You may be entitled to compensation if you lost files. Please call me 415-609-1312 to discuss your problem and see if I can help.
Tony Abdollahi said
HELP FOR CONSUMERS WHO LOST MUSIC ON ITUNES.
You can also reach me at tonyabdollahi@gmail.com.
JC said
YEP- this is annoying. And possibly illegal. I haven’t lost anything I have paid for in Itunes. However, I have lost COUNTLESS albums I have imported- which I legitimately own, through this ITUNES bug. If one wants to modernize his collection, and MOVE ON FROM USING THE COMPACT DISC, WHAT IS ONE TO DO Apple? Add to this, the default setting Apple turns on during a New installation of ITUNES to choose to “automatically import CD” when you put it in the computer, this has GOT to be illegal. Apple is, in turn, illegally removing music from my computer that I have every right to listen to through Itunes, and in turn my device. This is completely irrational, inconvenient, and annoying. I understand the importance of copy protection, however I simply can’t depend on Itunes to listen to music I own. I look at any of my ipods as devices that might have some music I might like to listen to on, however-honestly, half of the time I go looking for an artist, and it’s been deleted. Boo. Honestly, the Zune phone will be next, possibly not presenting this bug. This kind of thing makes Apple look more & more like the company they’re trying not to be. Apple is still a greedy multinational corporation, folks. They have no right to do this. (Enter Google & they’re operating system.) Fix this bug Apple. Fix this.
Donsen said
This crap happen to me too I lost 230 GB of music and only ended up with 10 GB left this piss me off!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so bad you just don’t know how long it took me to collect all that music. But what stop me from flippin out was my friend had my back up hard drive. What I learned was Apple has it if you don’t buy there music they deletes yours to buy there’s .
Jesse Nemitz said
This just happened to me on the LATEST version of itunes. I had reloaded my operating system. I imported my entire library into itnues and it worked beautifully. I was reinstalling other software while listening to music and then it stopped playing because it couldn’t find the songs. itunes had deleted over 120gb of music. I HATE FUCKING APPLE
alex watson said
this happened to me yesterday, went to use itunes every single one of my songs were’not there, started wondering what the hell happened. found all the files again copy them over, all is good then i open it up and again today and it was back to how it originally was( regarding previous playlists i’d made). it seems all is fine, for the time being
erva said
i lose my iTunes’s music everyday !!!! before itunes 7 i got 50-75£ “wasted” in itunes’s music, now it cleared me all!!!!!!
mike said
today i went to play music as i do every day after work . click on a song and it said that it couldn’t find the original file. i want to know what’s going on can anyone help!!!!
wtbleep said
I have the same problem. I run Itunes 9 but some rare files just got deleted form my drive (total 18 files). My library is on a network harddrive because it doesn’t fit on my macbook’s SSD drive.
The songs are still in my ipod so I’ll attempt to get them back of my ipod somehow.
This is making me very scared. I think I won’t start itunes again until I have a good backup of my library. I’m not really confident anymore about itunes.
“Apple, it just works.”