My computer just shut down as I had no battery power left. When I restarted, Itunes (that had been running) produced an error message, something like “your itunes library does not seem to be a proper itunes library, itunes created a backup library ituneslibrary (damaged) – I closed the window too quickly and did not quite get what it exactly was.
It seems that about 1000-2000 of my songs are gone, including all itunes store purchases, as well as all my playlists (I only have original CDs and music bought on Itunes in my library). What is the best way to restore the itunes library, everything was there before the computer shut down. I do have a back-up on time machine. Would it be easiest to restore from there, and if so how do I do it? Or is there a better way?
— Annie
It sounds like your "library" is corrupt -- that's just the file that indexes everything. Your media is all separate.
What I would do would be to simply create a new iTunes library (hold down option when starting iTunes). Then drag and drop all of your media (just your Music folder, probably) in to the iTunes window and let it import. That should give you everything back, even your purchased music.
You will probably need to re-create any playlists, though.
I also noted that all my apps are gone from itunes (I can see them in the music library in finder), but they are not in itunes. Also most of my album covers are gone, all my podcast subscriptions and all my audiobooks. I see what you say in your reply and I see how that works, but I will lose a lot, I guess?
You say I might need to recreate the playlists? Is there any other way? I really had a lot of playlists and put a lot of time and heartblood in them.
Any way to get this library back from time machine?
Thanks so much for your help, I feel so sad about loosing all this work.
I so want to get this fixed, I just tried what you suggested. This seems to copy all the media again for which there is not enough space on my hard disk. I get the message that there is not enough space and that Itunes will copy as much as possible, but this is now track 1700 of 5000 when really there should be more than 9000 tracks. I cant get it to stop, now everything is even worse.
I dont know what to do now.
Well, first, Time Machine. Yes. That should work. Just restore all the files in the user/Music/iTunes folder -- minus the iTunes Music folder (that's what holds all your music and should be OK).
Try that.
Another option might be a visit to the Apple Store genius bar with both the computer and the TM backup. They should be able to help.
Time Machine did the trick, thanks. I left the Music folder and the Apps folder alone but restored all library files from Time Machine. In the current version there was also another library file and folders in under album artwork that were not there when I did the backup and I deleted those. Now everything looks like before, including playlists.