iTunes music disappearing

[illgiveumorality]

Just wondering how many people have watched music in their iTunes library disappear. I went to go listen to a Ravel recording I put on my computer back in January, but noticed that only 1 out of 7 songs in the album remained. They had vanished from all of my Time Machine backups as well.
I've lost hundreds of songs over the years due to whatever corruption may be going on. It seems that AAC files disappear, while MP3s corrupt and refuse to play.

Statistics: OS X.6.3, iTunes 9.1.1. Default library location.
Again, this has been happening for multiple years over multiple machines.

 

[dashpuppy]

Just wondering how many people have watched music in their iTunes library disappear. I went to go listen to a Ravel recording I put on my computer back in January, but noticed that only 1 out of 7 songs in the album remained. They had vanished from all of my Time Machine backups as well.
I've lost hundreds of songs over the years due to whatever corruption may be going on. It seems that AAC files disappear, while MP3s corrupt and refuse to play.

It's not disappearing, its being moved, you have selected itunes to sort your, have you recently did a upgrade ?

 

[entropism]

I've had this issue as well. Over 50GB of music, and eventually over 25% will either disappear, lose its tag, or the file itself will shrink to 500kb and the song will drop to around 8 seconds long. I've seen 1:08, I've seen 1 second songs.

I'm kind of anal about my music, I'm willing to put money on the fact they were ripped, tagged and saved correctly, but iTunes has wiped out my library about 4 times now.

Edit: Sorry, this is on a Windows machine. I've asked everyone I know that uses OS X, and the only time I see someone with issues, they're using iTunes on Windows.

 

[phide]

Only with WAV files. The iTunes database just isn't equipped to handle them and therefore their links frequently disappear from the database (but not from the drive). I haven't had issues with AAC or MP3, however. I use iTunes on both Windows and OS X, and while the latter is light years beyond the Windows version, I haven't had any major issues with it on Windows (apart from general sluggishness and clunkyness).

 

[Archer75]

As far as I know I don't have that problem. But with so much music some could go missing and I wouldn't know it.

 

[evilsofa]

Let's ask some basic questions:

1. Are you running the latest version of iTunes? (9.1.1 at the time of this writing.)

2. For the Windows version, go to Edit->Preferences->Advanced. Is the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" option checked? If not, turn it on. Also check to see if the iTunes Media folder location is set to a location that makes sense.

3. If you are having issues with music files getting corrupted, you may have hardware issues. Run Memtest86+ to see if you have bad RAM. Update your motherboard's BIOS. Update your motherboard's chipset drivers. Your hard drive might be failing (ask around in the Data Storage Systems forum).

4. Check for malware; download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and run a scan. If you have a crappy anti-virus software (there are too many to list here), remove it and install a decent anti-malware suite like Microsoft Security Essentials, Avira Free, or ESET NOD32.

 

[illgiveumorality]

Let's ask some basic questions:

1. Are you running the latest version of iTunes? (9.1.1 at the time of this writing.)

2. For the Windows version, go to Edit->Preferences->Advanced. Is the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" option checked? If not, turn it on. Also check to see if the iTunes Media folder location is set to a location that makes sense.

3. If you are having issues with music files getting corrupted, you may have hardware issues. Run Memtest86+ to see if you have bad RAM. Update your motherboard's BIOS. Update your motherboard's chipset drivers. Your hard drive might be failing (ask around in the Data Storage Systems forum).

4. Check for malware; download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and run a scan. If you have a crappy anti-virus software (there are too many to list here), remove it and install a decent anti-malware suite like Microsoft Security Essentials, Avira Free, or ESET NOD32.

This is on a Mac. I'll update the OP.
My music is all in the default location on my internal drive. I just don't understand how they have not only departed from my internal, but from my external time machine backup as well...

 

[book]

I had some instances of songs randomly stop being able to be played =/

 

[evilsofa]

Sorry, I got sidetracked by others posting about Windows iTunes issues. I found this article interesting, particularly the "A Word About Time Machine" section. A quote which may apply to your situation:

The most important thing to keep in mind is that Time Machine is not integrated with iTunes. This means that unlike other applications like Mail and iPhoto, you cannot restore an individual item such as a track or playlist back into the iTunes database. The only way to restore iTunes data from Time Machine is to do so by restoring individual files.