Odd iTunes problem

E

entropism

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 23, 2004
Messages
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Maybe someone here can help me out, because I've got no clue whats going on here and I've already tried reformatting my system, and it solved nothing.

iTunes for some reason, refuses to load some MP3s into the library. This is a new development, it was working fine literally a week ago. I plugged my iPhone in to sync it, it showed as having 4GB of storage instead of 32GB, so I wiped the device and went to sync it again. After that, I was missing about half my MP3s from iTunes.

Now I have about 50GB of MP3s on my system and I'm a little OCD about them. They were all perfectly ripped with EAC, perfectly tagged, etc. My problem is, when I moved, the movers dropped my box of CDs, and most of the media is completely shot.

I've reformatted my system and the problem persists. I thought it was corrupt files, but Songbird and WMP show them just fine. When I try to re-add them to iTunes via "add folder to library", literally nothing happens. Shows as the files can't be dragged over either.

So, anyone have any idea?

Edit: Sorry, this is Windows 7 Ultimate (retail), x64.
 
The files may not be corrupt, but it sounds like somewhere along the line something went corrupt regardless. This is definitely a unique problem, and you're probably going to want to contact Apple support. You may have somehow corrupted part of your library database. Definitely get in contact with Apple.
 
Called apple, and they're stumped as well. Going through my files, it looks like a TON of MP3s got shortened down to 8 seconds or so, a few hundred of them... This happened before, had no idea what caused it, and it took MONTHS of re-ripping everything to get it all corrected. I cannot express how pissed I am right about now.
 
Your track lengths were also shortened? Wow. I really hope that's not the result of hard drive corruption or some bug between iTunes and Windows 7.

I'm sorry for the loss of your library. I'm just as anal about my tracks as you apparently are, and it would be pretty devastating if I lost everything. (backups!)
 
entropism said:
Called apple, and they're stumped as well. Going through my files, it looks like a TON of MP3s got shortened down to 8 seconds or so, a few hundred of them... This happened before, had no idea what caused it, and it took MONTHS of re-ripping everything to get it all corrected. I cannot express how pissed I am right about now.
Click to expand...

Do they still play out to the fill length?

Sorry about your loss.
It's why we all say backup:(
I only got 24GB, atm, so I gotta watch out (and I use WMP, because I like it better).
 
So do you have the 64bit version of Itunes or the 32bit?

You could try the one you don't have to see if the problem persists.
 
maybe you hard drive is failing, as said before. do you have the data on a separate partition from your os? I would try running Spin Rite on that disc to try and fix it. If that doesn't work, I would not rerip your collection to the same disc...maybe a good idea to get a brand new hard drive...
 
This happened before, to a 500gb drive that was in perfect health. The current drive is a (secondary) 1GB WD black drive, and not only were play times shortened, but file size was as well. A lot of the truncated files are about 500k now.

My problem is, now that my purchased media was destroyed I'm basically shit out of luck. Not a happy camper right now.

Oh yeah, this was using 64 bit iTunes, 9 and then I downgraded to 8.2.1.

Do not try to justify piracy. It's a quick way to get this thread closed and NO help at all.

-KaosDG
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The database issue and shorted files were what prompted me to move to 8.2.1, not the cause of it. I appreciate trying to figure this out with me though. I'm truly stumped, and so is Apple...
 
What do the files look like now? (open one up in a hex editor and see what it looks like... regular mp3s usually start with the ID3 info so you should see titles/album names etc)

Are all the file sizes the same?

Do the shortened songs play OK (aside from being shortened)?

Have you run a chkdsk or other diagnostic on the drive?
 
Chkdsk runs fine, it's a brand new drive, I believe I got in in April. Songs play ok, just shortened, and I've never even used a hex editor, so I couldn't tell you there.
 
I had a similar problem. Out of around 5k songs iTunes would only load 40% of them into a library; other applications would play them without a hitch. Finally I discovered it was the ID3 tags. I used www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html to downgrade the ID3v2.4 tags to ID3v2.3 and clean them up. I successfully loaded all the files after this.

Goodluck
 
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