How To Recover iTunes Library After An Update

HOW TO RECOVER ITUNES LIBRARY AFTER AN UPDATE

For the last goddam how many years I have been resisting iTunes offer to update to the latest version. I don't really know why I resisted it so much, but anyhow, I put up a mighty good fight until some point yesterday afternoon I must've clicked on the wrong combination of buttons. And next thing I knew, iTunes looked more modern (not so bad) and my whole iTunes library had disappeared off it with no explanation (rather bloody bad). I had no idea how it happened, or why it happened, and as you can imagine I was rather peeved that my iTunes library, which I'd carefully spent 4 years growing to the grand total of 2,107 songs, had completely gone. 

On my iTunes I usually have the setting that means my library gets automatically backed up onto my computer, but for some reason, when I went to find it yesterday it had disappeared with no explanation. The only library I could find was one that had 15 songs I'd bought from iTunes on it. Not great. So the majority of yesterday evening I googled every possible solution known to man, but none of them worked, or the recommended software looked dodgy, or the fact I couldn't even find my original iTunes library was a bit of a problem. The most frustrating thing, was when I plugged my iPod in, it showed my entire music library was there, but I couldn't transfer any of the music back onto my iTunes. What a bummer.

It was only after I accidentally deleted something on my computer and went to recover it from the Recycling Bin, that I noticed lots of songs from my iTunes library were in the bin too. I never would have thought to look there. And I know I certainly didn't put my music there. I also saw the folder which contained my iTunes library in the bin too, and that's when I started to get to suspicious. The long and short of it, is that in my case anyway, it appears that my iTunes update subsequently did something to my computer, causing it to bin my iTunes library. So I thought I'd knock together a quick post with the steps I took to retrieve my poor lil' iTunes library, because if you've found yourself in a similar position, it might just work for you too!

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001. As soon as you notice your iTunes is missing, open up your Recycle Bin 

002. Click 'restore all items' and wait till everything has transferred

003. Click on your 'Music' folder in your 'This PC' folder

004. Click on your iTunes folder and see if your library is there, and if the file name includes a date/ time before the iTunes update happen (eg. iTunes Library 2016-10-08), OR see if a new folder appears in your 'Music' folder with your iPod's name (mine is called Vi, and after transferring back from my recycle bin, a folder re-appeared called Vi)

005. To check if it's the right iTunes Library, quit iTunes, then hold the 'shift' key while you click on the iTunes library file

006. A box should come up allowing you to 'choose ipod library'. Select this option and then a new box will open up, allowing you to select an iPod library from wherever you may have it stored.

007. Fingers crossed, your old iTunes library should be restored!!!

Good luck, and I hope this helps :)