What the heck

[CGFxColONeill]

Itunes crashed on me any ideas?
all my podcasts, play lists etc went away

[Heradel]

Probably lost the link to the iTunes library. If it's a Mac go to /Users/[name of user]/Music/iTunes/ and just click on the library there. Not sure where it's kept on the PC, but the procedure should be the same.

[eytanz]

That happened to me once (on a PC) and while I could easily recover the regular music library by re-pointing iTunes to it, I couldn't recover the podcast subscriptions and playlists - I had to re-create the playlists and manually re-subscribe to all the podcasts.

[Russell Nash]

That happened to me once (on a PC) and while I could easily recover the regular music library by re-pointing iTunes to it, I couldn't recover the podcast subscriptions and playlists - I had to re-create the playlists and manually re-subscribe to all the podcasts.

When I accidentally deleted a podcast, I pulled the file back out of the trash and opened it.  iTunes automatically put it back in the podcast directory.  All I then had to do was click subscribe.

[CGFxColONeill]

thanks I am on a pc btw sorry I forgot to metion that little fact
it had the music back and I will have to redo the podcasts I guess
thanks again

[Listener]

Rule 1 of the PC:  turning it off and turning it on usually solves the problem.
Rule 2 of the PC:  back up every week.
Rule 3 of the PC:  back up every week.

I lost my iTunes as well a few months back, and reloaded everything from my backup at work.

[Darwinist]

Rule 1 of the PC:  turning it off and turning it on usually solves the problem.
Rule 2 of the PC:  back up every week.
Rule 3 of the PC:  back up every week.

I lost my iTunes as well a few months back, and reloaded everything from my backup at work.

Does anyone use an external hard drive for backup?

My hard drive is filling up due to I-Tunes and family pictures.  I have most of my pictures backed up on CDs but I'm thinking of taking all of my documents and pictures off my hard drive to free up space. 

Also, my computer is running slower than ever.  Is that due to the fact that my hard drive is filling up?  (6 GB left on 80 GB hard drive)

[Listener]

Rule 1 of the PC:  turning it off and turning it on usually solves the problem.
Rule 2 of the PC:  back up every week.
Rule 3 of the PC:  back up every week.

I lost my iTunes as well a few months back, and reloaded everything from my backup at work.

Does anyone use an external hard drive for backup?

My hard drive is filling up due to I-Tunes and family pictures.  I have most of my pictures backed up on CDs but I'm thinking of taking all of my documents and pictures off my hard drive to free up space. 

Also, my computer is running slower than ever.  Is that due to the fact that my hard drive is filling up?  (6 GB left on 80 GB hard drive)

Me.  I have a Maxtor 320GB HD that I back stuff up on.  I only have a 120GB drive on my lappy, so I keep two weeks worth of backups.

[Russell Nash]

Rule 1 of the PC:  turning it off and turning it on usually solves the problem.
Rule 2 of the PC:  back up every week.
Rule 3 of the PC:  back up every week.

I lost my iTunes as well a few months back, and reloaded everything from my backup at work.

Does anyone use an external hard drive for backup?

My hard drive is filling up due to I-Tunes and family pictures.  I have most of my pictures backed up on CDs but I'm thinking of taking all of my documents and pictures off my hard drive to free up space. 

Also, my computer is running slower than ever.  Is that due to the fact that my hard drive is filling up?  (6 GB left on 80 GB hard drive)

Me.  I have a Maxtor 320GB HD that I back stuff up on.  I only have a 120GB drive on my lappy, so I keep two weeks worth of backups.

We have a network ethernet backup HD (500GB).  We back up all of our computers to this one HD.

[FamilyGuy]

I've got a WD 160GB passport drive.  I like the fact I only need a USB cable and don't have to use an AC plug.

[Heradel]

250 Gb LaCie drive and Time Machine for me. Laptop drive is 120Gb (Actual 113), so it's about the right size.

[CGFxColONeill]

I just ordred a case for the hd from my old laptop so that will give me 40 gigs or so if memory serves on its size
to back it up you just go to export library?

[Planish]

...to back it up you just go to export library?

I'm not sure what happens in that situation to any music you've purchased from the iTunes Store. Normally (I think) you have to "de-authorize" purchased music and then re-authorize it when you move them to another drive. Again, I'm not sure how that works because I never buy from iTunes Store. All of my stuff is ripped from my CDs, or public domain, or else free sample tunes.

It appears (I think) that the iTunes "Library" is an XML file that has a list of all the playlists, tunes, music folders, podcast subscriptions, radio station links etc. My XML file got corrupted once somehow and I lost all of the playlists and most of the podcast subscriptions. I ended up re-importing 1,800 or so files into the Library and had to go through and re-assign them to the playlists. Fortunately, many of them were able to be sorted by genre and/or other ID3 tags, which sped things up considerably.

I believe you can "Export" the library file, from the "File" menu.

(running Mac OS X "Tiger" version 10.4.whatever's_current)