iTunes Anomoly

M

Mole69

Guest
Maybe this should be in the PC section, but here goes.

I recently decided to try and speed up the sluggish speed of my PC by sending all 9Gb of songs in my iTunes library to the recycle bin. (Arrrggghhh!).

However, the following day, I decided to restore the files back into iTunes, which worked, but only to a point. About half the files were suddenly gone!!!

Can anyone explain what's happened, why and maybe how I can sort it out or avoid it in the future?

Cheers.
 
i could be wrong but i dont think you can store anything over 4 gb in the recycle bin and it is permenently deleted ( with out back option from recycle bin) so its had probably deleted most of it aprt from just below 4gb.
 
That would certainly explain the problem. I was advised that you could store your iTunes library to disc for storage, but the only option I could find for that wrote them as audio disc files and that would have taken up hundreds of discs!!! I was hoping to be able to write them to disc in MP3 format. Can that be done?
:lease:
 
If you right-click on Recycle Bin and go Properties you can set the size of the bin as a percentage of your hard drive. Not sure if there's a max limit in Gb. However, you might still be able to get your files back with a programme such as Undelete. Deleting files doesn't actually delete them, it simply makes them disappear and allows them to be overwritten, but until that happens the info is still there.
 
MPK said:
Deleting files doesn't actually delete them, it simply makes them disappear and allows them to be overwritten, but until that happens the info is still there.

It basically replaces the code used by your OS to identify files with a series of zeros. However, the longer you leave recovery - especially if you're writing new data to your HDD - the less likely your chances of this being 100% successful. I use a part of VCom's SystemSuite 5.0 to recover 'deleted' files with moderate to good success. It's not an exact science, however. You could also try Googling Disk Investigator if you're tech savvy - this shows everything on your HDD beyond what the OS tells you is there.
 
That's good advice and I appreciate it y'all. So, can I write my iTunes library to disc in MP3 instead of Audio File format?
 
If you back up your songs to a cd as an mp3 cd or data cd then you can store upto 700mb worth of music, or even better a dvd-rw disc can store over 4gb of files
 
You could spend upto £50 for a cheapo MP3 hard drive player, or external hard disk, and use that for storage
 
I would go with the external hard drive route, there are loads of them as buy it nows on ebay. Best prices i've seen are for the 300GB ones which will take you a fair while to fill, £108.70. Of course the price goes zooming down depending on how much storage you want.
 
Get a DVD Writer for £30 and some blank discs and save all your MP3s on them. Totally the best way, just make sure you don't use the discs for long term storage. Some do degrade over time.

By the way, deleting mp3s and other files is never a way to speed up your PC. The number of files on a hard drive will not affect the speed of the system (unless it is totally full to the brim)
 

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