Section 97. Restore Your Music Library Database from a Backup Copy


97. Restore Your Music Library Database from a Backup Copy

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

94 Back Up Your Music to CD or DVD

96 Restore Your Music from Backup


SEE ALSO

62 Repair a Missing Song Entry

98 Copy Your Music from the iPod Back to iTunes


The Music Library database file, found in the iTunes folder within the My Music folder (in Windows) or the Music folder (on the Mac), is the heart and soul of iTunes. Sure, you can recover all your actual music by simply copying your backed -up song files back into iTunes; but the Music Library database file ( iTunes 4 Music Library.itl on Windows, or simply iTunes 4 Music Library on the Mac) is what stores all the extra information such as your playlists , your star ratings, equalizer settings, and external fields such as the Last Played and Date Added fields. Without that information, all the personalization you've done to your iTunes music is lost, and you have to start building it back up from scratch.

This is why it's important to back up your iTunes Music Library database each time you back up your music files, as described in 94 Back Up Your Music to CD or DVD . It's a little extra work, but protecting the ways you've trained iTunes to play your favorite music might be every bit as important to you as protecting the music itself.

This task is useful in many circumstances such as when you're installing iTunes on a new computer. However, it's of particular interest when you have restored music from a backup (as described in 96 Restore Your Music from Backup ), but you notice that your ratings and play counts have disappeared.

1.
Quit iTunes

Because iTunes writes changes to the Music Library database file when you exit the application, you must quit iTunes (choose File, Exit in Windows, or iTunes, Quit on the Mac) before beginning this task.

2.
Locate the Backed-up Music Library Database File

Find the CD, DVD, or disk location where your backup copy of the iTunes 4 Music Library file is. Open a Windows Explorer or Finder window that shows this file.

NOTES

The iTunes 4 Music Library.itl and iTunes 4 Music Library.xml files contain identical information and are updated simultaneously with every change you make. You can theoretically restore your iTunes Library from either file, but the binary .itl file is preferred. In Windows, you might have to turn off the Hide file extensions for known file types option (choose Tools, Folder Options and then click the View tab) to distinguish between the two files.

In this task, iTunes 4 Music Library refers to the .itl file.

3.
Copy the Music Library Database File into the iTunes Folder

In a second Windows Explorer or Finder window, navigate into the iTunes folder inside the My Music folder (in Windows) or the Music folder (on the Mac). Select all the files whose names begin with iTunes 4 Music Library and drag them out of the folder into a temporary location, such as your Desktop.

97. Restore Your Music Library Database from a Backup Copy


From the Windows Explorer or Finder window you opened in step 2 (the window onto the backup media), drag a copy of the iTunes 4 Music Library backup file into the iTunes folder window you just opened in this step. Be sure to drag a duplicate, not the original file itself. If the backup copy of the file is on a separate volume or a CD or DVD, a duplicate is created automatically. If the backup copy exists on the same disk, hold down Option on the Mac or Ctrl in Windows to duplicate the file as you're dragging it from one place to another.

4.
Relaunch iTunes

Start iTunes. When you reopen the application, it reads the newly restored Music Library database file and shows the playlists and song information from there rather than from the file it had been using previously. If you restored a backed-up database file over a nearly empty one from a newly reinstalled copy of iTunes, your library should be populated with all the music you'd had before the database file was lost.

If all is well, you can throw away the old iTunes 4 Music Library files you dragged to the temporary folder or your Desktop. If anything goes wrong, however (for example, if the restored file has been corrupted somehow), you can go back to the previous state of the iTunes Library by quitting iTunes and then moving the temporary files back into place in the iTunes Music folder.

5.
Re-import iTunes' Own Music Library Folder to Restore Lost Entries

There's one final housekeeping trick to perform. If you backed up your iTunes 4 Music Library file at an earlier time than your last backup of song filesor if you've been adding new music since reinstalling iTunesyou'll need to add those new songs to the restored library (because it won't yet know they exist). Fortunately, this step is an easy one.

In a Windows Explorer or Finder window, navigate into your iTunes folder and locate your iTunes Music folder, which contains all your organized music (including songs you've added or purchased since backing up your database file). Remember that iTunes can tell whether you've already added a certain file to the iTunes Music folder, and won't add a second copy if you try to import the file again. Taking advantage of this knowledge, simply drag the iTunes Music folder from its window into the song listing area of iTunes. (Note the + sign on your mouse pointer indicating that the folder's contents will be added to iTunes.)

When you let go of the mouse button, iTunes imports only those songs within the iTunes Music folder hierarchy that weren't already in its database. This process may take a few minutes, depending on the size of your music collection; but when it's done, you'll have all your music back to its normal state.

Any external data fields (such as the My Rating, Play Count , and Equalizer info tags ) you'd added to your newly acquired music will be reset, but those fields are still intact for all your other files, and you've now got all your music back at your fingertips.



iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 152
Authors: Brian Tiemann

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net