Computer Help - missing files

[disneychrista]

On Sunday afternoon a friend helped me organized all my music into one folder on my laptop. Since for unknown reasons it seemed to be split into three different folders, some being duplicated. We then attempted to back all 22,089 songs to an external hard drive. After more than an hour it was still 0% complete so I stopped the back. When I went into the folder that had all the songs it was empty. It is like my music went POOF!! The thing is my hard drive usage is the same. So the music has to be somewhere, but where? It is not on the external hard drive, which we just reformatted and has NO FILES. I am more than devastated because most of the songs can not be simply redownloaded, as they came from various CD's that I no longer have.

Anyone have any ideas of where to look?

 

[hardcorestitch]

Do you still have the original CDs that your files came from? If not, unfortunately all your songs are in fact unrecoverable.

 

[lanejudy]

I was going to say check the recycle bin. But if you reformatted the hard drive without running a back-up, that's a problem that may not be fixable.

Is it possible the songs are in a cloud account? Like iTunes?

 

[disneychrista]

I was going to say check the recycle bin. But if you reformatted the hard drive without running a back-up, that's a problem that may not be fixable.

Is it possible the songs are in a cloud account? Like iTunes?

We reformatted the external hard drive before we started the back-up. None of the missing files were ever on that drive. They aren't in the recycle bin. It would have taken HOURS for them to actually been deleted. And it was instantaneous. One second they were there and the next they were just gone.

Unfortunately not. A good 90% of the songs came from CD's and as far as I know not backed up into iTunes. SOME, like maybe 10%, of the songs are on my OneDrive but not all of them. I also have some on a flash drive. I am going to try to rebuild my library as much as I can, on a different computer, while we try to figure out what the hell happened.

Do you still have the original CDs that your files came from? If not, unfortunately all your songs are in fact unrecoverable.

No. I don't have most of the CD's that they came from.

 

[lanejudy]

We reformatted the external hard drive before we started the back-up.

Oh, you reformatted the external hard drive. I thought you meant you had reformatting the laptop hard drive. But they never copied over to the external drive and yet disappeared from the laptop? Most likely it was too much to transfer at once. When I have a lot of files I need to transfer I do them in small chunks. Is it possible your settings are "hiding" certain file types?

 

[sam_gordon]

We reformatted the external hard drive before we started the back-up. None of the missing files were ever on that drive. They aren't in the recycle bin. It would have taken HOURS for them to actually been deleted. And it was instantaneous. One second they were there and the next they were just gone.

Unfortunately not. A good 90% of the songs came from CD's and as far as I know not backed up into iTunes. SOME, like maybe 10%, of the songs are on my OneDrive but not all of them. I also have some on a flash drive. I am going to try to rebuild my library as much as I can, on a different computer, while we try to figure out what the hell happened.


No. I don't have most of the CD's that they came from.

How did you try to backup the files? If you just did a "drag and drop", maybe you did a "move" instead of "copy"? And the files got "dropped" into some other folder/location?

If your laptop hard drive still shows the same space, there's a chance you just moved the files. Make sure you don't reboot. My next attempt would be letting windows search for the files itself (this is windows, not a mac, right?).

Open File Explorer. In the left column highlight 'This PC' (or might show the name of the computer).
Then type in the name of a single file in the upper right and hit return.

You can also try searching by the file extension. put "*.mp3" (or whatever the extension is. That should find all files with that extension.

You want to make sure you search "This PC", so it looks through all hard drives.

 

[_19disnA]

That was my first guess as well.........you did a 'move' vs. a 'copy' and it never finished. IF you didn't install any other software or do anything else to your computers, the files should all still be there. Try a global search as mentioned above using ALL available folders.

I don't see the need/reason to try to put all files in one folder. When doing an external back-up, it doesn't matter how many folders are involved. Backing-up one folder at a time also avoids issues if you happen to lose power or the computer has any sort of problem.

 

[disneychrista]

How did you try to backup the files? If you just did a "drag and drop", maybe you did a "move" instead of "copy"? And the files got "dropped" into some other folder/location?

If your laptop hard drive still shows the same space, there's a chance you just moved the files. Make sure you don't reboot. My next attempt would be letting windows search for the files itself (this is windows, not a mac, right?).

Open File Explorer. In the left column highlight 'This PC' (or might show the name of the computer). View attachment 1013483
Then type in the name of a single file in the upper right and hit return.

You can also try searching by the file extension. put "*.mp3" (or whatever the extension is. That should find all files with that extension.

You want to make sure you search "This PC", so it looks through all hard drives.

Too late on the don't reboot, the computer has been shut down and restarted a couple times already. But I will give the searching "My PC" a try. All indications are that the music files are SOMEWHERE on my PC.

That was my first guess as well.........you did a 'move' vs. a 'copy' and it never finished. IF you didn't install any other software or do anything else to your computers, the files should all still be there. Try a global search as mentioned above using ALL available folders.

I don't see the need/reason to try to put all files in one folder. When doing an external back-up, it doesn't matter how many folders are involved. Backing-up one folder at a time also avoids issues if you happen to lose power or the computer has any sort of problem.

Not sure why my friend decided that everything should in on folder, other than easy & organization. We are trying to clean the computer up and get rid of unnecessary files, like the duplicated music. Thankfully we didn't delete the duplicates yet, so I do have some of my music still.

 

[Imzadi]

My next attempt would be letting windows search for the files itself (this is windows, not a mac, right?).

Was just going to suggest this. If you are able to find the name of one song, check to see what folder or Drive it is in. More than likely all the songs got moved there.

Also, if you have more than one drive, check to see if they got dropped there. I have a C drive and a D drive. An external hard drive attached becomes an E drive, or another letter, depending on what other stuff you may have attached to your computer, like a CD player would be another drive letter.

 

[sam_gordon]

I don't see the need/reason to try to put all files in one folder. When doing an external back-up, it doesn't matter how many folders are involved. Backing-up one folder at a time also avoids issues if you happen to lose power or the computer has any sort of problem.

Organization. Personally, I would want all my music in one folder, with numerous subfolders under that one.

The more folders you have, the tougher it is to find something you haven't touched in a while. Did I put it under "My Documents"? Oh wait, was it "home stuff"?

 

[_19disnA]

For back-up purposes I like several folders better. Typically, you aren't going to access the back-up unless something goes wrong with your PC. Backing-up a gigantic folder takes longer and more chance for something to go wrong.

I think the OP should first check to see if ANY of those files can be found on the computer. How you choose to organize things is mostly a matter of personal preference.

 

[sam_gordon]

For back-up purposes I like several folders better. Typically, you aren't going to access the back-up unless something goes wrong with your PC. Backing-up a gigantic folder takes longer and more chance for something to go wrong.

I think the OP should first check to see if ANY of those files can be found on the computer. How you choose to organize things is mostly a matter of personal preference.

For anyone who wants to do a backup, I suggest SyncBackFree. My company uses the paid version, but I decided to try the free version. Yes, the first backup takes a while. After that, it only syncs changes.

 

[_19disnA]

I have an external backup device that includes its own software to do the back-up. Likely there are many on the market.

 

[disneychrista]

For back-up purposes I like several folders better. Typically, you aren't going to access the back-up unless something goes wrong with your PC. Backing-up a gigantic folder takes longer and more chance for something to go wrong.

I think the OP should first check to see if ANY of those files can be found on the computer. How you choose to organize things is mostly a matter of personal preference.

It would still makes sense to me to put all music in one folder, even if I was copying over A-D at one time and then E-H, etc. Especially since I intend to delete songs from my iTunes that I don't use but may want in the future. I don't want to have to figure out where I put it. I guess alternatively you could have Music A - G in one folder. H - M in another, etc.

I have an external backup device that includes its own software to do the back-up. Likely there are many on the market.

This external Hard Drive came with back up software but I have never used it.

 

[_19disnA]

Not clear what you attempted to use when your original post said you were doing a back-up. I still think your priority needs to be focused on finding those 'lost' files. What you do after that comes later.

This external Hard Drive came with back up software but I have never used it.

We then attempted to back all 22,089 songs to an external hard drive.

 

[disneychrista]

Not clear what you attempted to use when your original post said you were doing a back-up. I still think your priority needs to be focused on finding those 'lost' files. What you do after that comes later.

He copied the entire iTunes folder, which included all the artwork, library files, etc (a total of about 89,000 files) to the external hard drive. At an hour + it was still at 0% complete so I cancelled it, figuring something wasn't working. I then went into the "music" folder within the iTunes folder to try to copy just those files it was empty.

 

[anrew]

I would contact some pros probably