Retrieving iTunes music from old hard drive

Geobabe · #1 11th January 2010, 09:33 AM

When my old computer went kerflooey, I got an external enclosure for the hard drive in hopes of being able to pull the data off of it; when I hooked it up, I got the message "drive is corrupted and unreadable". Some Googling led me to a program called Photorec that was able to pull the files off of the disc, but everything is renamed. iTunes was able to recognize the mp3s and get them all properly imported and renamed, but none of the music I bought from iTunes (m4p) is showing up. It may be that those files are there in the recovery directory but are renamed without the .m4p extension, and there's no way I can go through manually and find all those files. Is there another data recovery program that would find those files? I hate the thought of losing all that music (and yes, from now on I'll remember to back up my music, because OMG

).

LordVor · #2 11th January 2010, 09:42 AM

Have you tried authorizing the new computer with the same iTunes account info as the old computer? I thought that Apple would could sync all the stuff that you had bought (or at least let you re-download for free) if you did that.

Zeener Diode · #3 11th January 2010, 09:44 AM

I have nothing of technical value to add but I want to point out that your OP and avatar make a perfect fit!

Geobabe · #4 11th January 2010, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LordVor

Have you tried authorizing the new computer with the same iTunes account info as the old computer? I thought that Apple would could sync all the stuff that you had bought (or at least let you re-download for free) if you did that.

I did that first, so I was able to at least get back the songs that were on my iPod, but the stuff that's on the old drive I can't even *find*--none of the recovered files have an .m4p extension, so the recovery program apparently doesn't know that file type. You can't, unfortunately, re-download purchased music from iTunes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeener Diode

I have nothing of technical value to add but I want to point out that your OP and avatar make a perfect fit!

Haha, true!

Zeener Diode · #5 11th January 2010, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geobabe

I did that first, so I was able to at least get back the songs that were on my iPod, but the stuff that's on the old drive I can't even *find*--none of the recovered files have an .m4p extension, so the recovery program apparently doesn't know that file type. You can't, unfortunately, re-download purchased music from iTunes.

Haha, true!

I don't mean to pile on, but this is why I have my iTunes backed up on an external hard drive AND in batches of 8Gb thumb drives.

It sucks that you cannot recover the corrupted files. You can go the legal route and re-purchase the songs you lost, or try the P2P route and justify that you've bought the songs already and are entitled to "free replacements."

I'm sure the universe won't judge you for that!

Geobabe · #6 11th January 2010, 10:36 AM

Yeah, I know, I said in the OP this it was stupid not to have it all backed up--I had even backed up all my documents and pictures, so why I didn't do the music at the same time I cannot explain. I remembered that I do have a backup from a couple years ago on another external drive, so I haven't lost all the music I bought, just the more recent stuff. I can look at it like getting a bunch of CDs stolen and having to buy them again, but it would be really nice to find a way to retrieve those files from the bad drive.

LordVor · #7 11th January 2010, 10:48 AM

I can say that iTunes in general is absolutely horrible at actually migrating your entire library from one computer to the other. I mean, I'd expect there to be some sort of option IN ITUNES to back up the whole thing to an external hard drive rather than to CD(!). I'm just glad my wife's whole collection fit onto her iPhone, and even then I still ended up buying a piece of third-party software to copy the whole thing onto the new computer directly (since syncing with the new computer using iTunes would have cleared the iPhone instead of populating the computer).

that said, if you need an invite code for demonoid.com, PM me.

Jaglavak · #8 12th January 2010, 10:26 AM

Try this: Get yourself a handful of .m4p files. Open them in a text editor and find a segment of symbols that seems to appear in all of them (usually right up front or right near the end). It might work better if you can find a segment that is all ASCII text.

Open File Manager and go to the drive with all your recovered stuff on it. Search for any file containing the magic sequence of symbols. Those will be .m4p files regardless of their extension.