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After Big Sur upgrade all itunes media files deleted

I have just upgraded from High Sierra to Big Sur on an old MacBook Air 2013. Everything works fine except I was surprised that after the upgrade I had suddenly additional 180GB free disk space. All the media files are missing. When I opened the Music App the playlists and library seems intact. All songs are shown but when I try to start a song it says that the original file cannot be fund.

I made a timemachine backup before the upgrade so my questions is just how to best move the old itunes Music folder into the Music App?

Just move the whole folder, rename in Media and link it again in the Music app as the source or is there another easier way?

Posted on Feb 14, 2021 4:08 AM

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Posted on Feb 14, 2021 4:48 AM

You probably need to restore the iTunes Media folder from your Time Machine backup to the original location, but just in case see the following to determine where the converted library thinks should be, or how to repair things if they remain broken after restoring the folder.



The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.


Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.


In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.


If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

  1. The location of the media folder under iTunes|Music > Preferences > Advanced
  2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file://
  3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2



See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.



tt2

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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 14, 2021 4:48 AM in response to Camphausen

You probably need to restore the iTunes Media folder from your Time Machine backup to the original location, but just in case see the following to determine where the converted library thinks should be, or how to repair things if they remain broken after restoring the folder.



The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.


Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.


In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.


If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

  1. The location of the media folder under iTunes|Music > Preferences > Advanced
  2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file://
  3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2



See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.



tt2

Feb 15, 2021 10:56 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks tt2 for trying to support me.

regarding your questions:

1) The location is : /Macintosh HD/Benutzer/tiger/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music and that folder contains perfectly all the folders of the artists and albums but without the mp3 ... they must have been deleted during the upgrade process. The files are also not anywhere else on the computer.

2) / 3) Since no files are on the computer anymore it immediatly ask me to search for the file


I hope that clarifies the situation better!



After Big Sur upgrade all itunes media files deleted

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