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PC Trouble & Music Lib Restoration

  • 11-07-2014 11:11am
    #1
    BodFred
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10 ✭


    Hope someone might know of a contact or any tips on how to progress.

    Background: PC (8.1) went on the blink there a while back. I had left it on one evening when on ps4, after sometime it goes into a standby/hibernate mode, it is totally silent you'd swear it wasn't on. I was drinking that night too on FIFA14 clubs with lads over Skype. When I finished up for the night, powered off everything except PC, pulled the plugs from the walls & still the PC didn't even enter my head.

    Powered up PC next day & the hard disk was in a boot loop, tried everything advised to me including steps from Microsoft website but still nothing would just loop & loop.

    Solution (my steps): Took out hard drive & copied all my stuff off it, popped it back in & reformatted. All works fine now.

    However - all my Music (in MyMusic folder) all of it didn't copy only some, which I found weird. So out of a 500GBs library I lost about 320GBs worth of stuff!! Not sure really what was going on, I would have expected copy/paste the MyMusic folder would have taken everything. Then I thought with re-installing iTunes could something have happened importing the Music Lib back in as I already had an iTunes folder in the MyMusic folder & there might have been something here, to this day I don't know!

    I found a tool that can retrieve data off a disk regardless of it in recycle bin, deleted from recycle bin or a total disk format. Scanned the whole disk for music related files & found about 320GBs worth...happy days.

    However - when I wrote all the files out they are named "File[#00001].mp3" all the way up to "File[#675383].mp3" or whatever, all split up into folders per every 1000 files. There is also no metadata (the ID3 tags) on the files.

    So, I have no way of knowing the content of each file so I can't rename anything or add metadata, let along group them into new folders for albums, artists etc.

    I tried running MusicBrainzPicard over the files, but way too many conflicts & manual intervention is required.

    My Question: I've rambled on long enough!

    But does anyone know of a service or software that can address my issues with the type of files & structure that I recovered from the disk? I am huge music enthusiast & am nearly to the point of paying someone or a service (I can post the hard drive) to sort it!!
    Tagged:


Comments

  • #2
    Synode
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,967 ✭✭✭Synode


    What tool did you use to retrieve the data from the disk?

    I've used Recuva before and when I recovered the files, they were named the same as they were when I accidentally deleted them. Might be worth a shot


  • #3
    BodFred
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10 ✭BodFred


    Great - thanks for the prompt reply, will give this a try. The tool name I used escapes but it definitively wasn't Recuva as I don't recognise the GUI. I will check my PC & let you know, just for your information/curiosity.

    Hopefully Recuva will work & can recover folder structure too as I have one folder per artist & then within, a folder for Live, Compilations, Studio Albums, EPs, Remixes & Posthumous Release of which then contains more folders.


  • #4
    counterpointaud
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 403 ✭✭counterpointaud


    Hate to say it, but I have had a similar experience twice, and both times I could recover the files but not the metadata.

    If you come up with a solution I'd love to hear it, as I still have a couple of old disks lying around with files I would like.


  • #5
    beauf
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22,648 ✭✭✭✭beauf


    Sometimes when you create MP3's not all the metadata is written to the file itself. Its stored in the database file, which differs depending on application you are using, MediaMonkey, iTunes, Windows Media Player etc.

    If iTunes I'm guessing You needed to recover the Library.itl , and Library.xml files aswell as the MP3 files.

    So if you are backing up your music and you use itunes or some-other database, remember to take the database as well as the music.

    In my own music library I use Media Monkey to write the metadata to the file itself, and also rename the file from the mp3 tag information. In that way if I lose the metadata the file name will still identify the file. Hindsight and all that.

    Maybe you can try recovering those library files now? Assuming you haven't been using the disk since.
    BodFred wrote: »
    ....I found a tool that can retrieve data off a disk regardless of it in recycle bin, deleted from recycle bin or a total disk format. Scanned the whole disk for music related files & found about 320GBs....

    The data isn't deleted off a disk until you overwrite it with new data. Then its unrecoverable. If the disk still has free space, you still might be able to recover the "non music" related files that you need.

    If all that fails you can always rebuild the music from the sources you originally got it from. It might be the easiest way to recover much of it.

    You might get more detailed information from some of the iTunes forums etc. I'm hazy on the details of the databases/file format. I've always avoided letting apps manage my music because I don't like how they tag/organise them.


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