Songs with ! next to them in itunes

Question

Songs with ! next to them in itunes

I tried to use an older thread for this but it was locked for replies.

I digitised my music collection and filled nine and a half 160GB IPod Classics.

I have been gradually filling itunes to the allocated 148GB to fill the tenth ipod.

Some of the files have the ! next to them, for some it will be because they are on

a different external hard drive than the ones plugged in but others are random

files on audiobooks which I borrowed from my local library and copied straight into

Itunes rather than a folder on a drive.

How can these be missing from itunes when I imported them directly from the source discs?

Knowing that some of the files are on the external drives which are currently plugged in I asked itunes to search for them and it said it cannot find them and has changed from 104 original missing files to 2121.

Any ideas?

Win 11 Home.

Posted on Nov 30, 2024 8:53 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

275,834 points

Nov 30, 2024 12:04 PM in response to The_Thing_At_Rawlinson_End

Each time you start iTunes it assumes all tracks are present at their last known path until it has reason to find otherwise, such as when you attempt to repair one track and ask iTunes to try to repair all of the others. Whenever you notice a track with an exclamation mark, or one that you know is currently unavailable, you can select it, press Ctrl+i to get info, decline when prompted to locate the track, and then look at the file tab to see the last known location. If will display with an initial file://localhost and / instead of \ in the path, but you should be able to tell where the file should be. Connect the relevant drive if needed/possible, or inspect the location to see if you can determine what has happened. Ideally your entire library, database and media, would be on a single external drive big enough to hold it all, and with room for expansion, which you then back up to a second drive for security.

See Recover media from an iPod - Apple Community if you find you need to reclaim files from you collection of iPods.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

275,834 points

Dec 1, 2024 3:54 PM in response to The_Thing_At_Rawlinson_End

I don't know why exactly, there are many potential causes. See my post in here about fixing broken links: iTunes Original File Could Not Be Found - Apple Community.

See also Corrupt iPod Classic - Apple Community for advice on getting the best out of iPods. They are all going to have aging drives now but checking the HDD stats may help you work out which ones are healthier than others.

A Windows iTunes library should really be on an NTFS disc, on a larger drive than is supported by FAT32. Macs can read but not write from NTFS, but Macs and Windows can also share content over your local network which can be better than relying a common compatible file system. If you have a drive that is ejecting itself or causing system issues then it is past time to retire it in favour of a new one, or two since it seems you may be lacking a decent backup strategy at this point. See Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy - Apple Community. Old tech, but I haven't found anything better yet to replace it. Also good for recovering any readable files from a temperamental drive. Explorer just crashes when it finds something it cannot read, and then you've no idea what remains to be copied.

tt2

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Answer 3

Dec 1, 2024 1:52 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for the reply.

I knew that some of the files were in one of the plugged in external drives so I used that earlier and it located between five and six hundred of the missing files. There are still a lot missing though some of which will be on other external drives, I have seven sitting next to me as I type and others at families houses for backup.

One of the drives here has a lot of free space on it so I was thinking of putting everything onto that for filling ipod #10 but I was using it at college so had to reformat it to work with both WIN/Mac and for some reason it is ejecting itself then starting up again, I get the ping and message onscreen. Not ideal if I was to use to fill a 160GB IP Classic.

I had already gone through five or six Classics, started with an 80GB then onto 160's. Just as I was finishing one of these last year rain got into it and a new battery couldn't save it from running out of juice after about twelve minutes. I was already locked into digitising my music collection, thousands of audio tapes, thousands of vinyl and thousands of cds plus heaps of cdrs and a bag of minidiscs. Even though a lot of the stuff was already on the aforementioned IPods I bought another ten 160's to start from scratch with everything going onto them, none of the tapes had been digitised and I had been digitising my vinyl via burning to CDR then importing and not titling, I enjoyed the mystery aspect when it came to the vinyl but this time I bought a turntable with USB connectivity, digitised everything and bought a new tapedeck and also digitised all of the tapes plus all of the bought CDs, I balked at all of the CDRS though, took two and a half years.

Question, why has one of the audiobooks which I borrowed from library and imported directly into itunes gone missing?, every track has an ! next to it.

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