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[amsco15]

Hoping for some expert help.  I accidentally deleted a bunch of HD Downloads while converting a playlist (converted the playlist for my phone from flac to ALAC) big oops.  Made the problem worse by screwing up the recover from my back-up.  Bottom line, I lost a lot of individual HD Download Songs (I successfully recovered my standard CD rips but not my HD Downloads).  Nothing I can do but buy some of the HD Download Songs back!

BTW, the Playlist is a "best of" in my life, well over 2200 songs that I shuffle and play when I'm feeling it.  My favorite MC feature is this ability to customize great playlists!!

As an experiment, I've purchased a couple of the lost songs from Qobuz (they offer more single track sales than others).  After I purchased the song, I selected it and sent it to the playlist (the one I screwed up).  The pop up box message states, "the song already exists in the playlist, would you like to remove them?"  That's odd since deleting the song caused the song to be eliminated from the visible list.  I selected no and the song re-appears in the playlist.  This means, that somewhere in the playlist (not visible) the song title and path still exist.  The question is:

If the song title and path still exist (but is not visible within MC when I select the playlist), is there a way for me to recover that information?  It would help me create a list of songs I would like to re-purchase (the list is fairly extensive).

I tried exporting the playlist to a text file; however, only the songs (not previously deleted) appear, like you would expect.

Sorry, this is a complicated explanation, hope I made the situation somewhat clear.  Being able to figure out what songs I lost without going through all 161 HD Download albums would be a big deal.

Thanks much!!!

[Shasta Mike]

There are various soft settings for when you restore a library that can affect how and what displays.  I lost the ratings (I thought) and was freaked out because, like you, curating my music is a big deal.   Check out this thread in case something here could possibly help you.  I feel your pain.  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,121689.msg841660.html#msg841660

[RoderickGI]

Amsco15, are you really, really sure that the HD files are actually gone, as in deleted off the hard drive, haven't been moved somewhere else? Postive? It is really irrelevant if a file/Track doesn't appear in a Playlist, if the file still exists on the hard drive you don't need to re-buy them.

If you did a FLAC to ALAC conversion, and told MC to "Replace original file on disk and in library", then your HD Files are not lost. Sure, the FLAC versions are lost, but the ALAC version still exist so you can just convert them back to FLAC files as the conversion between FLAC and ALAC, and vice versa, is lossless.

If you are talking about a MC Library Restore, that does not delete media files, and so your HD files will still be there.

I guess if you restored an old hard drive backup that didn't have your HD files, then you could have wiped the drive as part of the restore process, and the files are physically lost. In that case you still may be able to re-download them from wherever you originally bought them. You would have to look into that option.

Sorry, this is a complicated explanation, hope I made the situation somewhat clear.

Not really. Not at all. You need to clarify exactly the sequence of events that happened, and how the original HD files were removed from your hard drive, if they have been.



Regarding this:

The pop up box message states, "the song already exists in the playlist, would you like to remove them?"  That's odd since deleting the song caused the song to be eliminated from the visible list.  I selected no and the song re-appears in the playlist.  This means, that somewhere in the playlist (not visible) the song title and path still exist.

That is odd, and I'm not sure what is going on there. It really depends on how the original HD Files were deleted, I think. MC does have a Playlist Database, and maybe the file key of the missing files aren't deleted from that database, so when you put a copy back in exactly the same place, with the same name and basic metadata, MC may recognise the file and assign it back to the original file key. Then the HD file would reappear in the Playlist.

MC does have a "Removed Database"  that stores metadata for files removed from MC in the past. If the same file (by name and location, and maybe metadata) is re-imported back into MC, then MC will use the metadata in the Removed Database when reinstating that file. However, if memory serves, that database doesn't include the Playlist information, because that is in the above separate database. So when a file is reinstated as above, its metadata does not include the Playlists it used to belong to. So it isn't on any Playlist.

So the above message, "the song already exists in the playlist, would you like to remove them?", was probably MC asking to remove the file record from the Playlist database, and reinstate the HD file in the Library using the metadata from the Removed Database. I'm not sure exactly. But you did the correct thing by saying no, as MC didn't delete the record of the files from the Playlist database, and hence reinstated those file in the Playlist.

The question is:

If the song title and path still exist (but is not visible within MC when I select the playlist), is there a way for me to recover that information?

Generally you can't read the Playlist Database directly, and if there is a record of the files that used to belong to your Playlist, that is where it is. I haven't checked, but MCutils may be able to read that database and give you a list of file. But it may just be a list of file keys, which are just numbers, and that wouldn't be of any use to you.

Perhaps first confirm the series of events that resulted in the lost files, and if they can't actually be recovered, then look at whether MCUtils can get the data for you, and whether that data is of any use.

All is not lost though, if you have a MC Library backup from before you did the conversion. So confirm if you have that as well as answer the above issues.

[Shasta Mike]

the ALAC version still exist so you can just convert them back to FLAC files as the conversion between FLAC and ALAC, and vice versa, is lossless.

Agree - thus the beauty of lossless and why we use it.  I found this quote on another forum.   "Both FLAC and ALAC are lossless codecs. Conversion between them is also lossless.  To verify, I converted file.wav to file.m4a (ALAC). I then converted file.m4a to file.flac. I also converted file.wav (the original file) to file.flac. I then obtained the md5 checksums of each of the two flac files. They matched exactly. I used XLD for all of the conversions."

[amsco15]

Thanks everyone for your help.  My screw up, like many that are big, involved several dumb steps.  The first attempt at converting files went from FLAC to mp3.  This was the big mistake where I lost many files.  I recovered, what I thought were the files, but skipped my HD downloads (didn't know it at the time, the playlist is big).  I then synchronized all my back-ups, deleting the missing HD downloads across all my back-ups.  I still didn't know I was missing many files.  I then converted, what was remaining in the playlist to ALAC but of course, skipping the missing files.  I didn't discover the missing files (couple trips of some virus mania in between) for a couple months.  The files are gone.  I now know there are 178 missing songs.

So, back to trying to make a list of the songs.  I restored an older MC 25 playlist from January, couple weeks before the big mistake.  The missing HD downloads show up for a while then melt away as MC looks for the actual files.  During the restore process, I deselected restore settings (I had previously unchecked "Update for external changes."  The missing files show up for about 10 seconds and then disappear after MC looks for and can't find the song files.

I then tried, under Media Import, Fix Broken links: No and I got the list I wanted.  I then sorted by HD and exported them to a new playlist then exported that list to a file.  I now have a list of those HD songs I lost and those I didn't.  Step 1 of the problem solved.  Now I have 178 HD songs to replace!  Ug!!

Thanks again everyone for your help.  It's the reason I keep buying MC every year!

[RoderickGI]

It sounds like you have done what I was going to suggest to get the list of missing files, although I would have turned off Auto Import before the Restore without settings, so that MC definitely wouldn't remove any files from the Library. Then it would be easy to display the original Playlists and filter it for missing files.

Have you investigated just being able to re-download the files you lost yet? I don't tend to buy HD audio via downloads, but I would expect the supplier would provide a way to re-acquire them without re-buying them. If you still have purchase or account details of course.

[Dawgincontrol]

Thanks everyone for your help.  My screw up, like many that are big, involved several dumb steps.  The first attempt at converting files went from FLAC to mp3.  This was the big mistake where I lost many files.  I recovered, what I thought were the files, but skipped my HD downloads (didn't know it at the time, the playlist is big).  I then synchronized all my back-ups, deleting the missing HD downloads across all my back-ups.  I still didn't know I was missing many files.  I then converted, what was remaining in the playlist to ALAC but of course, skipping the missing files.  I didn't discover the missing files (couple trips of some virus mania in between) for a couple months.  The files are gone.  I now know there are 178 missing songs.

I hate to ask the "is the computer plugged in question", but did you check your recycle bin?

So, back to trying to make a list of the songs.  I restored an older MC 25 playlist from January, couple weeks before the big mistake.  The missing HD downloads show up for a while then melt away as MC looks for the actual files.  During the restore process, I deselected restore settings (I had previously unchecked "Update for external changes."  The missing files show up for about 10 seconds and then disappear after MC looks for and can't find the song files.

I then tried, under Media Import, Fix Broken links: No and I got the list I wanted.  I then sorted by HD and exported them to a new playlist then exported that list to a file.  I now have a list of those HD songs I lost and those I didn't.  Step 1 of the problem solved.  Now I have 178 HD songs to replace!  Ug!!

Thanks again everyone for your help.  It's the reason I keep buying MC every year!

[amsco15]

Thanks, I did check the Recycle Bin.  Unfortunately, I use a program called Goodsync to synchronize my music across a bunch of hard drives.  While investigating the error, there's a setting in Goodsync that limits the number of syncs before the Recycle Bin is purged.  I exceed that number due to my paranoia about losing my music files...kind of ironic.  I did put in a request with HD Tracks to see if they'll let me download the songs again.  I'm not optimistic (their policy is clear) but you never know.  Worst case, Quboz allows for many single song downloads, $2.00 per download.  I'll replace those I really enjoy, some will be lost to me forever.

[Dawgincontrol]

Sorry to hear.  Good luck.

[amsco15]

One last post about this just to set the record straight.  HDTracks is being very helpful.  They are going out of their way to help even though they're not set up for it and it's against their policy.  In a way, they kind of have to be helpful.  One of their big download competitors, Quboz, let's you download over and over once you purchase the music.  As I looked for ways to solve this problem, of my own creation, I've looked at lots of options and Quboz is a good one.  Their prices are good, they offer lots of single tracks (this is label dependent but true more often than not), and, as mentioned, you never lose the right to download a purchased track.

Thanks again!!!!

[RoderickGI]

A good result. Thanks for sharing.

I have always had concerns with using file synchronisation software that just makes a backup drive the same as a source drive, adding and deleting files on the backup(s) to match the source(s), just because of the possibility of what happened to you. Maybe if the synchronisation software retained versions, or never deleted a file, it would be okay. But when it synchronises deletions it is a worry.

I use EaseUS Todo Backup for that reason, and maintain a minimum of one month's worth of backups with all changes using daily incremental backups. Plus a semi-regular full backup from the recent past. For me, that works best for my data backups. For music I just have those backups plus a couple of copies of the lot from various times and states of the collection, as I don't have terabytes of music. My video collection I don't backup as it is too large, but I could just re-rip most of it.

It sounds like the timeframe over which your problem happened was too long even for the above to work, but maybe a review of your backup process is in order.

Cheers.

[wer]

As Rod says, good backups are essential.

I highly recommend Macrium Reflect.  It has saved me an infinity of agony and trouble.  Small differential or incremental snapshots can be very quick (a minute or two). 

In addition to just general protection, as Rod is describing, I use it to take a snapshot any time I'm going to do something significant to MC: major metadata changes, version upgrades, complicated config changes, whatever.  If things go south on me, in just 2 minutes I can revert back and it's like nothing ever happened.  Invaluable peace of mind.