Even if you have back ups you are still running a risk. My Drive and My Back Up Drive both failed and had to be replaced.... Luckily my Music is on a 3rd drive that was ok... But my Ghost image is toast.
Yeah. I try to back up the hard-to-replace media files. For me, that primarily means the APLs and CUE files. I can fairly easily replace any of the album-ripped APEs that go down the tubes. However, my latest experience is making me rethink a little. It's still hard to back up .5TB of music, but a couple of large firewire drives could help.
I found a better way: Make a new empty MC library. Use Windows Explorer and search for the .apl files. Import the .apl files from the Search Results list to MC (select all > right-click > Media Center > Import). Change your list order to Bitrate or Duration. You see instantly what tracks are missing the information.
Thanks for the suggestion.... However, I believe MC stores the bitrate/duration for the APL files in the tags of the files, so I would actually get the correct information after the import, yet still have missing master APEs.
I'll try to be clearer. I have 2 problems that would be nice to have MC help me with:
1) APLs that are in my library that have disappeared from the hard drive (disassociated files).
2) APLs that are valid in both the library and the hard drive, but the master APE is either missing or invalid (missing masters).
3) APLs and APEs that are in my library that are now invalid, primarily because the file on the hard drive shows a size of 0 bytes (corrupt files).
This third problem is easily resolved by searching in explorer for files sizes that are no bigger than 1KB. That gives me a list of the 0KB files that I can then restore or rerip.
AlexB gave me a couple of ideas for solving my "missing masters" problem. I think the Monkey's Audio application can do a verify on APLs, so I'll try searching for all of my APLs in explorer, then using that feature to check them.
I still don't have any ideas for finding disassociated files other than adding all my tracks to "Playing Now" and skipping through each one with the track adavance button to see which ones have their icons change to the dreaded red 'X'.
Any other thoughts?
Brad