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[PeggyP]

I have searched the forum and found my question has been asked but there are no posted answers. Take pity, as I'm very confused.

I had a problem w/hard driveand lost all my music (& a bunch of other stuff)  and had to reload MC9 and restore the Library....no problem I've got my backup file. So I've restored the library, I see all my music & playlists, etc. But nothing plays due to a message "make sure path in Media Library points in the right direction. In the Help file, I have located "reconnect the files with the library" instructions....and followed them but am having no luck. There is something about this process I'm not getting, could someone go through this, slowly? I'm using XP home edition.

[JimH]

You may have your music in a different location (drive and/or path).  You could move your library or you could clear the database and import again.

[PeggyP]

I have cleared & restored a few times...& moved & renamed the folder. Here's a dumb question - am I trying to restore the library as a .zip file or should it be unzipped. When I use restore, I use browse, find the zip file and click on that, is that not correct?

And thanks for your help...

[Alex B]

This can also be a stupid question, but did you have a backup of your music files too? Media Center's library backup has only the database included. Not the actual media files.

The restore process as you described is correct if you mean that you browsed from inside MC's restore window. If you have the music files (MP3s, WMAs, etc) on your hard drive the folder paths must be exactly as they were before. So if your files were e.g. in "C:\My Music\" folder they must be restored there before the restored MC library can find them.

[PeggyP]

Well, you have clarified things for me! I only used the library backup, nothing else. Guess this explains how the zip file fit on my thumb drive! I thought it was amazing that 1500 songs could be compressed to fit on a thumb drive. And I was so proud of myself for making a backup!

Thanks for all the help - I am sadder but wiser.

[modelmaker]

Many of us, having learned the same hard lesson, back up the actual music files to a second (or even a third) hard drive. It's definitely worth the cost of the extra HD(s) when you think about the time and money spent on the lost files and having to replace them . I lost over 35gigs when I decided the extra HD was no longer "optional".

[Alex B]

Oh, I feel sorry for you. Now you must start from the beginning.

As modelmaker said, I have found that external hard drives (connected with USB/USB2 or Firewire) are an easy and fast way to backup larger collections. At least you could burn the files to data CD-R disks.

By the way, if the files are already in compressed format (e.g. MP3) no software can compress them any further. You will need as much backup space as the files take on your hard drive.

EDIT

I mean losslessly. It is possible to re-encode them to even smaller audio files, but audio quality will also be much lower and there is no way to restore the original files.