iTunes Backup Anomaly

This post is not about solving a problem (I have a solution), but about a problem I didn't know I had with iTunes files backups.

I thought I had a corrupted iTunes file; it sounded very distorted. The file was not actually corrupted, but that is another story. I went to my Retrospect backup files to recover a copy of the "corrupted" file. I could not find the file.

Next, I searched my Norton Ghost image backup. I could not find the file. In both cases I noticed that most of my iTunes songs were missing from the backup. The backups were organized by artists, but many of the artists were missing.

I tried looking at the iTunes files using Windows Explorer (Windows Ultimate 64bit). The files looked exactly like the ones in both of the backups: organized by artist with many files missing.

I finally ended up burning all of my iTunes music to a DVD to use as a backup. I don't know if I would be able to transfer the files from the DVD back to iTunes if I had to, but the files can be played in iTunes. The way I transferred the files to DVD was by displaying "Songs" in iTunes, then using Edit "Select All" and dragging the files to my DVD burner window.

The point of this post is that if you think you have a backup of your iTunes files, it is worth checking to see if they are all actually backed up.