Digital music forum: A SERIOUS Problem: Disappearing MP3 Files On Hard Drive

I'm a P2P user, and your point is?

I encoded many PURCHASED CDs and I had numerous tracks disappear.

I have a backup hardrive as well, so if one drive fails I have another.

No offense, but thanks, Bob, for nothing.

This has been happening to me, as well specifically, I just noticed an entire album missing (If I Were A Carpenter), two tracks off of one of my Letters To Cleo albums (songs 6 and 12), as well as a rendition of Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major that I rather like. Likely, there is more missing

And, yes, I still have the original albums but that is hardly the point.

I mean, if someone went to your car and re-set all your programmed radio stations, you can just re-program them, right? Or, what about having the laces of some of your shoes pulled out (just lace them up again)? Perhaps you scanned a bunch of family photos on to your computer, and they started to vanish (silly, you still have the actual photos, just re-scan them)?

Personally, I have a collection of over 2,000 albums: cassettes, CDs and vinyl. All of these have been copied to digital format (i.e., MP3), so that I dont have to deal with the logistics of all that media. With a single format on a PC, I can keep things organized so knowing whether or not a song is going to be there when I want it is rather a big deal to me.

In any event, it is worth mentioning that I was also a Musicmatch user until about six months ago, but, since I cannot definitively say *when* my music went missing, I can only run with a hunch that a certain Yahoo-infested jukebox is to blame, either with or without deliberation.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with being able to correct the situation; its about the inconvenience and loss of privacy and, for those of you who have ever been jonesing for a certain piece of music, whether it be from Kay Hanley or Mozart, it is also something else (you either understand, or you do not a love of music does not translate well to text).

All apologies I neglected to adequately explain.

By missing, I didnt mean that the .MP3 files were not where I left them in some applications library listing, or that the file Beatles, The was re-named The Beatles.

I meant missing, as in:
They were no longer physically stored on the HDD.
They were not archived, moved or renamed.
They did not migrate to another HDD, or to some other backup device.
There is no data remanence that can be associated with the missing files.

They were kept on an ST3200822A that is only a year old, and showing no unusual signs of deterioration (Also, just to be certain, I ran a check for any recoverable .MP3 files or fragments using two separate data recovery applications nothing too invasive).

Finally, the HDD was not exposed to any electrostatic discharges, magnetic fields, impact shock, or little blue things from the planet Klextor. It is operating within thermal specifications, and its cabling is intact with properly seated connectors. The system power supply is running at slightly over 78% efficiency with a 65% load, with no noteworthy variance in voltage. There are other possible causes for data loss, but nothing that could happen without noticeably affecting other parts of the system.

Granted, the missing data could be a result of some highly-specific virus, that only attacks certain files named a specific way but the probability of such a beastie existing *and* being able to avoid the protection I have in place, as well as my periodic remote scans, is so low that it doesnt bear mentioning. The only reason I do, in fact, mention it is because invariable it is suggested as the cause for any and all unknown computer issues (which sounds a great deal more viable than reality demonstrates).

Also, since it has now become somewhat relevant, I will qualify the above statements with the fact that Ive been a certified pc tech (field work, not tech support) for over twenty years. Am I omniscient? No. I do, however, know what to watch for in a failing HDD, and have done my share of data recovery.

Hi,
I'm agree with you , " Backup " is more important then any other things...:)

Sorry if I sound rude, just to let you know I'm not normally like this. I'm just unhappy at the moment and unfortunately, it's been reflecting that in my posts.

~Thanks again, for your valuable time

I have a newly built PC (merry christmas to me). It is probably the 15th PC I have built for myself over the years since the first 80286 I had. I do not have any P2P file sharing software installed. I do not (according to Norton AV) have a virus. Ad-aware, Spybot & RootKitRevealer do not find any malware on this PC. My machines are all behind a firewall/router. I rip my own (purchased) CDs.

Yesterday (2006-01-03) I saw several newly ripped files disappear while MusicMatch was doing the 'deferred lookup' after it had crashed and I had restarted it. I watched them disappear one-by-one (bang, bang, bang - gone!) from the Explorer window that was running in the background. They are not in the recycle bin. In some cases it left 2 or 3 tracks in the album folder and in others it wiped all of the tracks in the directory. I may try to un-delete them with a file utility tool but have not tried that yet. I may just rip them again with an alternate ripper.

I will be un-installing MusicMatch and using an alternate - I also do not need the aggravation from a piece of software with such incredibly BAD behaviour. What else might it be deleting??? (To be fair, prior versions of MusicMatch did not ever give me a problem like this).

Taking backups to allow for file restoration is all well and good, however in this case it would not have helped. One would need a backup product that does continuous data replication and although these exist, they are really enterprise-class and not consumer products. Or I suppose I could have taken a backup after each disc I ripped... (ya sure - bye bye MusicMatch)

Regards,
- Dean

I had a group of CDs that I had burned disappear from Music Match (at least 50 CDs). I have hardware and software firewalls and use Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy for spyware. I don't believe I have any malware. I've never used any P2P programs.

The number and names of the CDs that disappeared didn't follow any particular rhyme or reason (ie. they weren't in a particular date or aphabetic range. I'm really puzzled. It hadn't occured to me until yesterday that this could be a glitch with the program. I'm using 9.00.1 version of Music Match Jukebox.

I think I have a backup of most of the music. I had already decided to reinstall my operating system and programs because I had noticed some slowdown in performance compared to how my computer performed when I first bought it. I'm running XP.

I think I'll be switching mp3 programs too. Does anyone have any recommendations for a program, hopefully free?

Chalres

a virus. You can't blame your software for missing files or slow performance when that happens. Further, you can't be sure which downloaded file has the virus. Even if you rebuild your machine, you may reintroduce the virus as soon as you load your music. Good luck.

There are too many examples of exploits by JPEG, now the WMF and other media player content.

Please update your knowledge base.

Bob

I have also had music disappear from my music library. I am using Windows media player 11, and what is happening is really bizarre. Certain songs from my own CD collection will post to the library as I add them. Then the next day they are gone. So I re-recorded them, they were added to the library, and the next day, gone again! All the same CDs and artists disappeared both times. I have a folder of unknown artist, but when I open the folder it is empty. There were also certain songs that stayed in the library for a few days, then were taken away with the second batch that disappeared.
Next time I synced up with my MP3 (which had some of the elusive songs on it, it took them off my MP3 too. Now I'm afraid to sync anymore, or I will lose them, too.
Any advice out there?

I too have had this problem. But, only certain MP3's dissapear. I have DL'd many songs off limewire and had only a few certain ones do this. for instance "Jane"- LA guns, I have DL'd this song liek 3 times now. It dissapears off my HD, so I burned the ***** and have a hardcopy of it. I often wonder if its sometign encoded in the mp3 for copywrite stuff. Why would it happen to this mp3 but not the others. Its not random.

I too have suspected MM for some time.
Even after I moved my mp3 collection to another drive - it appears to have "kept track" of the files, and removed still more mp3 files.

I have just uninstalled MusicMatch - now I use MediaMonkey (it's free and MUCH better than MM, imho)

It's too bad that I gave MM the benefit of the doubt - always suspecting rootkits, malware, etc -- now I have quite the mess to clean up (and re-rip my 1000+ CDs !

I feel you. At first I thought I was going crazy doubting whether or not I actually had the mp3 on my hard drive in the first place. But just the other day with all the Kanye West controversy I go to play my West mp3s and poof they were gone. Although I hadn't listen to it in like forever this was one album I without a doubt knew I had. I then looked around and lo and behold my Beyonce, Common, Miles Davis were all gone and probably some others I don't miss. However, most are still available.

I do not know what the problem is but just wanted to let you know that you are not alone.

...to all the other good suggestions, have you tried to run scandisk or whatever to fix your FAT, FAT32, or NTFS? Do any other files disappear? And do a diskwide search on the filenames?