MediaMonkey 3.2 destroyed my hard drive

[agw]

Today I installed MediaMonkey 3.2.0.1294, since my iTunes has been stuttering audio for a while. I wanted to see if MediaMonkey might be better for me. I keep all my music on a single drive (E:). While MediaMonkey was scanning this drive, I tried to play a song, but it would just continue skipping to the next song. The skipped songs would then appear grey in the library, whereas the normal songs appear black. I assume this means the song's file could not be found.

I thought nothing of this, but since MediaMonkey doesn't offer some of the features that iTunes offers (advanced auto playlist functions, etc.), except with a Gold version, I decided to return to iTunes. I uninstalled MediaMonkey.

When I opened iTunes again, none of my songs would play. They show the (!) exclamation mark symbol, meaning the files cannot be located. When I opened E:\Music, nothing showed up. I rebooted the computer, but now when I try to open the E: drive, I receive the following message:

The disk in drive E is not formatted.
Do you want to format it now?

I dread the thought of having lost my entire library: 26,000 songs / 150 GB. What happened? What can be done?

[Edit: I use Windows XP Professional with SP3.]

[Guest]

Sounds like you have a failing hard drive. That's the reason your iTunes would have been stuttering. When MediaMonkey started accessing it to build the library, the hard drive went from "failing" to "failed". If you would have rebuilt your library in iTunes it would have done the same thing.

There are utilities and tools to recover data from a failed/failing hard drive, but it's hit or miss on the results. The other alternative is to take it to a professional, but that will be expensive.

Hope you backed up your library someplace! After I lost about 200gb of MP3's I started keeping them on a mirrored array and then on two separate computers as insurance!

[Laeotaekhun]

Sounds like you have a failing hard drive. That's the reason your iTunes would have been stuttering. When MediaMonkey started accessing it to build the library, the hard drive went from "failing" to "failed". If you would have rebuilt your library in iTunes it would have done the same thing.

There are utilities and tools to recover data from a failed/failing hard drive, but it's hit or miss on the results. The other alternative is to take it to a professional, but that will be expensive.

Hope you backed up your library someplace! After I lost about 200gb of MP3's I started keeping them on a mirrored array and then on two separate computers as insurance!

The OP attempted to make an "earth shattering" headline which, IMHO, was designed to cover up for his/her own incompetence!

Surely, file back up is now something that any sensible person does on a weekly (better daily) basis?

Seems not!

[Lowlander]

The scan probably was too much stress for the hard drive, but the hard drive was bad to start with. So this wouldn't be MediaMonkey's fault. I do hope you have a backup to recover from.

[rovingcowboy]

a weekly back up ? your nuts did you mean that? with music that would be a lot of cdroms.
i know i do a monthy or by monthly back up on the compter when i add songs some times it is 8 months.
and i got a hundred cdroms of backed up songs.

i also have this other computer for an back up of them so i have double but most important is BACK UP THE DATA YOU WANT SAVED. be it songs or email or software codes what ever you can't replace from a store bought cdrom.

leolaport use to say that all the time back up, back up, back up and back up some more.
and that was on windows 98 and winMe he was saying that so its been known for ever.

but one more time can't hurt.
BACK UP YOUR DATA.

its also a good idea to run a surface scan of the hard drives once a year to make sure you find the bad sectors before the whole drive goes bad and that way you know to get a new one.

[Philosfr]

a weekly back up ? your nuts did you mean that? with music that would be a lot of cdroms.

With as cheap as hard drives are these days, simply back it up to a second hard drive. Or third hard drive to be extra safe. Or burn it to DVD or even Blu-ray now days.

[Laeotaekhun]

a weekly back up ? your nuts did you mean that? with music that would be a lot of cdroms.
i know i do a monthy or by monthly back up on the compter when i add songs some times it is 8 months.
and i got a hundred cdroms of backed up songs.

i also have this other computer for an back up of them so i have double but most important is BACK UP THE DATA YOU WANT SAVED. be it songs or email or software codes what ever you can't replace from a store bought cdrom.

leolaport use to say that all the time back up, back up, back up and back up some more.
and that was on windows 98 and winMe he was saying that so its been known for ever.

but one more time can't hurt.
BACK UP YOUR DATA.

its also a good idea to run a surface scan of the hard drives once a year to make sure you find the bad sectors before the whole drive goes bad and that way you know to get a new one.

Yep!

Probably to both, but I don't use CD's or DVD's.

I use a 300GB external hard drive - partitioned 50/50 so my music etc is on one side and the back up of my system (including music/videos) is on the other - far less hassle!

It's done automatically as I sleep!

[nynaevelan]

I have my music backed up on two external drives as well as the original internal drive, and mine is done on a daily basis.

[rovingcowboy]

i can see doing documents and other files you edit everyday being backed up every day but what if that back up hd goes? and backing up music every day? why you only put the tags on it once?

why would you back it up over and over and over and have all them copys and take a chance on the hd going out too.
i use my back up computer for adding the songs to the phillips cause they are all on that computer and i play music on it from time to time when i don't want to hear the radio's scheduled list, so its getting use.

but i always take the songs to the jukebox computer add them to a temp folder and when i think i have enough in the temp folder to add to a cd i burn them to a cd by the cdburnerxp program, and then use monkey to move them to the proper locations on the library hd's this way i don't need to do backups only on a long time frame.
i already have the entire win98 os and other programs backed up on cdroms just incase. so only thing i back up is the songs to the cdroms, makes sense to have them in 3 places i know but i also have most the libray at mom and dads, so thats 4 places ( i got to up date their back up copys. )

[Anubis]

I have 5 backups...
1) to an external USB hard drive I keep at home and swap with #2 monthly
2) to an external USB drive I keep at my parents and swap with #1 monthly
External USB drives are cheap as chips now a days. For this backup I use Microsoft's SyncToy. It only does the changes when ever I run the backup (weekly to bi-weekly)

3) to my own backup server running IBM's TSM,
4) and then from #3, it is spooled off an external vendor, I use my work's system, but it could just as easily be Amazon's S3, Dell's off site back, Mozy@Home, etc..
Again, TSM is run daily, and only back's up the things that have changed. The offsite backup's are spooled off-site straight away.

5) My disks are mirrored.

This process has served me well for many years, touch wood.

Oh, btw, I run grc.com's SpinRite to keep my hard disks in good shape quarterly. Best $80 anybody could spend.

OK, I'm paranoid!

[jc836]

MY 2 cents:
Buy several HDD and put 1 in the main computer set up as a mirror/image drive that is only accessed to update data and is complete for a full restore. Second drive in an external case saving only the programs and data that you cannot recover any other way.
I store all of my music and special documents on both CD and DVD and have them stored in our safe. These are redone on an annual basis. Music is always bought on CD and those are stored in a safe location away from other resources. No, I'm not paranoid - I think this method works. Additionally, my laptop has 2 drives so that I can recover the internal one if need be.

A backup strategy is one that has enough coverage most every situation that can befall the user. If you have really valuable music files, then you must use multiple methods to preserve them. I happen to have all of my family history (130+ years worth)stored both locally and at several off-site locations. That was my decision and uses 2 methods.

Yes-Leo Laporte is right. Plan a strategy and follow it. Media Monkey does not have any code in it that wipes a hard drive or can directly cause it to fail. Sure, overworking an old drive will eventually cause its demise. Remember drives do have a finite operating life.
Happy holidays

[nynaevelan]

i can see doing documents and other files you edit everyday being backed up every day but what if that back up hd goes? and backing up music every day? why you only put the tags on it once?

I add new music to my library every couple of days, so yes I want to have a couple of backups in order to protect my music. I also make changes to some of my music so once again I do not want to lose my hard work. And my backups only need to add the new music, not rebackup the entire collection.

why would you back it up over and over and over and have all them copys and take a chance on the hd going out too.

I have my music on three different hard drives, so barring any natural disasters it is unlikely I would lose all three, so I would be able to recover from it. That is not to mention the copies I have on my external hard drive at work and the partial copies I have on my laptop. I love my music more than I love some of my personal files and I have no intentions of losing all my hard work due to laziness or an oversight on my part. I lost my collection twice before, once due to a hard drive failure and once due to my own idiocy, so this time I am taking no chances.

but i always take the songs to the jukebox computer add them to a temp folder and when i think i have enough in the temp folder to add to a cd i burn them to a cd by the cdburnerxp program, and then use monkey to move them to the proper locations on the library hd's this way i don't need to do backups only on a long time frame.
i already have the entire win98 os and other programs backed up on cdroms just incase. so only thing i back up is the songs to the cdroms, makes sense to have them in 3 places i know but i also have most the libray at mom and dads, so thats 4 places ( i got to up date their back up copys. )

My music files alone are almost 150 gbs so cds or dvds are not an option for me.

[redelephant]

As this thread seems to have turned into a discussion on backups (no bad thing) - here's my 2 penn'orth....

I had a "C" drive failure a few years ago, taught me a valuable lesson, since then I have backed everything, every day.

I searched long and hard for backup software to make this easy to do, and only backup files that had changed or were new -otherwise it takes too long. I can recommend Karens Replicator - just a simple and straightforward copier of files from one place to another.

As others have said, external hard drives are so cheap now it is simply not worth the risk of not having a backup drive (or two).

PS beware the terabyte bug - if you want to use a terabyte (or larger) drive on a computer that is a few years old, you you may need to tweak the BIOS settings - some older setups can't recognise numbers above whatever a terabyte minus one is. Plenty of info on the web about this (thankfully!).

[gds]

leolaport use to say that all the time back up, back up, back up and back up some more.

He also used to say "CALL FOR DUTY!"
Darn-it, that tv show sucked after they left.

[agraham]

I don't backup. Never have, never will.
When I get a new HD, I copy my stuff onto it and the old one gets thrown in a corner and becomes the backup.
My pictures are on flickr, my email is in GMail, my docs are for the most part on Google docs except for old stuff from school days that is on an old 50GB drive in a closet anyway.
My music is on emusic and the old stuff is on the original CDs.
These days rather than rip the CDs again I would just download the flacs from wherever.
It would be annoying to organize my collection again, but with all the time and money I've saved in twenty years of never backing anything up it won't be a big deal.
And anyway, I'll in all likelyhood be replacing my 1TB drive with a 10TB in 2012 and the 1TB will be thrown onto the pile. I'll be very surprized if it fails before that.

My 2c.