Retrieve iTunes??

[cjensens]

Is there anyway to retrieve iTunes music library that was lost when my son reformatted his hard drive?? He was running windows XP, experienced problems and thought the solution was to reformat his hard drive.......he lost 2000+ songs he had downloaded.

I don't think there is, but thought if anyone would know if there is a chance to retrieve them, this forum would.
Thanks!

[pam123]

I hate to tell you this but unless he has the music backed up or on his iPod ( ( See article link at bottom for how to get it back if it's on the iPod. ) it's gone for good.
Apple will not let you re-download music after you buy it except under exceptional circumstances. Once you buy it's your job to keep it backed up.

If it's all on his iPod then read this article on getting it back : http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/art...d-to-computer/

[cjensens]

no, he didn't use an iPod....he just used iTunes to store his music that he had acquired. I thought that when you reformat your harddrive, you are basicallly just "freezing" them; the actual files are still on your harddrive somewhere. I could be way wrong though. If they are still there, isn't there some type of program that could retrieve them?

thanks.

[David M]

All is not necessarily lost.

There is data recovery software that allows you to retrieve data that was written to a drive that has been overwritten. But, where the new OS has made changes to specific sectors, that data has been changed and therefore is not recoverable. There may still be songs left on the drive that the data recovery software just might find.

For now, stop using that drive because every time you do more sectors are overwritten by the new OS.

Do a Google search for this type of software.

[MrDravenX]

Originally Posted by pam123 I hate to tell you this but unless he has the music backed up or on his iPod ( ( See article link at bottom for how to get it back if it's on the iPod. ) it's gone for good. Apple will not let you re-download music after you buy it except under exceptional circumstances. Once you buy it's your job to keep it backed up.

Another great example of why Apple is evil. When you reformat a drive it will delete all the files on the drive. There are tools out there to try to recover files but don't count on it just in case.