Why would you allow SB to delete half of my music?

Have you not backed up your music?

I've backed up whatever I have left after this incident.

But the issue isn't backing music up. I shouldn't have to make a back up of 5,000+ songs just to use a feature in a program that has passed through beta testing. I think it's ridiculous that this feature would have the capability to delete song files in bulk (without sending them to the recycle bin or somewhere where they can be recovered) in the first place.

If you don't back up then you're onto a losing streak, sorry that this has happened to you but common sense should have prevailed.

Granted. My music should have been backed up. But at the same time I shouldn't have to suspect my music player will delete 2500 tracks permanently. Or am I missing something here?

Are you sure the files are actually deleted? Could they have just been moved and/or renamed in an unexpected way?

Yes, they've been deleted entirely. I don't have a lot of nonsense clogging my computer as I use it mostly for music and artwork. I tried finding any trace of the music I lost right away and came up empty-handed. Some of my friends had a couple of my rarer albums (I listen to a lot of obscure stuff, which took me a long time to get my hands on), so I was luckily about to *ahem* borrow the music from them for now. But that still leaves me with 2200 or so songs lost.

I hate to be so virulent about all of this, but the fact of the matter is that I'm furious that a feature which should have helped organize my music destroyed 2500 files.

Mike M: You're right about people not expecting their music libraries to be partially or even fully deleted but it does happen and this is usually by user error (in my case it was).

Dustin Grey: It's a shame that this has happened and I hope that you manage to get all the music back that has been deleted.

The same thing just happened to me! Over 3000 songs gone!!!!!
Majority of which were not backed up!!! because windows has just recently crashed on me and I wasn't able to access my files until my eldest son partitioned my hard drive and put Linux Ubuntu on one half enabling me to transfer the songs across so I could back them up...I was all set to do that but thought I'd give songbird a go yesterday to see if it works with my hubbys ipod (it was his bday yesterday so wanted to set it up for him) Wish I'd never installed songbird now!!!
I am so upset about this!!!!
I want my music back!
I can't afford to go and buy all of that music again!
Does anyone have any suggestions??? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeze???????
regards
Shirley

Lost a boatload of tracks myself, but now I've found them. Under Unknown Artist, Unknown Album. alphabetized. all 46 gigs. At least they're still there.
Why all this media management crap? why do media players have to copy everything from here to there and then re-organize it in the most inconvenient way? This is why I hate iTunes. Now I also hate Songbird.

So clicking one little button completely changes (renames, deletes, creates) my entire directory structure and the file names of everything within it?! And with no warning whatsoever?! Holy CRAP. I had everything sorted in the exact folders I wanted, and all the file names exactly as I wanted, and now it's all totally DESTROYED. Holy CRAP. I can't even fix it manually. It's all totally beyond repair. I've never in my life had a program mutilate my hard drive file contents so horribly.


I didn't even check off the "Rename files as" box!


Shouldn't there be a message in bright red text as a warning?


Now I know what the @$@#% "Preview" button is for.


#@%@#%@!!!

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
File names & directory structure destroyed!.

Hi Guys

I'm sorry to hear about your deleted music collection. There haven't been any solutions to solve your problem yet. I don't know much about that, but i think it could be possible to recover your data with a recovery tool:
PC Inspector
I think it's a mighty tool though i don't know whether it helps you.

Give it a try and let me know if it worked.

I've lost most part of my music collection (about 1000 songs) e and think is ridiculous the rustic posture of scouser73, cause I didn't even know about the crash in music manage music in conflict with the library and watch folder.
I'm sorry to be a little rude in my reply but you (all team) need to work based in more confident.
And the essential is: you need fix this problem with extreme urgency! (like priority #1). My suggestion is to do a kind of recall of all songbird users with objective they don't lost their music collections too.
Yes, even so I will continue with songbird. I still have hope.
Why are you doing to make it the Firefox of media players?

I've lost most part of my music collection (about 1000 songs) e and think is ridiculous the rustic posture of scouser73, cause I didn't even know about the crash in music manage music in conflict with the library and watch folder.
I'm sorry to be a little rude in my reply but you (all team) need to work based in more confident.
And the essential is: you need fix this problem with extreme urgency! (like priority #1). My suggestion is to do a kind of recall of all songbird users with objective they don't lost their music collections too.
Yes, even so I will continue with songbird. I still have hope.
Why are you doing to make it the Firefox of media players?

Sorry for the big delay. I was out, but always following the roadmap and reading songbird documentation. I really dont remenber it (a time ago), neither I'm care about it more. I've been getting a good part of my lost colletion in the web. :-) good notice.

So let's continue talking about how to improve and fix SB. I'm really interested about it. A important thing call me attention about managing music. See:

"4.2 Importing & Managing Your Music"
the explanation about Media Manegement that follows:

"When Managed Mode is enabled, Songbird will delete music from your Library AND Hard Drive by default. If you wish to disable this,..."

Are you getting nut!? Making it able by default? What does really media manegement is for?

Other important questions: 1. if deletion happens, why would I consider it as my root library folder??? The user must be clear about the relation between Library, Media Management and Media Importer (that modify directly the library)

2. Supose I have a old library folder and at present want to use Media Management in those folder. My songs will be deleted so. Am I right? Please, tell me more about and help the users.

Something is scaring me too: there is nothing (blank page without details) in the Kanye roadmap section, about fix the top crashes. Are you concerned mainly in this part, arent you? No doubts that our SB is yet very very buggy. I neither can use a Media view correctly, without a kind of UI error or crash.

Thank you for your patient and heard a Songbird user (I believe in that since beta).
GOOD JOB 4 all.

The problem with media management and track deletion is that there is a warning when you're about to delete a song, but 1. you can waive this warning, 2. it does NOT warn you about physical deletion if media management is active.
I have open a but about that, but no activity on it for the moment: http://bugzilla.songbirdnest.com/show...

About the old library, the thing is, never activate Media Management on a folder that is not empty (I mean, the first time), so, never on the folder where your current old library resides.
There will be a warning for that in Songbird 1.4 (but too shy in my opinion). Using a separate folder needs twice the amount of disk for a while, but has the advantage of doing kind of a backup as it is DUPLICATING files, but not moving /renaming the original. Giving the user the time to perform some check, and maybe to remove the original files when he his confident with Songbird.

About crashes, I must say that on my Windows XP with Songbird 1.3 for a while, never had such crashes anymore for long.