iTunes hard drive music question

[jakartajive]

I saw somewhere else earlier today a post by Babycart that said something along the lines of him now having a hard drive full of music he can no longer access due to the fact that there's been a mad clampdown on online file sharing.

This may explain something I've been wondering about myself recently, but I'm curious to see if anyone else has had the same problem.
Over the last few years, I've ended up with upwards of 6000 songs on my iTunes on my desktop.
Some of these were burned from CD compilations, others downloaded from blogs, etc.
Recently, about 90% of what was there seems to have vanished and every time I click on a song, it tells me this:
This song could not be used because the original file could not be found.

Is anyone else experiencing this?
Or am I being an idiot?
Again.

[ginghamkitchen]

Have you lost the files from your HD or just from i-tunes? If you've ever moved the files around they have to be reimported into i-tunes from the new file path.

[jakartajive]

Have you lost the files from your HD or just from i-tunes? If you've ever moved the files around they have to be reimported into i-tunes from the new file path.

They seem to have vanished from everywhere.
When I search the whole computer, they've gone!

[alanmck]

not sure it'll make a difference, but have you tried searching for the mp3s using Finder, rather than iTunes?

[jakartajive]

not sure it'll make a difference, but have you tried searching for the mp3s using Finder, rather than iTunes?

Yep. Nada.

[Tsundoku]

there's been a mad clampdown on online file sharing

I don't think this is the explanation though. Whatever is happening online should not be affecting what's happening on your computer. I'd guess there's some kinda problem with your computer and file location. If it's not coming up through Finder, that'd suggest some kinda HD malfunction to me.

By the way - My ability to pirare pretty much whatever I want via Pirate Bay and proxies doesn't seem to have been affected by this clampdown. I cna't see that going away anytime soon, though blogs like Mutant Sound have been a bit crippled by Rapidshare etc. being taken out of the frame.

[babycart]

I saw somewhere else earlier today a post by Babycart that said something along the lines of him now having a hard drive full of music he can no longer access due to the fact that there's been a mad clampdown on online file sharing.
.

It's not that I can´t access it. it´s just that it ain´t out there any more.
I was pretty much strip-mining Loronix, seeing as I´d never a. find . afford almost everything on there, until it disappeared with all its links, and even prompted an "Orphans of Loronix" site ( orfaosdeloronix ).

abracadabra-br2 was even better than Loronix in many ways, but its gone too.

Anyway. I lost a file of salsa stuff last year and was toying with the idea of doing the Windows "restore computer to previous date" thing to see if that would magically restore it, but I didn´t dare in the end. Has this worked for anyone else?