I had a backup but it failed
My iTunes folder is on an external Thunderbolt hard disk, and my Time Capsule backs up my Mac mini and the iTunes folder. After a power cut, iTunes said that iTunes Library.itl wasn’t valid and it had created a new one. It then showed my purchases, available to redownload, but not anything already on the drive, including albums ripped from CDs. Restoring the library file from before the power cut hasn’t helped. Can I avoid redownloading everything and just point iTunes to the media already on my drive? Ray McCarthy Before you give up on your backup, I would try restoring the entire iTunes folder in ~/Music. If that doesn’t work, try restoring from a week or two further back, just to make sure that there isn’t a corrupted file in the backup just prior to the power cut. If that still doesn’t work, you definitely don’t need to download all your purchases again. You still have them all on your external drive. All that’s missing are the entries in the library file. Make sure that iTunes > Preferences > Advanced has ‘Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library’ unticked, then click File > Add to Library and point to the folders on your external drive.