HELP, I lost all my MP3 music files when my computer crashed!

Aug. 10, 2023 | Vanity

[zeugma]

Yep. Multiple copies, too. I have some FLAC/MP3 files I've ripped from our collection of roughly 1,500 CDs (a lot of CD compilations & greatest hits among them). Used mainly for our vehicles. I can gather the music again if I were to lose them, but it would be a lot of work (especially getting the tagging right for the vehicle displays). As such, I have the files on FIVE different drives. Yeah, I'm that paranoid.

You're right. Rebuilding from scratch is a serious pain. Several years ago I decided to re-rip my entire catalog of tunes at a much higher bitrate than I had originally. Took quite a while. Fortunately, the new collection is now much more consistent in it's tagging and filename conventions. It was worth the effort. I also have several albums that I went ahead and ripped as single tracks, as I occasionally like to listen to the entire thing as it was recorded.

[zeugma]

Can’t play vinyl in the car. But if you do, avoid the bumps.

I believe Mercedes had a commercial years ago with someone playing vinyl in the car.

[zeugma]

$10/mo might seem expensive to some but for me it actually saved me a lot of money as I used to buy at least 3-5 music albums a month prior to going with a music subscription service. Now I don't buy any albums at all, while having access to all of them.

Some of us prefer to have hardcopy backups of our data. If you don't own it, you can be denied access to it at any time for any reason.

[PROCON]

Hallelujah! I'm not as big an idiot as I thought!

I hardly ever use a thumb drive but I checked the only one I have and I had saved all my music on it, from 3 years ago when I upgraded to a faster 'puter!

Now I downloaded it to my hard drive and all 1200+ tunes are there, listening to ZZ Top right now.

Thanks for all your advice, but as Emily Litella would say:

[Red Badger]

[Jamestown1630]

Yes; very different today from yesterday’s ‘floppy’ disks.

[Organic Panic]

Hillary? Is that you?

As long as the hard drive is physically OK your files are on there. Get yourself a USB external hard drive reader and you should be able to copy all your files to the new computer. It is super simple.

[Navy Patriot]

Excellent! Glad you saved your MP3’s!

[Jamestown1630]

The way things are going, someday long from now when humans no longer exist on Earth, our entire recorded history, just about every book ever written, etc., will be left somewhere to testify.

[sauropod]

.

[Osage Orange]

I have albums....I know nothing about MP3 files....

[A Navy Vet]

Always in the last place you look. Good for you and good selection with ZZ. I also have my music saved on thumb drives.

Although when in serious listening mode in the Cave with serious audio/video, I prefer CD's with their .wav files over MP3. Being a drummer, I can hear the difference in the high hat sssssizzle between the two. Maybe MP3's have improved their top frequency range - don't know.

[Captain Peter Blood]

Good deal , glad it worked out. I would to have hated to lose that much music I had collected.

At one point we would have backed it all up on a CD-Rom or DVD drive and now a small thumb drive will work even better.