Database Corruption Recovery

Starting with beaTunes 4.0.2, you can initiate database recovery (repair) from the Tools menu of beaTunes. The process is pretty much self-explanatory. Just note that repair differs from recreation in that repair attempts to save all data that's in your database, while recreation just re-builds the database from scratch using your media files.

Should you use an older version of beaTunes or cannot access the Tools menu, please follow the steps outlined below.

beaTunes 3.5.5 and later supports a mechanism for database recovery.
If you are experiencing database related errors (task queue frozen, new songs don't show up, JDBCExceptions, ...), please follow these steps:

  1. Shut down beaTunes, if it is running.
  2. Place a file named recover (no file extension, content does not matter) into the database folder (for location, please see below).
  3. Then start beaTunes.

beaTunes will now attempt to rebuild the database. It will let you know, if it succeeded or not.

Oftentimes, database corruption is the result of memory problems. Please also see OutOfMemoryError to avoid problems in the future.

Database folder locations for beaTunes 3 and later:

  • Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\tagtraum industries\beaTunes\database
  • Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\tagtraum industries\beaTunes\database
  • OS X/macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/beaTunes/Database

On OS X/macOS the directory denoted as [your_home] or ~ is not your harddrive, but your home directory. You can get to it by opening a Finder window and clicking on the little house icon.

Also, starting with version 10.7 (Lion), OS X hides the user Library folder from you (while you can still see the system Library). To get to the user Library, use the Go menu in Finder.

On Windows the Windows Explorer may hide the folder AppData from you. To navigate to it, you can simply type the path into the Explorer navigation bar or tell Explorer to show hidden files.