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#1
How do I identify and remove corrupted files from my Music Library?
I recently tried playing some music in Winamp and kept running into an issue where files would playback incorrectly. Instead of playing the displayed/selected music file, another song would playback (one from a completely different album/artist). This is a consistent problem and is repeatable.
At first I assumed that the files had been corrupted while being transferred to and from a (new) portable hard drive to my (new) laptop. However, after checking the files on the desktop they were originally transferred from it became apparent that they had been corrupted at the source. Then it dawned on me - I had remembered that one night I had accidentally deleted my entire music library (somehow the music library was copied into my pictures library and I had figured that a shortcut had accidentally been placed there, so I deleted it thinking it was just a shortcut or copy). Upon complete shock, I frantically tried to restore the files. I downloaded Recuva on another computer and installed the program to restore the files. Everything seemed fine, as Recuva reported all the files had been fully recovered, and upon initial playback things seemed fine.
About a couple of months after this incident, before moving to a different country, I purchased a new laptop (as my desktop would be too large and costly to ship) and a portable hard drive to store my files. After installing Winamp and playing some music, I encountered the problem I described in the first paragraph. I thought it was a problem with Winamp reading back the files. I then uninstalled Winamp and installed Foobar. This did not fix the problem. I then recopied the files from my desktop to my laptop through LAN and this did not work either. It was at this point that I remembered that the files had been accidentally deleted previously and then realized that they must have become corrupted.
So now I am here, almost all the songs play, but are playing back incorrectly (not as the file which is displayed), and a few files do not play at all (complete silence and skip to the next track).
I have explored my options online and it seems that there is no way to recover these corrupted files or re-tag them to display the song which is actually playing.
Now my question is this - is there a utility or command line which can identify which songs are corrupted in my library (~ 90+GB) so I can then delete them?
I know there are some large chunks of the library with contain no corrupted files and I don't feel like deleting all of my music.
Sorry for the long-winded OP. I hope this can be resolved. Thank you.