Thanks for the "heads up" about HD Tracks policy.

You may want to consider a different music program for your Mac. What you experienced with iTunes is not an isolated instance.

I cannot fathom why these companies want to alienate their paying customer base.  

I'm not sure I could go through the process of re-downloading that music over again.  

I wonder what the hypothetical 'loss' rate of lost downloads is overall compared to disasters destroying LP's and CD's.  

The title of the Dead Kennedy's album 'Give Me Convienence Or Give Me Death' takes on yet another meaning. 

Death, please.

Another fine example of why maintaining one's own personal backup copy (or copies for the very paranoid) is very important - even with a Mac.

And another fine example of why iTunes should only be used to manage the music on one's iPod, iPhone and/or iPad. Otherwise one encounters probelms like this.

One thing I would suggeat that you do before you start to rerip your CD collection (and ripping to lossless is a very good idea) is rip everything to two external hard drives (the main working drive and a full mirrored backup drive) - that way whatever happens to the computer will not effect the data on the external hard drives.

And yes, HDTracks policy is a bit user unfriendly but then again one should have a backup copy of everything and not need to re-download from HDTracks.

Sounds like iTunes was not the problem here, original poster says it was a computer problem. And that iTunes let him re-download their tracks that he had lost. 

Bill B wrote:

Sounds like iTunes was not the problem here, original poster says it was a computer problem. And that iTunes let him re-download their tracks that he had lost. 

Perhaps not but as JoeE SP9 stated "What you experienced with iTunes is not an isolated instance." - which I concur with since my experience over the years of participation on various audio related forums is that iTunes can very tricky at times.

In any case, whether of not it was or wasn't the fault of iTunes, the real fault lies with the original poster for not a complete and useable backup set.