MacBook Pro - iTunes/TV Downloads Missing - Apple Genius Can’t Help

where those tv series you purchased from apples itune store?

the usual way of such things are not really that you download a file but that the purchase are forever tied to your apple account so you can stream it from any device you use with the apple account attached.

if it's physical files you downloaded from another place you purchased them then you need to add them to iTunes or apple tv app on the computer yourself

Losing how?

What exactly happened in iTunes or how were you accessing them?

Did you at some point change libraries?

Can you find the files for the shows in the external drives?

It's a bit hard to offer help, when we have no idea how these shows were kept or where they were accessed before, or what may have changed in the interim.

Sounds like the downloaded shows might still be in the external drive, but iTunes is just unable to find them.

Why exactly don't you want to redownload them? That would be the easiest option if your account still shows them as purchased and available.

If you explain exactly where you stored them or what you did to save them to the external drives exactly, we may be able to find them and get iTunes to see them again.

Otherwise, this is a guessing game as we have no way of knowing what you did.

as stated with apple stuff you don't own physical media so if you downloaded something that's irrelevant, if you purchased it it will forever show up under your apple account for you to stream or redownload in iTunes (if older windows platform) or appletv app on windows and macOS just login using the apple account the media was purchased with

Are you sure they disappeared from the external hard drive?

Did you do something, or did something happing prior to losing the downloaded episodes?

How did you move them out to the external drive in the first place? What did you do?

You really need to explain what you did to move them in detail. Remember we can't see your computer, so we don't know what you'd id or are seeing.

Have you searched the hard drive for them specifically.

If you were accessing them through the TV App, make sure it loading the correct Library. It may have been unable to load the library on the external drive at some point, and reverted to one on the internal one that does have those episodes downloaded.

You can quit the TV app entirely and then re-open it while holding down the option key on your keyboard, and it should let you Choose a Different Library. You can then navigate to the external drive and find the TV Library.tvlibrary file and select it. That may then load the correct library with the downloaded episodes.

Outside of that, you will need to find them yourself on the external drive assuming they are still there. We can't just magically make them come back, more so because we still have no idea what may have happened to them.

if it was purchased from apple using your apple account then if it was me then I would reach out to them

 reportaproblem.apple.com.

writing here will not accomplish much

these forums are user helping other users like yourself, it's sort of going

to a physical apple store and asking other customers there advice

Linda1234567890 wrote:

Hi,

I’m not sure what happened to my files. I know I went to settings to have things downloaded to an external drive….the location address was something like iTunes/MyHD/……something.

O.k, that sounds like you just changed the Media Location. You can go back in to Apple TV menu ➜ Settings ➜ Files ➜ Media Location, to see where it set to.

This means all future imports and downloads get saved there, but it does not move existing downloads there on its own. You would have needed to move them yourself and then point iTunes now the TV App to the new location.

The location address changes to my Mac when iTunes overrides my external HD link. I have used Finder to try to find my files but I can’t find them.

Not sure what that means. iTunes or more specifically, one of the 3 apps, Music, TV, Podcasts that hold your libraries does not override any HD link. If the Media location is set to the external drive it will remain as such unless, the app cannot find the external drive for some reason.

As I said before, if the drive was unavailable at some point when you opened the TV App, and it was loading a library from there normally, then it would by default generate a new library on the internal drive without any of the content from the external drive. Otherwise it would be unable to start.

I am not sure what happened because I haven’t touched my Mac in years except to download the update versions of the OS. I mainly use my iPhone and iPad.

For some reason my iPhone and iPad can stream all of my TV series (12 or is it 15 seasons of Criminal Minds, 10 seasons of X-Files) through the Apple TV app but I can’t access Dr Who series purchases. The Dr Who series are no longer on my external HD.

They can't just delete by themselves. The iPhone and iPad would access them from the store and stream them, not from an external drive at all.

So it seems there's 2 separate issues here. The files not available on an external drive, and the Dr. Who purchases not visible on your account.

click here ➜ View your purchase history for the App Store and other Apple media services - Apple Support

With that said, it's probably a better idea to go to an Apple Store with the MacBook Pro and the external drive and see if they can help you there in person find your downloads.

They are probably still there somewhere. Just not very clearly accessible.

The Purchases may or may not be available for download as changes to the iTunes Store catalog can and do happen from time to time so certain things may become unavailable for a while and then maybe come back.