Doug, I myself don't know if it is at all possible. I am thinking - and maybe the apple experts in here know more than me - that iTunes incorporated the "My Documents/Archive" directory in those managed by it, and asked some questions like "do you want to add this humongous 500GB dir to your Colletion?"; could my friend have misinterpreted the question, clicked some yes/no, and killed the dir? It seems to me a bit too bad, even for iTunes.