My 10,000 Songs Gone

[Mat]

Hi

Probably the worst thing ever happened! I have a 4G iPod 40GB. Yesterday I was putting some songs on it and all went as normal. Then when I got to work I went to play mt iPod and the only playlist was On-The-Go, then I checked Artists, no artists there. I had a look at About, and it read 0 songs. Pure devastation wracked my body and I contemplated ending it all, but I pulled through. So I'm guessing something went wrong somewhere. Is there any way that I can get my songs back? It's not like the songs are just sitting on my computer, many of them have been deleted beacause I thought 'I don't need them on my computer cos they're on my iPod now'

Any/all help much appreciated.

Mat

[symphonix]

Its very unwise to delete the songs from your computer. You would be just as stuck if your iPod were stolen or damaged. I also *strongly* recommend that you backup your iTunes library. Even if you still have the CDs there to rip from again, ripping a hundred CDs is a tedious task, so you don't want to have to ever do it again. Back up your files.

By deleting the songs in iTunes, the next time you sync your iPod with itunes you're essentially telling it that you want to delete those songs.

I hope you have a backup of your iTunes library, otherwise you'll be importing all those songs all over again. If you do have to reimport your CDs, then make sure you've got an Internet connection up and running so iTunes can get your track-names automatically.

[Mat]

I had started the arduous task of re-importing all my songs and transferring them all to my Pod, then my iBook ffroze up for a while, came back and all the songs were gone again. ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

What is going on? I'm ready to toss this iBook out the window.

[Mat]

Wanting to get to the bottom of what's going on I did some tests. I tried to put a few songs on my Pod. They all transferred across fine in iTunes (or seemed to), then once I disconnected the iPod there were no songs on it. What's the deal? Is it the iBook, is it the iPod? Can anyone help me out in any way?

Mat

[Mat]

Whoa, slow down guys, don't all reply at once.

Thanks Symphonix for the help, I discovered it was the iPod. I restored to factory settings and now all is working again. Unfortunately I still have to find all the music and transfer it all again. I suppose it's a chance to clean out anything that isn't essential listening and gives me a chance to make sure everything is at the same bit rate.

Mat

[Thank The Cheese]

I"m confused about your set-up. If you have 10,000 songs on your iPod, then you must have 10,000 in your iTunes library -- there's just no other way to do it AFAIK (unless you go to great lengths using open source apps).

if you have 10,000 songs in iTunes, then transfer it over to your iPod, and then delete 1,000 songs from iTunes, then you could never connect it to your Mac while iTunes is running again, because those 1,000 songs you deleted from iTunes would then be deleted from your iPod.

If that is what you have been doing, that could be why your iPod had to be reset -- I find it is easy to confuse and corrupt an iPod when you start changing the iTunes library between synchronizations. I once plugged my iPod in to my friends computer and it stuffed my iPod up until i re-set it because it got all confused between my library and hers.

Like symphonix said: you should never treat the ipod like a permanent storage device, that's not how it was ever intended to be used.

[Mat]

No dude, I manually update my iPod through iTunes. My sister tends to put crap music on my computer and I don't want it on my iPod, so I use the manual update. It's way better IMO, much quicker.

I don't have the biggest hard drive on my iBook so I deleted some albums, and having them on my iPod, was pretty confident they would be OK. Now I know otherwise. I realised there was a risk of this happening and that's OK.

[fryke]

You could create a user-account for your sister so she's not filling your iTunes library... Setting up the iPod to autosync with iTunes, in my opinion, is the best thing since sliced bread. And it doesn't really get quicker than that.