# Music won't show up but is still on iPod // 80GB 5G iPod



## itsmematt (Sep 18, 2007)

So here's the deal. I just updated to iTunes 7.4.2 and now my iPod will not display my playlists/music. When I click on the iPod icon in iTunes and show the display tab it says that I have 70.4 BG of data in "Other" no music, no movies.

So I then double click on my iPod on my desktop only to see that what is on that directory is still just what I had put on there for data transfer and storage. I really have the feeling that I just need to redirect my music to another directory. I haven't heard of anyone else running into this problem. Since the data is still on the "Hard Drive" portion of my iPod I know that the music is still there. If you can help me I just want to transfer all this music onto my computer using Senuti and restore my iPod. I have some music on this iPod that I might not ever be able to get again.

I would love any help that you might be able to bestow upon me. Apple of couse said that there is no way, but I'm sure they are worried about piracy. 

THANKS.
PLEASE.


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## Tommo (Sep 19, 2007)

First try resetting the iPod by pressing and holding the centre button and menu at the same time until it restarts. If this doesn't work you could try a piece of software called Senuti which lets you copy music from your iPod back to yuo computer.


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## fryke (Sep 19, 2007)

He mentioned Senuti already. Wants to have it solved without this long process of having to redo the complete library.


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## Tommo (Sep 19, 2007)

Apologies for that, I got interrupted while reading the original post and missed the last bit of that paragraph. Still might be worth a reset to see if that helps.


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## itsmematt (Sep 19, 2007)

I tried resetting my iPod and I still didn't get anything. It's really weird because without plugging it into a computer it appears as though it was totally wiped clean. But when I plug it into my computer I then I get reminded that my iPod is taunting me by showing all 70+ GBs of music and not letting me have it. My iPod is a bitch, right now.


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## Qion (Sep 19, 2007)

Senuti isn't working, then?


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## itsmematt (Sep 19, 2007)

No it only reads your music library and since iTunes can't read the music library Senuti isn't doing the trick either.


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## grnvnz9 (Feb 11, 2008)

This just happened to me.  I can't believe it.  Im so incredibly pissed.  What the hell is wrong with itunes?  Im not even using a mac.  THis is unacceptable.


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## GoldenArm (Feb 14, 2008)

This just happened to me too.

I plugged my Ipod into a pc which doesn't have Itunes simply to charge the battery (I didn't have my charger with me).

Now I have 118GB of "other" files on a 160GB Ipod Classic.

Someone please help!!!!!


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## GoldenArm (Feb 14, 2008)

OK, I seem to have figured out how to get everything back if your data gets shifted from "Music", "Video" etc.. into "Other" for whatever reason.

1) Plug your Ipod into your pc
2) Find the Ipod in Windows Explorer
3) "Unhide" Hidden files & Folders in Windows
4) In one of the ipod's hidden folders, locate "itunesDB" and an "itunesDB.old_mlpmp"
5) Rename "itunesDB" to "itunesDB.old" (this is the newly corrupted DB), and rename "itunesDB.old_mlpmp" to "itunesDB" (no file extention). This restores the automatic backup of your DB that Apple doesn't seem to think we need to know about...

It worked fine for me. I didn;t pay attention to when the backup was made, I believe it was last time I synced with Itunes. I didn't add anything new on that last sync, so I'm not sure if you will be missing some files if you do this restore and you had changed the Ipod's contents on your last sync...

Either way, it's a whole lot better than rebuilding your library and all your playlists (they have also miraculously re-appeared!)



Hope this helps some of you!


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## Jacksloadedgun (Feb 17, 2008)

alright well since this is macosx.com how about some answers for us mac users??? cause this just happened to me today and i just attempted this and no luck fore me i didn't even have the "mpmp" file.


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## Satcomer (Feb 17, 2008)

Jacksloadedgun said:


> alright well since this is macosx.com how about some answers for us mac users??? cause this just happened to me today and i just attempted this and no luck fore me i didn't even have the "mpmp" file.



Use TinkerTool to hide/unhide files.


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## Jacksloadedgun (Feb 17, 2008)

already did that, i used an automater script to show all hidden files


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## Satcomer (Feb 17, 2008)

What happens when you use Disk Utility on the iPod? Does it reports any errors?


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## kramm (Jun 21, 2008)

GoldenArm said:


> 4) In one of the ipod's hidden folders, locate "itunesDB" and an "itunesDB.old_mlpmp"
> 5) Rename "itunesDB" to "itunesDB.old" (this is the newly corrupted DB), and rename "itunesDB.old_mlpmp" to "itunesDB" (no file extention). This restores the automatic backup of your DB that Apple doesn't seem to think we need to know about...


This just happened to me and I cannot find the "old" file. I would really like to fix it as opposed to restoring it.

Can anyone offer advise before I have to begin moving all the music off my full ipod?


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## kramm (Jun 21, 2008)

Another question...

Is there a way to save my playlists? my whole ipod was completely playlists and I'd like to salvage them if possible.

Before I restore my ipod, can I save a particular file from it to keep them?


Also, I had every song's volume manually adjusted to be even.... is there any way to save this too??


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## MrMike23 (Jan 19, 2009)

GoldenArm said:


> OK, I seem to have figured out how to get everything back if your data gets shifted from "Music", "Video" etc.. into "Other" for whatever reason.
> 
> 1) Plug your Ipod into your pc
> 2) Find the Ipod in Windows Explorer
> ...



OMG I LOVE YOU SOOOO FUCKING MUCH!! this shit happened to my ipod, i never saved any of my music tho, music ill never get again. thanks so much!!!


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## drewm52085 (Jan 25, 2009)

kramm said:


> This just happened to me and I cannot find the "old" file. I would really like to fix it as opposed to restoring it.
> 
> Can anyone offer advise before I have to begin moving all the music off my full ipod?



I couldn't find it either? does ANYONE know any way around this??? My girlfriend is going to kill me if I lost her music.


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## Clownyx13 (Feb 4, 2009)

drewm52085 said:


> I couldn't find it either? does ANYONE know any way around this??? My girlfriend is going to kill me if I lost her music.


For those of you who could not find the itunesDB.old_mlpmp here is my fix

I fixed, i used floola to find the correct itunesDB

For those who cant find it here was my fix
1.Download floola
2.Install floola on youre ipod and make sure floola works and shows youre music if it does not show youre music this wont work.
3.if floola did work and showed all youre music, find the hidden files as stated above
4.find the file itunesDB witch is the only one i found rename it to ItunesDB.old
5.Find the Floola folder inside the hidden files folder there should be an itunesDb file in there(only if floola worked)
6. just copy and paste the file to the same folder that itunesDB.old is in this should work.

let me know if it worked


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## vineshp (Mar 16, 2009)

floola method didnt work for me


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## soft27 (Dec 11, 2009)

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## deasley (Feb 23, 2010)

I have used wind solutions from www.copytrans.net with good success. It does cost 19.99 but seems to be worth it. you can transfer 100 songs with the free download trial version to see if it works before purchasing.


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## Kmac_79 (Mar 26, 2010)

vineshp said:


> floola method didnt work for me


Didn't work for me either. I can find the 'itunesDB' hidden file, but not the 'itunes.old_mlpmp' file. Floola didn't show any of the music stored on the ipod. itunes comes up with a message telling me I need to restore my ipod to factory settings. This sucks. Someone please help!


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## veromx (Nov 24, 2010)

GoldenArm said:


> OK, I seem to have figured out how to get everything back if your data gets shifted from "Music", "Video" etc.. into "Other" for whatever reason.
> 
> 1) Plug your Ipod into your pc
> 2) Find the Ipod in Windows Explorer
> ...



WOW, thank you very much. This saved my life, I had tried to use my Ipod with winamp and when I unplugged the Ipod I couldn't see the music. 
I knew it was still there... thanks to you I got it all back! TKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## LRwHCW (Jul 29, 2011)

I have - I think - the same problem.
my Ipod (generation 6.0, 80 GB) is windows-formated, but I'm using a mac by now.
my old computer died, or the hard drive or both and I didn't manage to copy all the music from my iPod to the mac, for example it didn't copy songs/albums that started with "..." or with other special characters.. or songs that had the same name and artist (although different versions). I wanted to fix it when I had internet, because I hadn't for the first half year, but when I had internet, my computer was updating over night with the ipod plugged in and after the night the music wasn't showing up anymore.. 

I couldn't and still can't find any itunesDB.old_mlpmp, discutility didn't help(maybe I would need a windows computer for that?)

I'm not sure if floola would work and I have one other idea, but I have no idea if that could even work, or make my iPod even worse. Maybe someone can help me with that one

I copied all the music in the hidden folders onto my hard drive to try to copy them into iTunes, unfortunately many songs ended up there with the names the iPod gave them, like ADAC.mp3, so that solution was not "that" amazing (I still have all the songs, but identifying and renaming a couple of hundred songs doesn't sound good).
However there was a problem with copying some files, after which the copying always stopped. I also wasn't able to play these files correctly, it were all podcasts from the same TV-channel, maybe just from one series. There was no problem with these podcasts that I copied half a year earlier to my mac. I assume that these files on my iPod are somehow corrupted.
I read somewhere that this problem can be caused by the hard drive or some files going corrupt. (It happened last October and I can't find where I read it).

Does anyone have an idea if it could help when I replace the not-working-podcast-files with (renamed) working ones, or could it probably kill my iPod even more? (ideal would be getting all the songs with their real names back)
I assume it's not a good idea just to delete the non-working files, as the iPod wouldn't know where these files are (in case the library is still complete and working)

Does anyone has an idea if replacing the files could make other solutions impossible. Or do you reckon my iPod is beyond recovery anyway?

I hope someone has any idea, I really would like my iPod back (and spending £100+ for an outdated model isn't really appealing, the others have too many features I don't need and too less capacity)


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## Josefus (Oct 20, 2011)

Just follow dude's previous steps, but instead of switching current iTunesDB (the newly corrupted one) with iTunesDB_old or whatever (because it's not there), switch out iTunesDB with TempDB.  So new steps would be:

1) Plug your Ipod into your pc
2) Find the Ipod in Windows Explorer
3) "Unhide" Hidden files & Folders in Windows
4) In one of the ipod's hidden folders, locate "itunesDB" and an "itunesDB.old_mlpmp"
5) Rename "itunesDB" to "itunesDB.old" (this is the newly corrupted DB), and rename "TempDB" to "itunesDB" (no file extention). This restores the automatic backup of your DB that Apple doesn't seem to think we need to know about...


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## Basim Daoud (Oct 3, 2013)

I am having the same problem but I do not have the itunesdb.old_mlpmp.  PLease help.



GoldenArm said:


> OK, I seem to have figured out how to get everything back if your data gets shifted from "Music", "Video" etc.. into "Other" for whatever reason.
> 
> 1) Plug your Ipod into your pc
> 2) Find the Ipod in Windows Explorer
> ...


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## DeltaMac (Oct 3, 2013)

Please notice that this thread was started more than 6 years ago, and iTunes was substantially different, compared to what it is now.
I don't have access to iTunes on a Windows system, so it's possible that the file is no longer named itunesDB with newer versions of iTunes.
You should find what you are looking for in the iTunes folder. This article describes where that folder is located.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1391


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## Applewhyyougottabesorude (Mar 23, 2017)

Hey Everyone! So it's 2017. I'm probably the only person still using a iPod 120GB but I ran into this problem on Monday. After searching different forums for hours this one was the most helpful but what I did was different.

I have a MAC Book Pro Running OS X 10.11.6
My ipod was running software 2.0.1 when all my music went to Other
So Here We Go!

1) Plug in your Ipod
2) Show hidden characters by using the terminal program then pasting in:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
After that line put in:
killall Finder
(here's a guide for that)
3) Now double click on your Ipod icon on the desktop. A finder window should pop up with your Ipods content.
4) Ipod_Control Should be visible as a hidden folder there now.
5) Inside that folder should be a folder that says Music.
6)There's all your music! What I did was make a copy of that whole folder to my desktop before importing them and then manually, by folder, import the songs. They don't look like normal song files but when you import them into Itunes, double click them, they should show up as normal songs with all info!  

This took a good two hours to do. The first time a lot of songs were missing. Not sure if it was from me importing songs from each folder before it had enough time to import one folder at a time or if i just missed folders by mistake. I now have my 6,000 songs back though and will be backing them up this time.

Best of luck!


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## Lucky711 (Mar 3, 2018)

Hello everyone!

Recently had the same problem with iPod shuffle (1G): iTunes told me that there is no more music on my iPod, only media marked as "Other".

These steps helped me to restore my music back (Windows & macOS):
1) I made sure hidden folders are shown
2) Plugged in my iPod
3) Opened iPod in Explorer (Windows) / Finder (macOS)
4) In the root folder I found something interesting:
4.1) There were regular folders like Trashes, Ipod_Control, etc. In the Ipod_Control folder there was Music folder but it was empty (0 mb)
4.2) There was also folder called "_" that contained the same folders as root folder (Trashes, Ipod_Control, etc) but in the Ipod_Control folder there was Music folder which size matched the size of "Other" media, displayed in iTunes. So there was all my music.
5) I copied the folder "Ipod_Control" from folder "_" to my desktop and deleted the empty "Ipod_Control" from root folder
6) I also looked inside "Trashes" folder where I also found copies of regular folders. I deleted them since they were technically in trash.
7) Pasted the "Ipod_Control" from desktop to iPod root folder
8) Opened iTunes and it recognized all my music.

Hope this will help.


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