[kyleshulman]

Ahhhh! I have a love/hate relationship with my iPod. Basically, an iPod will not let you download your music off the iPod! So when you change computers or want to move/manage/backup your files to an external hard drive, it won’t work. The solution is to use a third party product such as “Sharepod”, which works fairly well. The problem is if you have a lot of songs, (I had about 4K), the iPod’s hard drive runs out the rechargeable battery before transferring all the songs..errrr.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I ended up loosing about 1,000 RANDOM songs (even with a DVD backup of my iTunes folder…) . I used a data recovery program called R-Studio which “recovered” the missing files off the iPod. But now the files are “unreadable”. I did not add any songs to the iPod since they were erased, so I can’t believe they were written over in any way. I used another program called “4Musics multiformat” which re-converted the MP3 back to MP3 and it worked great for 1 song, but then the program promptly crashed each time I dragged in more than one song into it… uggg…so close. I also tried using a program called MP3 repair Tool by Aspect 1, which said it repaired the file, but didn’t do anything.

Facts:
1. The un-repaired songs are the same file size as the originals.
2. I can tell a file has been properly repaired when the song info such as the artist, album title etc. appears in the folder.
3. iPod stores the songs in random order in hidden folders labeled F00, F001, F002 etc. Folders F00 to about F012 were erased.

Questions:

1. How can I repair my MP3# files?
2. How can I back up my iTunes on DVD folder without loosing song? How were they lost?

A big THANKS in advance to anyone who can help me shed some light on this, thus preventing me from killing myself and/or my computer!

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Ahhhh! I have a love/hate relationship with my iPod. Basically, an iPod will not let you download your music off the iPod! So when you change computers or want to move/manage/backup your files to an external hard drive, it won’t work. The solution is to use a third party product such as “Sharepod”, which works fairly well. The problem is if you have a lot of songs, (I had about 4K), the iPod’s hard drive runs out the rechargeable battery before transferring all the songs..errrr. 

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I ended up loosing about 1,000 RANDOM songs (even with a DVD backup of my iTunes folder…) . I used a data recovery program called R-Studio which “recovered” the missing files off the iPod. But now the files are “unreadable”. I did not add any songs to the iPod since they were erased, so I can’t believe they were written over in any way. I used another program called “4Musics multiformat” which re-converted the MP3 back to MP3 and it worked great for 1 song, but then the program promptly crashed each time I dragged in more than one song into it… uggg…so close. I also tried using a program called MP3 repair Tool by Aspect 1, which said it repaired the file, but didn’t do anything.

Facts:
1. The un-repaired songs are the same file size as the originals.
2. I can tell a file has been properly repaired when the song info such as the artist, album title etc. appears in the folder.
3. iPod stores the songs in random order in hidden folders labeled F00, F001, F002 etc. Folders F00 to about F012 were erased.

Questions:

1. How can I repair my MP3 files?
2. How can I back up my iTunes on DVD without loosing songs? How were they lost?

A big THANKS in advance to anyone who can help me shed some light on this, thus preventing me from killing myself and/or my computer!

[kyleshulman]

Ahhhh! I have a love/hate relationship with my iPod. Basically, an iPod will not let you download your music off the iPod! So when you change computers or want to move/manage/backup your files to an external hard drive, it won’t work. The solution is to use a third party product such as “Sharepod”, which works fairly well. The problem is if you have a lot of songs, (I had about 4K), the iPod’s hard drive runs out the rechargeable battery before transferring all the songs..errrr. 

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I ended up loosing about 1,000 RANDOM songs (even with a DVD backup of my iTunes folder…) . I used a data recovery program called R-Studio which “recovered” the missing files off the iPod. But now the files are “unreadable”. I did not add any songs to the iPod since they were erased, so I can’t believe they were written over in any way. I used another program called “4Musics multiformat” which re-converted the MP3 back to MP3 and it worked great for 1 song, but then the program promptly crashed each time I dragged in more than one song into it… uggg…so close. I also tried using a program called MP3 repair Tool by Aspect 1, which said it repaired the file, but didn’t do anything.

Facts:
1. The un-repaired songs are the same file size as the originals.
2. I can tell a file has been properly repaired when the song info such as the artist, album title etc. appears in the folder.
3. iPod stores the songs in random order in hidden folders labeled F00, F001, F002 etc. Folders F00 to about F012 were erased.

Questions:

1. How can I repair my MP3 files?
2. How can I back up my iTunes on DVD without loosing songs? How were they lost?

A big THANKS in advance to anyone who can help me shed some light on this, thus preventing me from killing myself and/or my computer!

[rschlitz]

Well this is not help, but I also have a love hate relationship with the ipod, I have ipod photo and just found out the same thing you did, I should have guessed because weeks ago I realized the ipod can not transfer the photos back to a computer, I lost some important photos thinking I was "backing" them up on the ipod, it is just a viewer once the photos are on , only some can be transfered back and all get compressed. I just had your experience with the music also lost 1000+ songs I had collected over the years before my ipod . I thought I was ok, I transfered my library back to my real player all songs appeared, looked good it took time to do the transfer , so I thought they were on my hard drive, silly me did not try to listen to them when ipod was disconnected. My ipod became corrupted and needed to be reformated, so I did thinking I could just transfer my library back to the ipod and it was safely on harddrive. No luck . No I lost all my rare music , I am very dissapointed. Ipod has cost me much more than the $499.99 a lot of the music can not be replaced. I have not contacted them but I am pretty sure they will be no help. If you have gottenhelp since this post please let me know, my music is very important to me, the ipod was a gift, there should have been some warnings with it in the manual. I would have taken it back and replaced it with somehting else had I known all this.

[rschlitz]

One more thing have you tried http://www.yamipod.c...n/modules/home/

I feel so naive , thought I was semi informed, guess not
Gina

[kyleshulman]

Well, looks like I learned the hard way. It took me FOREVER, but I did end up retrieving all my songs. I basically combined all of my partially backed up iTunes folders, chose “show duplicated songs” and hand deleted all the multiple titles. It was a real pain-in-the-behind, so I hope I can add some info here to help people avoid this problem in the future. Here are a couple of articles I SHOULD have read beforehand on the Apple site. I recommend you take a look:

1. Backing up your music files in iTunes 4
http://docs.info.app...ml?artnum=93033

2. How to use your iPod to move your music to a new computer
http://docs.info.app...l?artnum=300173

3. Use a Smart Playlist to make regular backups of your music in iTunes
http://docs.info.app...ml?artnum=93474

It is worth emphasizing that having iTunes consolidate (Advanced>Consolidate Library) and organize your music library (Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized) is a good way to ensure that you are backing up all of your music.

Also be very careful to when using the Automatic Update option (Edit>Preferences>iPod>Update Songs Automatically). This is the default option and can really get you into trouble. I recommend always keeping your iPod in the “Manual” update mode.

For more help try searching the Apple site and http://ipodlounge.com/

Good Luck…

AND Thank you Gina…That Yamipod app looks great, have not tried it yet, but the link was very helpful.