may have lost all my music, corrupt ipod, you know the story

[joesd23]

HEy guy, first off im not much oh a computer or ipod guy, just a guy that had or has alot of music on his ipod video 60 gig. so if you have an explanation to my problem please explain simple and please dont imply i know computer terms. <cool, well i plugged my ipod and the corrupt mesage came up and i noticed that my ipod showed that i had absolutly no music on it yet it still said i had 37 gig worth of music on my ipod ( even though no titles or anything were showing up ) then it asked my to register my ipod and all that jazz, like when i first bought my ipod. i noticed that my 37 gig went down to 30 gig so i paniced and unplugged my ipod. i cant reformat because i realy dont want to loose all my music because i moved to mexico and only broguht my ipod and no cds so i would be able to put new music on. and my library is cleaned out so i can have space on my laptop. iIS THERE ANY WAY THAT I CAN SAVE THE MUSIC THAT I LOST OR AT LEAST THE REST OF THE "30" that itunes says is remaining. please help, im begging. thanks guys

[goldcoaster]

First start by plugging the ipod into power or the PC , don't let itunes start, and give it a reset - hold both the menu and centre buttons for 10 seconds. Try that and post back.


- GoldCoaster (http://goldcoaster.wordpress.com/)

[joesd23]

hey, thanks for the reply and the advice but sadly nothing changed, my music is still not showing up on itunes or my ipod. although the corrupt messege didnt show up this time. got anything else?

[ginette]

Did you snyc your iPod automatically or manage your music manually? Because if you do it automatically, once you deleted your libray in iTunes, your whole collection in iPod will be gone as well!

If you're managing your music manually, I suggest you use Sharepod to backup your music, and then re-copy the whole things. Might be tedious, but its better than having erased all of your music yea.

Or you can also use PodUtil to do the transfer. Refer here:
Copy Songs from iPod to HDD (http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=4719)

[joesd23]

word, thanks for the reply, ill check out those programs but im not sure how its going to work backing up my music if I cant even find it on my ipod or itunes. I dont think i was clear in my original post but my music is lost but not realy gone. it just not showing up although my itunes reads my 30 plus gb of music. anybody got any other recomendations. thanks

[jhollington]

Basically it sounds like the iPod database has become damaged or corrupted, so the iPod can't find the music even though the files are still there.

Start by connecting your iPod into your computer without syncing it to iTunes (either don't let iTunes start, as Goldcoaster suggests, or just hold down SHIFT+CTRL if iTunes is running to prevent the autosync from running -- you'll need to hold it until you see your iPod appear in the iTunes source list).

Once the iPod is connected, you can find the music and other media files in the \iPod_Control\Music directory on the iPod by accessing it through Windows Explorer. \iPod_Control is a hidden directory, so you will need to go to Tools->Folder Options (in Windows Explorer) and turn on the option to "Show Hidden and System Files and Folders".

Once you can see the \iPod_Control directory, just copy the entire "Music" directory back to your hard drive. The sub-directories won't be organized in any way that would make sense to a human, but all of the files are there and the internal ID3 tags are intact.

Once you've copied them back to your hard drive, you can reimport them into iTunes and it will sort them out for you based on the tags. You can then do a "Restore" on the iPod and reload it from iTunes.

[joesd23]

i have some questions about the last reply on my post from jhollington, i understand everything up until the opening of explorer and going into tools. Do i need an internet connection to be able to see the hidden directory on ipod_control.

2nd. once i dont find the entire music directroy, how to i copy it back to my hard drive, im sorry even somewhat a computer guy, im totally lost on this point,

3rd once i figure how to copy to the hard drive, how do i copy reimport to intunes

4th-"You can then do a "Restore" on the iPod and reload it from iTunes."
*im not sure how to a restore and im not sure what reload it from itunes, even means.

thanks alot if u can reply

[jhollington]

You're looking for Windows Explorer (ie, "My Computer") as opposed to Internet Explorer. Windows Explorer is the program you use to browse your files on your hard disk.

Basically, you should be able to solve this by doing the following:

Go to "My Computer"
Select Tools->Folder Options (from the menu bar)
Find the option that says "Display Hidden and System Files and Folders" and ensure that it's enabled.
Find your iPod under "My Computer" and go into it. You should see the "iPod_Control" directory listed there, and within this another directory called "Music"
Copy the Music Directory back to your C: drive, in the same way that you would any other directory. There are several methods, but if you're unfamiliar with how to do this, the following should work:

Select "Music"
Select Edit->Copy
Go back to "My Computer" and go to your Hard Disk (C: drive)
Select Edit->Paste

Once your music folder has been copied back to your computer, you can reload it into iTunes by going into iTunes and selecting File->Add Folder to Library, and then selecting the "Music" folder that you copied over.


This should reimport all of your music into iTunes. Once you see that it's all back in iTunes on your hard drive, you can then restore your iPod by going into iTunes 7, selecting your iPod, and clicking the "Restore" button. This will reformat your iPod and erase everything on it. Once that completes, you can reload your music onto your iPod in the same way that you originally did (drag and drop if you're using manual mode).

[Mike A]

I am having an issue with 60g, colored display Ipod. A few weeks back after hooking up to my laptop I received the "ipod may be corrupted" message from Itunes. When i ejected I got the sad ipod icon. I set it into disk mode and plugged back into my computer but all music was "gone". But 48 gig was still shown as used so I know the files are still there.
The Ipod was showing as a drive letter so i started copying the files off the ipod to my harddrive. After about 100 files it stopped copying and gave me the windows message "drive is not formatted. do you want to format now?" ...I did not. So now I get both the sad ipod and the exclamation point folder. I have tried various file-recovery software to no avail. I really really want to save my 48gig of music that I do not have backed-up. Any suggestions ?

i really feel my trouble started when I installed Itunes 7.0. I suspect the new version with my old Ipod caused some trouble somehow. Another crazy thought is, could I have a bad USB cable ? The day the ipod appeared corrupted I had just started using a new USB cable.

[smithj11]

The same thing happend to me a week ago. I called apple support and they told me it was because the battery ran too low so the ipod starts deleting everything to save itself? They also told me that the only way to prevent it from doing this is to keep it plugged in whenever I'm not using it, and that my music is gone forever, but I can see that 12GB is still there, just not formatted and the ipod can't see it.

Thanks jhollington, I'll try to recover it. Does anyone know why this is happening? My ipod never auto synchs with the computer.

[jhollington]

The same thing happend to me a week ago. I called apple support and they told me it was because the battery ran too low so the ipod starts deleting everything to save itself?
That could possibly be the single most ridiculous thing I've ever heard an iPod support person say.... :shake:

The idea that the iPod lost information because the battery ran too low is a load of nonsense, as the iPods use either non-volatile flash memory (Nano/Shuffle), or a hard drive. Your computer doesn't lose the information on it's hard drive when it's unplugged, so the iPod is not going to lose information because the battery gets too low (the one and only exception I can think of is if you were loading it from a non-powered USB port and it went dead while you were writing to it, but that's a pretty rare occurence).

As for the real reason why this may have happened, I can only guess that something you plugged the iPod into at some point may have messed with your iPod's database files. This kind of problem can happen even in manual sync if you don't eject the iPod properly after transferring content to it.

Further, if you're using other third-party iPod management tools, then it's hard to say what they might do to the database (most are pretty good and stable, but there are a lot of different tools out there). Also, even your computer's operating system can do strange things (I've seen virus-scanners and other hard-disk maintenance programs try to "scan" an iPod when it's connected and cause file-system or iPod database problems).

[odsmart]

Okay, the site rules say no spamming with links, I'm not sure what counts as spamming these days but these are legit links to my thread on apple support. If you're having problems you need to check out my thread where I've written a (fairly) concise guide to iPod corruption but I still need some more feedback from people it works or doesn't work for. If you still have problems then send me some detailed feedback on the Apple thread. Read the two big main posts before you start. Here is the link.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=787509
I'm only posting the link and not the guide because I don't think I have the time or energy to support questions from two threads on two different forums, it is not because I have something against this forum.
-odsmart

[berlingoodman]

Hi,

Can you tell me how to do this on a MAC computer?? Finding the hidden files I mean...

thanks!

[jhollington]

This is one of those things that's actually a bit trickier on the Mac.... You can always access hidden files through Terminal directly from the command-line. For the iPod_Control directory, the path would be /Volumes/<your iPod name>/iPod_Control.

If you want to see the hidden directories in Finder, then you have to manually adjust a system preference. There are some third-party tools that can do this for you, but the simplest way is to just go into Terminal and tweak it from the command-line.

A Google search for "mac os x hidden files" will turn up several tutorials and other options, but here's one to get you started: http://www.osxfaq.com/DailyTips/02-2005/02-01.ws

[neely2005]

Can anyone help me? I have a corrupt iPod and I am trying to save the music on it that is not on my iTunes before I restore it. I have gone through jhollington's steps 1-3, but when I go into my iPod, there is nothing there. No control, no music...nothing. Any suggestions?

[honeybee1236]

1# Go to "My Computer"
2# Select Tools->Folder Options (from the menu bar)
**Select the View tab
3# Find the option that says "Hidden Files and Folders" and check the box that says 'show hidden files and folders'.

This is on your computer not your iPod if your using Windows. If your using a Mac then you need to post that information.

[miikeisonfire]

yeah i just fixed mine from being corrupted and now its skipping through songs and playing certain ones and half of some and idk its going nuts. Does neone know how to fix this problem? cause im definately about to chuck it haha its a 20g '04

[neely2005]

jhollington,

i have followed your instructions in #8 of this thread, however, when i go to paste my music folder i get an error that says "parameter is inncorrect". any idea how to fix this?

[MariamIB]

Similar problem. my Ipod is a 30 GB video. One day I plugged it in and then it says your Ipod is corrupted. I had no problem with restoring it coz I had back up. So I restored it, and everything was deleted. But then it connects again and the same message keeps coming up.. So I restored it like 3 times or something and that message does not seem to go away and so my Ipod is now useless as I'm incapable of transferring song on it..

and also, the Ipod appears just as a "removable disk D" in "My Computer"