HD failure/3G iPhone sync issues! help!

[mogwai84]

Hi all,

This might be a bit long... so bare with me!

I had a HD sector failure which meant I lost my itunes (opened up itunes to find my library had completely disappeared). So I've rebuilt my library and held my breath as I plugged my iPhone in. It all seemed ok, backed up and synced with the phone. However All my music and films remained, even though I had empty versions of the playlists i synced previously. When I select 'Music' and try and sync over my new playlists i get a

"Are you sure you want to sync music...." message, all good.

then when i apply this it says

"The iPhone "Jon's iPhone" is synced with another iTunes library. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library?"

oh crap! I thought something like this might happen. However I'm a bit worried about clicking "Erase and Sync", I don't want to lose all my contacts, applications etc (even though I've made sure my apps are transferred across and clicked Back-up iPhone on iTunes). Will it erase everything? or just the music and video? It seemed to sync my newer podcasts whcih was a bit strange.

Any prompt help would be gratefully received, I'm freaking out about losing everything on my phone.

Cheers,

Jon

[jhollington]

Hi and welcome to iLounge.

Clicking "Erase and Sync" will erase everything from your iPhone that is not already in your iTunes library. You shouldn't have any issues with your application data, and your applications should remain in place provided they're still in your iTunes library and that you've ensured your computer is authorized for your iTunes Store account (you can do this by choosing Store, Authorize Computer).

Note that you can get your purchased content back from your iPhone by right-clicking on it and choosing "Transfer Purchases" -- this will copy back any music, videos or applications that were purchased with the same account that your computer is authorized for (so ensure you've authorized your computer first).

To transfer back any other content (ie, not purchased from the iTunes Store), you will need to look to a third-party recovery tool. Check out our iPod 201 article, Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-computer/) for more information on some of the options for this.

[mogwai84]

ok great, so i'll need to back up things like my contacts/photos first? will it still have my phone data/email/internet settings? this all just seems fairly drastic seeing as all i did was lose my original iTunes library