Ipod Help

[Grant 4]

Hi All

I have an issue with my ipod. It is the 60gb video ipod (I have had it for a couple of years now). It has been awesome until recently.

In Feb, I managed to fry the HDD in my laptop. This was not a big deal as I am pretty anal about backing it up. So I essentially lost no data (or music) etc.

I had a new HDD put in and the laptop rebuilt, but when I plugged my ipod in (and iTiunes started) it wanted to erase it and reinstall all of the music from my hard drive onto it. There is a bloody good reason why I don't want to do this. I spent many many hours setting up all of the music (rating it) and had set up a huge number of playlists (my ipod gets used in my car a lot as I travel between Auckland and the Tron a couple of times a week).

I have downloaded a couple of pieces of software that allows me to transfer all of the music from my ipod to my laptop, however It doesn't seem to bring the playlists, song ratings etc with it.

What can I do to get my ipod setup back into iTunes exactly how it was? I don't really want to start again as there is some 7,000ish songs that I would have to rate and get back into playlists.

Cheers

Grant

[QuickSilver 0]

There should be a setting in Itunes under; edit > preferences > syncing.

Tick the "Disable auto syncing" as this is what makes the computer automatically try to overwrite and update all your ipods files, I've had a few computers in the time I've had my Ipod and never had a problem.

Hope that helps,

Alex.

Edited April 22, 2008 by QuickSilver

[Mark 178]

Use a program called "iPodCopy". A guy at work had this exact same problem (His computer with itunes blew up and he wanted to copy all his music to his new PC)

If you know the ways of the internets you get this program for "cheap". Also, I asked him just now if it copies playlists etc and he said it does.

Good luck!

[martyyn 2]

Grant I dont know if this will work for you but you dont actually need any programs to copy the music from your ipod to a PC, you just need the ipod to be setup as a disc drive. Once thats done you 'explore' into the ipod and see the hidden files that hold all of your music.

None of it is labelled as you would expect (I think the directory and filenames are all 5 or 6 random digits or something) but if you copy the whole lot to your PC and then open itunes on your pc and import that initial directory it will all magically appear with the correct artist and albums names etc.

Whether this copies data such as playlists or ratings I dont know sorry, Ive not paid attention to that. Ive only ever used it to get music to and from my neice and nephews ipods. Works a treat if you want everything, can be a pain if you only want some of it because you have to go through it in itunes and remove anything you dont want.

If you find a solution let us know though

[my_e36 43]

Penry's suggestion is valid and I use it myself when I need reformat, etc... However, it does not transfer playlist, rating, play counts or anything like that.

For future reference. After you've rebuilt it, iTune 7 lets you backup all your music and playlist into either the iPod itself (that allows you to restore) or on to CD/DVD. (File -> Backup to Disc)

[m325i 709]

Try SharePod.

I had a HDD meltdown and while I didn't lose music I did lose all my iTunes ratings.

That sucks bigtime. Years of rating tracks all gone

(BTW download sharepod, unzip and then put it on your ipod. You then access it from the ipod)

[Grant 4]

Nick - I meant to say earlier, thanks heaps. Sharepod worked perfectly (well almost...I had to do the playlists one by one - but close enough).

I now have all of my music properly recorded into iTunes, and everything seems good again.

Sharepod is a NZ made bit of software too!! It is also simple enough that even I was able to follow the instructions and get it to work easily and quickly.

Cheers

Grant