Never mind iTunes...15GB of music vanished into thin air!

Killaqueen!!!

Sorry to bore you with my iPod crisis' but I am nearly in tears. My brand new classic iPod has just removed all of the music on it. I spent all night transfering music from my 5 dvds of supposedly 20GB of music (turned out only 14GB transfered on) and now out of the blue I turn on my iPod and it says there is no music! Can'y play anything. Zilch.

However, it does say there is 60GB free and it is an 80GB iPod so it recognises the space the music took up and here's the funny part. (I'm not laughing). When I plug it in, iTunes and MediaMonkey both recognise the player and all the tracks that were (are?) on it.

Is it becuase I was using MediaMonkey (tracks played fine before I started organising them with MediaMonkey). Perhaps that program isn't good to use and it somehow deletes all the music on my iPod? Unlikely....so what the hell is going on?

Oh, and iTunes gives me an option of 'restoring' the iPod to its origional factory settings which means all the music will be gone...so it says. So there's is still music on the ipod but it just isn't recognising that and I can't play them.

I doubt AAAAANYONE knows what I'm talking about and how to fix this?

Hal1

Can you see the ipod in 'my computer' what does it say about media devices connected, size, free space. If you think something may have been accidently deleted there may be some undelete program you can run to recover lost data. Ipod's are not my favourite at all. IAudio 7 small and sexy .

Killaqueen!!!

iPods would be amazing if they didn't break all the time. I thought that was limited mostly to those crappy mini iPods and nano ones.

Yeah, as I said the player recognises that there is 60GB free so there is some stuff on it.

....and now it won't even connect to the computer. Fantastic.

Do Apple make half of their products faulty on purpose?! It's unbelievable. When I connect it it just show the Apple Logo and makes a funny noise, like a camera noise, and then turns off and keeps repeating this process.

Dont be at yourself

You did transfer the music using iTunes and not drag-and-drop, yes?

art

Killaqueen!!! wrote:

iPods would be amazing if they didn't break all the time. I thought that was limited mostly to those crappy mini iPods and nano ones.

Yeah, as I said the player recognises that there is 60GB free so there is some stuff on it.

....and now it won't even connect to the computer. Fantastic.

Do Apple make half of their products faulty on purpose?! It's unbelievable. When I connect it it just show the Apple Logo and makes a funny noise, like a camera noise, and then turns off and keeps repeating this process.

You've another thread open on this and it sounds like you are just adding confusion to crisis. I think you need to step back a bit, calm down, and just start again. Your use of two different music management software simultaneously cannot be good and perhaps, given your iPod is a new version, it would be better to stay away from MediaMonkey for the moment in case there are any new incompatibility issues introduced.

Your music is on the PC. Reset and Restore your iPod. Use iTunes for the moment. Check the Music library is okay, songs are all there and there just once. Then sync with iPod as mentioned on other thread.

Killaqueen!!!

art wrote:

You've another thread open on this and it sounds like you are just adding confusion to crisis. I think you need to step back a bit, calm down, and just start again. Your use of two different music management software simultaneously cannot be good and perhaps, given your iPod is a new version, it would be better to stay away from MediaMonkey for the moment in case there are any new incompatibility issues introduced.

Your music is on the PC. Reset and Restore your iPod. Use iTunes for the moment. Check the Music library is okay, songs are all there and there just once. Then sync with iPod as mentioned on other thread.

I'm sorry I know I have two threads open which people probably don't want. It's just that the first problem was that iTunes was confusing. That's my fault. Should've got one of them iTunes for dummies books!

But after spending hours transfering music using iTunes, and then finding that not all of it went on, and then finding that half of the tracks weren't named, and then finding that I couldn't rename them on iTunes, and then downloading MediaMonkey to organise music, and THEN turning my iPod and finding that all the music is gone......it just stressed me out a bit.

I also apologise for that very long sentence.

Ok so basically I wanted to know if I'd be able to get the music back? Doesn't look like it so I'll have to restore it? Ok, well at least the iPod is connecting to the PC now. There is still a lot of music in the music library on iTunes. I don't know whether this is stored on my computer, or on the iPod. Either way I'll have to re-transfer it all after I restore it.

I didn't find any websites saying that MediaMonkey is unreliable. Am I wrong? Maybe I shouldn't have used it - it's just that iTunes was wrecking my head so I thought I'd try something else.

Oh and is drag and drop a bad idea? I tried to do that once on iTunes when I didn't know how to transfer stuff but it didn't work.

Really appreciate your replies here so far. thanks

Creamy Goodness

Killaqueen!!! wrote:

There is still a lot of music in the music library on iTunes. I don't know whether this is stored on my computer, or on the iPod. Either way I'll have to re-transfer it all after I restore it.

go to your library in itunes, right click one of the media files and select get info. in the summary tab there should be a path name to where the file is stored. eg: C:\Users\Neil\Desktop\Frames\Oceansize - Frames - 04 - Savant.mp3

Killaqueen!!!

Cremo wrote:

go to your library in itunes, right click one of the media files and select get info. in the summary tab there should be a path name to where the file is stored. eg: C:\Users\Neil\Desktop\Frames\Oceansize - Frames - 04 - Savant.mp3

Oh yeah, you reminded me of something I must say. This is probably a big problem. When I right click and get info it says

'The song _____ could not be used because the origional file can't be found. Would you like to locate it?'

Does this mean that the files are not on my computer/iPod?

The funny thing is that this message was appearing from day one, yet I could play them. (I can't now) If I could play them earlier on, they must (have) be(en) somewhere.

I have a feeling that I'm going to have to restore and then delete the whole library and start again. That's ok - it will take a long time to re-transfer the files but at least I have a solution. I'm just wondering if there's any way around it.

Dont be at yourself

Your problems with iTunes stem from the fact that you have your music library on DVDs - so iTunes cant access them unless the DVD is in the drive, and can't rename the music because it wont write to the DVD.

Go into iTunes preferences, and select the option for have iTunes to copy music to the iTunes folder when added to the library. That way, all your music will be stored on your computer, and you can rename etc to your heart's desire.

Killaqueen!!!

Ah ok...but when they're on my music library and I rename them or whatever (while iPod is connected), will this rename them on my iPod? I presume so.

So what do I do when I insert a dvd of music? I think I go to file-->add folder but I want to be sure that this will copy the files onto my music library so that they'll stay in my library and the computer will be able to find them. Is this right?

rabbitinlights

Do you have enough room on your computer to transfer all the music from the DVD's to the Hard drive? This would make things alot easier for Itunes.

Killaqueen!!!

Yeah I think so.

But surely thats what I'm already doing by adding the files to the library? I clicked the 'copy music to iTunes folder' in my preferences so I hope this works.

art

Killaqueen!!! wrote:

Yeah I think so.

But surely thats what I'm already doing by adding the files to the library? I clicked the 'copy music to iTunes folder' in my preferences so I hope this works.

Your "Library" is just a file on the PC that keeps track of where all your songs are stored. So if you have a DVD with songs on it and you "add folder" to the library it doesn't necessarily move the files anywhere it just notes where you have the songs.

I think it might be best just to start again.

The way the iPod expects to work is that songs are stored on a PC, a Library is created which is a list of these files and when you plug in the iPod you can choose (via the iTunes preferences) to either copy the files that are listed in the library from the PC onto the iPod or you can choose just to transfer individual playlists (if you've made playlists).

From what you've posted I think what happened is you put a DVD into the drive and added to the library. This just noted that there are songs on a DVD and made a list of them. Then I think you must have synced the iPod without the DVD being in the drive anymore and problems started accumulating after that?

However, you say you've checked "Copy file to iTunes music Folder when adding to library". This is probably would have sorted everything from the start alright but you may need to "add to library" again to get the songs copied and delete the places where the library thinks the song is still on a DVD - hence why it may be best just to start again. But once the songs have been copied to the iTunes music Folder, you will be able to use the "get info" right-click option to tidy up the tags for the songs and change titles, artists or whatever and everything should be fine from then on.

Killaqueen!!!

^Thanks. That actually worked in theorey up until another problem arose :rolleyes:

When I connect my iPod it says it needs me to restore it to its factory settings before iTunes can work. Fair enough. I already did this but fair enough. I click restore and it does what it has to. But then once it's finished the same message keeps coming up, and it keeps telling me to restore it. No matter how many times I do it, the same message pops up. And I can't do anything with the iPod until it's properly restored.

I think it needs servicing to be honest. But after having it for a whole week (of which one of the days it was working), I'm even more dissappointed with Apple and its iPods than I ever thought I would be.

I admit, I did make a lot of mistakes with iTunes because I didn't know how to work it, and I think much of the problems arose from the DVDS (as mentioned by you lot) but now...? What am I supposed to do when it keeps telling me to restore after I've already done so.

art

Do a "reset" first, then a restore.

Follow the advice here: http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/

Just pick your operating system and model.

It just sounds like it has its knickers in a twist at the moment!