Music Disappeared from iPod AND iTunes!

[Vicenarian]

Ok, so got a call for a job later this week. Client says that all music has disappeared from their iPod, and also from iTunes. I've never owned an iPod, so I don't know much about them, and googling doesnt turn up a whole lot of decisive info. Any suggestions on what could be causing this and how do I fix it?

 

[TopLevelComp]

Was the music purchased, or was it downloaded from torrent sites/ripped from a CD?

Check the media folders (My Music in XP, Music in 7 and Vista), see if the media is there.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

Ok, so got a call for a job later this week. Client says that all music has disappeared from their iPod, and also from iTunes. I've never owned an iPod, so I don't know much about them, and googling doesnt turn up a whole lot of decisive info. Any suggestions on what could be causing this and how do I fix it?

It is possible that your client has had their Itunes library overwritten if someone else has attached their Ipod to your client's computer. Apple designed Itunes so that music libraries could not be combined. In order for someone to put my Itunes library onto their Ipod they have to overwrite (erase) what is already on theirs (clever). I would start by asking your client if anyone has used their machine other than them lately. Let us know what comes of this. Good luck.

 

[atlanticjim]

Aside from what dgresh said, you should get ahold of some old ipod and start playing around with it and playing with iTunes as well.

On the bench this week, older comp with totally trashed OS. I gave the quote for OS restore and offered data retrieval at my usual $$$ price. He said he only wanted his music and it was all on his iPod and could I transfer it back. Of course I said and the cost of doing that would be 1/4 of the cost of data retrieval.

 

[HouseOfTechs]

Was the music purchased, or was it downloaded from torrent sites/ripped from a CD?

Check the media folders (My Music in XP, Music in 7 and Vista), see if the media is there.

check there first.. thats where i would.

 

[MobileTechie]

Yeah the itunes library is just a database referring to actual files. It's very unlikely the actual files have been erased.

 

[Vicenarian]

Great! Thanks for the help/tips guys, really appreciated.

 

[bertie40]

iTunes can handle files in two ways. It can either "link" to the directory where your tracks are stored

OR

You can configure iTunes to "copy" those tracks from their original location across to the iTunes library directory.

Regards.

 

[dk564]

Aside from what dgresh said, you should get ahold of some old ipod and start playing around with it and playing with iTunes as well.

On the bench this week, older comp with totally trashed OS. I gave the quote for OS restore and offered data retrieval at my usual $$$ price. He said he only wanted his music and it was all on his iPod and could I transfer it back. Of course I said and the cost of doing that would be 1/4 of the cost of data retrieval.

Cue Sharepod

Filler (I hate Fillers) filler

 

[atlanticjim]

Cue Sharepod

Looks great, do you use it? Is it stable and reliable?


As it happened, for some reason when I transferred the files from iPod to Windows and then imported to iTunes about 12% kept the stupid 4 letter names and did not convert to conventional names. I don't know why that happened though. I apologized to the client and said that some were corrupted "probably by the virus".

 

[JAbbott]

I use Sharepod (http://www.getsharepod.com/as well. I really hate everything iTunes. Sharepod is nice drop and drag