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josiahpugh · Mar 18, 2003, 09:19 PM

Something really bad happened. I had an bad sync I guess and my music vanished off my hard drive. I tried retreiving the music off the iPod but that didn't work.. it just erased it off the iPod. I don't know if it overwrote the data or not... it shows the iPod as being empty. Is there anyway to recover my music??? I am thinking it's recoverable so long as it hasn't been overwritten.

Gul Banana · Mar 18, 2003, 09:36 PM

Why not just re-rip it off your CDs that you bought? It'll take some time, but it's better than losing the music forever.

josiahpugh · Mar 18, 2003, 09:38 PM

Some of the music is unreplacable.

clarkgoble · Mar 18, 2003, 09:40 PM

Some of the music is unreplacable.

Is that equivalent to, "hell, it'll take forever to download all those songs let alone remember all the songs I downloaded!" <grin>

[APi]TheMan · Mar 18, 2003, 09:48 PM

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
Some of the music is unreplacable.

Is that equivalent to, "hell, it'll take forever to download all those songs let alone remember all the songs I downloaded!" <grin>

So? Answer his question or don't respond. I'm not educated in iPod matters, so I can't help.

swiz · Mar 18, 2003, 10:02 PM

I have some music which is irreplaceable due to its being available only on vinyl and for all intents and purposes unobtainable because its so rare and in limited supply. Such as who you ask?
Sawhorse
Current
Sub Society
A slew of others. This music has no chance of being found on any sharing services. I feel your pain. Well, I would If I lost my music anyway.

[on topic]
Im sorry but in my experience when the iPod says your music is gone, it really is. Perhaps you may find a way to reive it on your hard drive but iPods are quite finicky by nature.

Toyin · Mar 18, 2003, 10:07 PM

Your best bet is to try a recovery utility like Norton Utilities. If it's a large amount of material (like several gigabytes) some of it is probably still on the hardrive.

I know you don't want to hear this now, but you can get a 120gb firewire drive for about $200. It's so important to back up. I currently have my music collection on 1) Desktop 2) Laptop 3) External 120gb drive 4) Several CDs (as mp3s) and 5) On the original CDs (where applicable).

jetta_gt · Mar 18, 2003, 10:43 PM

I have about 60GB of mp3's, and my system works like this...

I rip mp3's onto a 1GB partion on my laptop. When that fills, they get moved to a holding area on my file server. When that holding area gets up to 4.7GB i burn that (over the LAN) onto a DVD-R, then that holding area is moved in the archives on the file server. So my mp3's are permently kept on the file server, and as a last resort, on DVD-R's.

Works for me!

clarkgoble · Mar 18, 2003, 10:52 PM

So? Answer his question or don't respond.

I just thought it a funny way of putting things. I actually lost my entire MP3 collection a year ago. So I feel your pain. A lot of it was built up from peoples suggestions and a lot was indie stuff from the old AudioGalaxy. (i.e. stuff legally put up by bands) There was no way I could remember all the bands nor the songs.

One things I've realized since then is that if you can't backup your music library to backup a list of tunes so you can at least remember what you listened to.

I've also had various CDs lost or stolen during moves, roommate situations and then the dreaded "scratch death." There are several albums I no longer can play because of that.

But of course rare vinyl records are hard. Try Direct Connect though. I was surprised at how many rare Blues songs I was able to find there. The only downside is that many hubs are rather anti-Macintosh and will ban Mac users simply because they aren't using a dc++ client. But I've found that if you find the right hub you have a better chance of finding esoteric music there than anywhere else. I even found a copy of this esoteric 45 from the early 80's by a band called Blue Peter. It was one of my first purchases as a kid but it was warped by heat during a move. I was very happy to find it.

So if you do have a good playlist, try it. You might be surprised.

graveguy · Mar 18, 2003, 11:43 PM

Is there anyway to recover my music??? I am thinking it's recoverable so long as it hasn't been overwritten. [/B]

Back to the original problem...

Maybe it's just a problem with the Library file on the iPod...you could always mount the iPod (remembering to prevent an automatic sync!!!) and then use Terminal to explore the contents of the iPod drive...from my fuzzy recollection, the path is something like:

/Volumes/[iPod Name]/Music

Good Luck!

[APi]TheMan · Mar 19, 2003, 12:35 AM

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
I just thought it a funny way of putting things. I actually lost my entire MP3 collection a year ago. So I feel your pain. A lot of it was built up from peoples suggestions and a lot was indie stuff from the old AudioGalaxy. (i.e. stuff legally put up by bands) There was no way I could remember all the bands nor the songs.

Ah. Misunderstood.

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
One things I've realized since then is that if you can't backup your music library to backup a list of tunes so you can at least remember what you listened to.

Makes sense.

I'll have to try that... Thank goodness for DiskWarrior, though. I recently thought I lost 1300 or so MP3s (all tagged and organized, would have been somewhat of a pain to go through the process again)... But thank goodness for DiskWarrior. Gotta love Alsoft.

GENERAL_SMILEY · Mar 19, 2003, 05:42 AM

can you not just run Data Rescue (or something similar) on it like it was a conventional external drive?

Fallout · Mar 19, 2003, 07:20 PM

Never underestimate the importance of regular backups...take an hour or so at least once a month and burn your crap to CD's or something.

barbarian · Mar 19, 2003, 07:40 PM

The standard utilities (norton or diskwarrior) should work for you. Just don't run anything on your machine and run these utils from a CD.

But if for some reason these don't work and you are desperate you could try a disk recovery place. The ones listed in Mac magazines are expensive ($600 for a full recovery), but if you live in a major metropolitan area you can find cheaper. The harddrive in my G4 recently died with all my data and over 12,000 mp3s (most pain takingly ripped from vinyl). I had partial backups of the data, but the music had always been too big to back up... anyway the recovery place got back about 90% of the collection... total cost $350 which was worth it. Now I mirror my drives!

hellmachine · Mar 20, 2003, 01:40 PM

Originally posted by josiahpugh:
Something really bad happened. I had an bad sync I guess and my music vanished off my hard drive. I tried retreiving the music off the iPod but that didn't work.. it just erased it off the iPod. I don't know if it overwrote the data or not... it shows the iPod as being empty. Is there anyway to recover my music??? I am thinking it's recoverable so long as it hasn't been overwritten.

first use cocktail or some other tool to make invisible directories visible.
(or via terminal)
now check for your files. if they are really gone try some recovery tool, chances are good if you are quick...
hope this helps...