[ABach]

My Ipod touch 3.0? music, but not podcasts, evaporated. I don't currently have access to the laptop it is synced with. I noticed today that the Shake-to-Shuffle had deactivated also. It was mostly my own cds plus two itunes purchases but they took a long time to load.
In the future, could I back-up on a zip drive???

[MattJohnson]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

Wow ... it's the return of the Fresh-Faced Recruits with iPod Touch problems.

Wow, it's the return of the MacNN Addict to greet them with doubt that they actually have problems, and then look down on them for only having something like a Touch and not something more impressive or worthy of troubleshooting. Ever consider that people might be having a lot of these issues, and, wait for it, Google might have this topic as a search result? Or that it's not remotely plausible for someone to go through all the trouble to rack up logins, then post over the course of months to years in an effort to get an "isolated" problem solved? Or that the OP was a MacNN vet? Thanks for taking time off of hacking the Pentagon to show us you could post from CA, though, that was incredible.

Lo, jcastane, a FFR, had a very useful post in the thread. To follow up, I think there are a few problems people are posting about here. The OP had no music on his Touch, to the point where there was 30Gb free. I haven't had that happen to me, but I can see it requiring a full resync from the host, which may or may not be a PITA. Others, myself included, have encountered an issue where the Touch falls into an "updating library" cycle and then comes back with no music, which also puts the kibosh on my movies. In my case, I can go to Settings and see that I have 0 songs or videos on the device, but only 450M of 16G free. The only media content accessible is anything I've downloaded from the Touch since my last Mac sync(podcasts). A hard reset doesn't work, downloading some content and throwing it into the OTG playlist doesn't rejigger anything, changing languages doesn't help either. The only thing that does is a simple re-sync with the Mac, which leaves anyone traveling with their Touch pretty much SOL.

Everything about my particular bug suggests that it's the corrupted DB issue mentioned by jcastane- it gets sorted out when reconnecting to iTunes, as I don't ever have to do a full sync. I didn't even need to do a playlist create/sync/delete like others did. I unfortunately don't have a PC handy to check the solution (s)he posted, but I could certainly see it cleaning up the issue in a hurry- the music all appears to be there, it just can't be found by the Touch for some reason. It looks to me like Apple is trying to be responsible by earmarking Touch-generated content to make sure it gets synced back to the host at the next interaction, but those files can't integrate with the old media on the device after the bug hits.

As for what triggers this issue, I can say that the first time it happened I downloaded a podcast that couldn't quite fit, and it seemed to cause the DB corruption. Since, though, it's happened four or five times over the course of two years, and never when I am downloading anything. I will say that it was responding sluggishly in other apps or swapping back to the home screen, though, and it could easily be that I should have done a hard reset to clear out whatever was slowing things down in the first place.

[andi*pandi]

Originally Posted by MattJohnson 

Wow, it's the return of the MacNN Addict to greet them with doubt that they actually have problems, and then look down on them for only having something like a Touch and not something more impressive or worthy of troubleshooting.

Matt, I think you misunderstood Wiskedjak's comment completely, as well as applied a little transference. We've had a lot of spammers post in this thread. Those posts have been deleted so you can't see them, but our members are vigilant about these things - bumping old threads, nonsensical replies, etc.

I hope you get your ipod troubles sorted but have no advice.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Methinks a bug has been found.

..."methinks" this bug has been reported on MacNN by a lot of users, the primary difference is you're the first user that I know of that's experiences this problem and have more than 1 post on MacNN (e.g. the others were thought to be trolls).

With all the iPod Touches out there I'm curious why this hasn't been reported more. It's probably some strange combination of stuff (e.g. environmental, or installed apps, or actions like jarring/vibration/etc.) that may have caused this. Whatever it was, it's rare enough to never get looked into.

You really can't think of anything about how you use your iPod? Did you install an app on it right before it dumped your music? This is odd but I believe it happened...I don't think others disbelieve you, they're just trying to figure this out...

[Mikeoss]

For what it's worth this same issue everyone is talking about just happened to me tonight on my iPad1. Yes I'm a fresh face noob. Hopefully that doesn't totally invalidate that I've seen this problem. Found this forum in a Google search for the problem.

My pad is/was loaded with music and videos. I had watched several of the videos earlier tonight. I was noticing my safari browser would randomly kick back to the home screen and the occasional app would crash. Later (without having synced to anything) I went back to my videos only to discover they were all gone. As was all my music. Photos and apps apparently untouched. I did a settings reset (because that had solved problems with buggy apps in the past). Music and videos did not return except for a music video I had purchased off iTunes this evening. Nothing else.

Apparently I will have to wait until I resync to get my lost data back. I just felt compelled to post due to the widespread doubt on the forum that this bug or whatever existed. And the fact that it was on an iPad and not just a touch.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by ABach 

My Ipod touch 3.0? music, but not podcasts, evaporated. I don't currently have access to the laptop it is synced with. I noticed today that the Shake-to-Shuffle had deactivated also. It was mostly my own cds plus two itunes purchases but they took a long time to load.
In the future, could I back-up on a zip drive???

iPods can only be backed-up to floptical drives, not zip drives.

[Spheric Harlot]

JAZ FTW.

*click*-zzzt *click*-zzzt *click*-zzzt

[andi*pandi]

Originally Posted by Mikeoss 

Apparently I will have to wait until I resync to get my lost data back. I just felt compelled to post due to the widespread doubt on the forum that this bug or whatever existed. And the fact that it was on an iPad and not just a touch.

That's alarming.

[Mikeoss]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi 

That's alarming.

As stated previously by someone else reporting the bug, a resync was able to restore my music and videos - as if nothing ever happened. There was no need to reinstall all the missing items. There was no lengthy reinstall of all the items. It was a normal sync and suddenly everything that was missing was back.

Disturbing how easily it has all disappeared without any obvious cause. iPad had not been dropped. Only apps that had been used between now you see it and now you don't were. Mail, Safari, Netflix and iTunes. Safari and Netflix had noticeably began acting weird with freezing and dropping to the home screen. Multiple times with Safari, once with Netflix.

[tonewheel]

So he resync'd and all is well. What's the point of all this???

[thefatcat]

Originally Posted by jcastane 

Reading through this thread, it seems their are some doubters that this is a "real problem" and as a real person, I have to say this thing DOES happen. This same thing happened to me, and I found something that fixed it. I have a classic iPod, and all of a sudden it just had NO music on it. I didn't sync it or hook it up to a new computer, it just lost all of the music, videos, everything. BUT it still had 20 gigs of "other" data on it when I looked at it in iTunes. I figured it SURELY had the data on there somewhere, my iPod just wasn't giving me access to it. So I followed the instructions below, and BAM, everything is back. It was originally posted here:

Music won't show up but is still on iPod // 80GB 5G iPod - Page 3 - macosx.com

Originally Posted by GoldenArm
OK, I seem to have figured out how to get everything back if your data gets shifted from "Music", "Video" etc.. into "Other" for whatever reason.

1) Plug your Ipod into your pc
2) Find the Ipod in Windows Explorer
3) "Unhide" Hidden files & Folders in Windows
4) In one of the ipod's hidden folders, locate "itunesDB" and an "itunesDB.old_mlpmp"
5) Rename "itunesDB" to "itunesDB.old" (this is the newly corrupted DB), and rename "itunesDB.old_mlpmp" to "itunesDB" (no file extention). This restores the automatic backup of your DB that Apple doesn't seem to think we need to know about...

It worked fine for me. I didn;t pay attention to when the backup was made, I believe it was last time I synced with Itunes. I didn't add anything new on that last sync, so I'm not sure if you will be missing some files if you do this restore and you had changed the Ipod's contents on your last sync...

Either way, it's a whole lot better than rebuilding your library and all your playlists (they have also miraculously re-appeared!)



Hope this helps some of you!

what if you dont have itunes, (I use mediamonkey)will it still work?

[monkeymagic]

I don't normally post on threads but after reading through this lot I couldn't help jumping in. I just don't get why there are a number of people putting in comments like "you should backup" or "just restore" or "what's the problem".

Are you guys really that dense???

I have a new iPhone 4 and have noticed this same thing happening ever since I synced my songs onto it. Had an iPod touch 1st Gen beforehand.

It has happened at least 3 or four times since I've had the iPhone and since I don't often connect back to my PC (Windows 7) I've just gone without the songs for a while each time.

Obviously you get that the songs can be resync'ed.
However, the problem is they keep disappearing and it's alarmingly frustrating.

I sometimes connect my iPhone to a PC just to power it via the USB. I don't know if this is the kind of thing that causes the problem but surely the devices can't be this buggy... or can they?
After reading through this thread from way back in '08 I think I'm going to pay Apple a visit!

[Spheric Harlot]

If you connect your iPhone to a PC and iTunes pops up, it will usually present you with a dialog box. The Windows user's reflex is to just click "ok", which will sync your phone to that machine, erasing all your music.

I have never lost content from my iPhone (3GS) in 25 months.

[-Q-]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

I have never lost content from my iPhone (3GS) in 25 months.

I have never lost content from my iPhone (4) in 15 months.

[dodgers37]

i plugged in my ipod to add a song and so i clicked mi ipod tab and i saw it there so i ejected my ipod and all of a sudden my ipod turns off i turned it back on and its asking me for language and i see all my stuff gone like if i retored it

[dodgers37]

i connect my ipod again and i go to documents and i click my ipod and see all my music but yet it says o songs how do i get all my music back it also says my whole memory is full too!!!!!!!!! what do i do?

[cgc]

I tried syncing my iPod and now my toaster burns all the toast <insert hundreds of red-faced pissed emoticons for effect here> and my dog's mad at me now too.

[RyRyWhatAGuy]

Just going to add another voice here. iPod touch was displaying nothing except the last few podcasts I just downloaded yet all my music was visible in iTunes. Even aft seeing music visible in iTunes, the library on th eiPod itself was empty. After having been connected for a few minutes, the iPod synced on its own and all music is now appearing as normal. Very strange.

[RogueMomentum]

Originally Posted by el stasho 

I have an Ipod Touch 32gb 3g firmware 4.0. Here is what happened..
First my Ipod Touch stopped playing any of my songs both on the ipod itself and on itunes. When I tried to play a song on itunes, the song would receive an exclamation mark next to it, indicating it cannot be played. My web browser would still work fine, but my pandora application installed also would not play any music. My videos as well would no longer play.
Today I plugged my Ipod into my mac and it no longer even has my music registered. Under the music tab it is empty. Under the Ipod Summary page, Itunes says I have 15.92 gb of "other" on my ipod and 446.7 mb of applications, 12.93 gb free space.
What a Bummer!!
Note, I manage my Ipod Touch Manually. I do not sync, ever. As my mac is relatively new, my itunes has only a handful of songs on it but no music that was on my ipod. It is all gone now.

Once I noticed I could not play my songs, I tried removing them from my Ipod to my desktop with various applications, however, none of them worked. They would either do nothing or say the file is corrupt.

Up to this point I have been satisfied with apple. Consumer satisfaction is down..

Hello,

After skimming this thread several times, I don't believe anyone has answered or replied to el stasho's problem, which is more similar to my problem than any of the other problems. If anyone could provide helpful information, it would be greatly appreciated.

I manually manage my music and videos. I have an iPod Touch, the 4th generation, I think. It has a camera. Anyway, I had my iPod plugged in to a Mac, and I changed the spelling of an artist for a certain song (it shows up as two artists on the iPod) on the iTunes Library. I then deleted the song from my iPod and added the grammatically corrected song onto my iPod. After I confirmed that the grammar was correct on my iPod (verified on iTunes under "DEVICES" under "My iPod" under "Music"), I ejected the iPod and then disconnected it. On my touchscreen, however, I still had two artists for what should have been one. I plugged it back into the Mac, and then I again verified that the grammar was correct on the iPod under the "Music" tab under the "My iPod" tab. I deleted the song from my iPod anyway and added it again. I verified that the grammar was correct on the iTunes library before doing so.

I then ejected my iPod and disconnected it. Frustrated-frustrated, mind-with the redundant appearance of two artists, I again plugged it in, ejected it and then disconnected it. Only two artists out of the however-many-artists-I-had showed up. The grammatically incorrect artist, and a recently purchased-from-iTunes-on-iPod item were the ONLY TWO artists available on my touchscreen. I plugged the iPod in AGAIN, and clicked on the "My iPod" tab, and the "Capacity" bar on the bottom said that I had .1 GB of Audio files.

So, pretty much all of my music is gone. Whenever I plug in the iPod Touch and click on the "Music" tab under "My iPod," all of the 11.82GB of 2,188 songs are listed to contradict the "Capacity" bar that shows up on the screen when i click on the "My iPod" tab. However! Whenever I attempt to play the songs (with the exception of the two remaining songs), an exclamation mark shows up for every one. I don't know what to do

Again, I manually manage my music and videos, and the music that I "had" on my iPod Touch came from several computers, some of which are not easily accessible and no longer contain the audio files A "resync" will not help me. Can anyone help me recover my music or provide me with helpful information?