I lost my iTunes
This site is for you if you are someone who spent years downloading music, hours compiling your favourite playlists on your laptop for your iTunes and putting them on your ipod, then enjoying your 25 gB of chosen music and then - lost the lot when your hard drive crashed. This scary moment happened to me after I had stored more than 1000 tracks in my iTunes library, and I kept them on my laptop. When the hard drive went, I thought my songs had gone too. If you think this can never happen to you, be warned: the hard drive on my son’s new laptop failed after just one week recently! No matter how much we tell ourselves that we should be backing up our itunes and any other data that we are storing, the truth is that most of us rarely make backups of any of our material. If you are somebody who always intended to get a separate hard drive, or burn your tunes on to CDs, the chances are that you also failed to make the backups or you would not have arrived at this site. You have probably just discovered that Apple do not include a way of transferring your itunes from your ipod to your laptop or PC. Well all is not lost and we have found ways to get your treasured music back.
I created this site because I also lost my music when my hard drive crashed and I found there was no simple guide out there to show me how to choose a data recovery package to get my tunes back. I am not a programmer and I found plenty of geeky pages for those who were happy to spend hours coding and programming, I just wanted a simple solution to get my music back from the iPod and I could not believe that it did not exist.
Read on, and you will find out how you can get your itunes back as well - there is a way of extracting music from your ipod and I can help you find out how.
me problem:hard drive on PC failed and I have 40 songs on iPod.
How do I recover them?
Thanks!
I lost all of my music due to hard drive crash. How do I get the music I have on my iPod back on to my newly installed hard drive?
I am writing to you for help regarding my Ipod. I have th Ipod Video 30GB and have have it for nearly two years now from new. I have never had any problems with the Ipod and has been one of the best buys I have ever had. Music means alot to me and I had over 3,500 songs on my Ipod but today I seem to have lost every single one of them songs. Also not long ago my hard drive on my laptop was damaged and caused me to lose everything on the hard drive including 3,000 odd songs although at the time it was not a problem as I still had the songs on my Ipod its self, since then I have a new hard drive but onlyhave around 500 songs saved. All I have on my Ipod Music section on Itunes is a blank list where 3,500 my songs once where and a message at the top saying Ipod sync is complete. Is there anyway I can retreive these songs back again?
Regards, Jamie Lawson
Hi Jamie
Let me try and help. I need to know the sequence of events. Your e mail sounds like this is what happened
1. Your hard drive crashed
2. You installed a new hard drive
3. You then plugged in your iPod and the tunes on iPod vanished
Is that what happened?
Or do you still have the tunes stored on the iPod
John
Almost the same thing happened to me, please please help. Here are a list of my events ( pardon the spelling ):
1) My iPOD and iTUNES are working sucsessfully
2) I install new hardware and have to type a password.
3) I , being the muppet i am, forgot the password and had to delete everything,
4) All of my music in iTUNES is gone, the music is still on the iPOD though.
IS THERE ANYWAY THAT I CAN PUT THE MUSIC BACK INTO ITUNES? IF NOT CAN YOU HELP ME RETREVE THE MUSIC?
HI John,
You seem to be a savior? Is it true?? I lost over 10,000 songs and am vomitous. I only have about 800 on my IPod but it’s a good start. HOW do i get them back? I tried to “read on” on the site but there was nothing else to read. Please help a fellow music lover.
Thanks!!
Alicia
I’ve had my iPod mini for 2 years now and I can tell it’s dying so I received a new iPod nano for Christmas. The problem is that I have 800 songs on my iPod but only saved 300 in my Library so it wouldn’t slow down my dads laptop too much. I’ve lost most of the CD’s where I got my music from in the first place. Is there any way to transfer all of my 800 songs to my new iPod without having to track down the many lost CD’s? Please help!
Long story short - I had an ipod a couple of years ago synched to a Mac G4 laptop - someone stole the ipod (among many other things during a break in).
I still have the Mac laptop but have since bought a Tablet PC as well. I have a Maxtor One Touch Drive that WAS synched to my Mac but a professional speaking need (for presenatations) made me “have” to wipe the hard drive to reformat it for the PC. We moved the music library to my brothers Mac-formatted Maxtor Drive to save it.
I have recently bought a replacement ipod and my brother loaded all the music back on the NEW ipdo - but, as all the above comments point out, when I connect it to my PC (it won’t work, cause my bro connected it to his Mac), so when I connect it to my Mac laptop, it wants to wipe the whole library - which defeats the whole damn two year fiasco of trying to save all this stuff!
Thus, HOW on earth do I GET my LEGITIMATE music library OFF of my ipod and ONTO my Mac (and/or PC)?
PUHlleze help!
THANK YOU!
Ok……so how do you get it back?
If you are using Windows, its REALLY easy to do retrieve your music without any third party software. Simply go to your Windows Explorer and change the file viewing settings to “Show Hidden Files”. When you look at the file directories on your iPod, you will now see a new hidden folder. If you examine the folder contents, you will see many different directories with lots of files in each of them with completely nonsense random names. These are your music/video/etc files!
Go to your iTunes and import this hidden folder. Import will examine each file and then import it if it happens to be valid media! Voila, all your music is now restored. I’ve done this countless times.
this is exactly my situation, what is the solution?
I want to transfer music from my old I pod (40 GB) to my mac, still can’t, do I need a specific software, where can I find it!
hi i have been reading your comments i have lost all my itunes off laptop due to a hardrive break so please can you tell me wat to do to put 3700 songs back to my ipod
many thanks
i really need help to retreive all the songs that i had stored on my computer. what happaned is that we had to reboot it b/c it had a virus or something like that.
well hope that you can help me
same problem…what’s the solution??
thanks!
i have no idea was still unable to retreive the songs. if anyone has any helpful suggestions i wouldn’t mind hearing it.
I have recently had to restore/reformat my laptop. When I went back to reinstall itunes my music in my library was completely gone. The music is still on my ipod; but how do I put it back into my itunes library? Why do these fun little gadgets have to be so difficult?
I have the exact same problem as the previous message. I had about 3500 songs in the library and the laptop had to be reformatted now I have about 1500 songs. All of the CD’s that were imported are there but not any of the downloaded songs. I do have them on an old ipod but my newer 80gig was erased.
To Eric Achig - Thank you so much for your post above! It worked beautifully for me, and I’m soooo relieved.
hi iv read the comment on how to show the hiddenfiles on the ipod but when i plug my ipod into my PC running VISTA my IPOD TOUCH does not show up in “my computer”
any help would be great
=)
Hi! The hard drive on our Dell desktop failed last week. Dell repalced it under warranty but we were advised that they do not do data recovery. When the Dell service engineer replaced the hard drive and reloaded the programs that came as part of the original specification he informed us that we have lost both our iTunes program and our iTunes music library that had been stored on the old hard drive.
We had iTunes and the iTunes library synched to our 30gb video ipod and it currently holds 27gb of music and photos. Like all the others here we wondering how we can recover the lost music and photo files. I do not want to download a new copy of the iTunes program until I’m sure of the correct thing to do. Ant help would be greatly appreciated.
Eric Achig! Help me out here. A couple or three questions, if you don’t mind.
Q1: Do you mean the files in…
I:iPod_control\Music\F00 through F49 that contain files like AADC.m4a and BOOO.m4a and …
Q2: Since iTunes will only Import one file at a time, is it acceptable to group-click and drag them (if those are the right files to Import) into iTunes from My Documents?
Q3: I’m looking to restore my Playlists from my iPod back into iTunes. Can you steer me in the right direction for that result?
okay so how do I get my music back ?
I am having the same problem. Had to format the hard drive, re-installed iTunes but all music was gone from computer. The music is still on my ipod but have only managed to transfer the purchased music to iTunes library on the computer.
I have read on as you suggested for the answer, but there is no answer!
WHAT DO I DO????
Hello I have the same problem as Mike. I have all my 3500 songs stored on my home PC. I wanted to buy a tune from Itunes and it told me I couldn’t unless I installed the most up to date software. So I said “OK” and let it do it’s thing.
Then after it uploaded the new version I found that it completely deleted the old one along with all my music. I am Gutted after spending about an hour on the phone to the helpdesk, and them telling me they can only help me if I had a MAC! AAAGGGGGHHHH!
I have no idea when it comes to computers so if someone knows how to fix I would be grateful.
is this some kind of joke??????? i have a serious problem and all i can see are questions and no answers. this website is a fucking waste of time. AVOID!!!!!!!!!
Sam, The answer is on the 3 Feb 2008 post….however, we attempted the hidden folder import….and it seems iTunes will not import a folder…only files…how do we import a folder? The dialog doesn’t allow for that….I think a third party software may be required…??
I tried to follow Eric’s instructions (2/3/08) but didn’t quite get my issue resolved. I decided to reset my Ipod as I actually have all my music on my hard drive - but the link between my Ipod & Library isn’t working.
But if you’re smarter than I, perhaps the ff. link will help - without having to buy any addtl software. Note: I did find my hidden music files on my Ipod, but FYI - even the drive was hidden. I just couldn’t figure out how to trsf all the music all at once vs. one at a time. The system wouldn’t allow me to “click/select” the songs.
But I’m giving up & restoring since I do have all my music. Good luck all! Didn’t realize it was gonna be this difficult!
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-computer/P1
I have the answer. GOOGLE “APPLE MUSIC RESCUE”. IT’S ON THE APPLE SITE. MUSIC RESCUE. AMAZING. IT WILL GET THE SONGS ON YOUR IPOD BACK TO YOUR COMPUTER. EXCEPT I just did it without paying and it didn’t copy all my music (it did 1/4) so maybe you should pay before you do it… It’s weird it asks you to pay but then you can press “ok” without paying. So I just pressed ok. I’m calling apple to find out the deal with it.
what is going on here, am i gonna get a “personal” answer? because all i see are questions and praise for the answers that i don’t see….i used the cool iris preview to look at the highlighted words and all i go to are similar pages that are no help or stupid ads!
hello anyone ugggh
If your PC can’t detect your iPod or something along those lines, I can’t really help you. You have to look up a way to clean out the registry and temporary files so that the detect will work again. There are directions on how to do this on the apple support site.
My solution above is ONLY IF you want to retrieve your music FROM YOUR IPOD after you’re PC harddrive lost it due to breaking, etc.
If you want to bring import all the music, simply drag that hidden folder that shows up into your iTunes OR use the iTunes “import folder” option from the file menu.
I went to explorer and showed the hidden file. It took awhile to copy to a new folder. I had movies, music, pictures, audiobooks, and etc. But, everything was copied. Thanks soooo much.
how can I get my music back?
If you have a PC use SharePod. Its an app you can run off the internet.
If you have a Mac download Senuti.
They are both free and A complete lifesaver. Quick and easy.
Well I just got a Macbook and I had a PC before and all my music i did not get from itunes and only the music that i bought from itunes is showing on there. So if i want to listen to all my musici have to plug in my ipod which can be annoying do you have a solution?
I lost my songs when my IPod was corrupted or something. I had to reset it and it made me cry.
Hi. yes my hardrive crashed and i got a new one…
i plugged my ipod back in to my computer….managed to get my music on itunes BUT!, it says when i try to download it to my new ipod i just got saying ” The song “its not my time” could not be used because it can not find its orginal file. Would you like to relocate it?
but i cant cause my files are all gone…WHAT DO I DO?!?!?
P.S, i didnt purchase my songs ….i got em off CD’s from my friends and some off lime wire :/
so please PLEASE!! HELP ME!
thanks!