backup --> iPod
October 15, 2009 7:00 PM Subscribe
Trying to get my music library from my external hard drive back onto my iPod while maintaining my sanity.
(Apologies in advance for the lengthy/convoluted question.) I recently started having problems with my iPod and realized I should make sure to have a perfect, up-to-date backup. I started by turning on the iPod's hidden files. If you're familiar with these hidden files, you know that they have randomly generated names like "VCKT.m4a," "BBLC.m4a," etc. (no apparent indication of which songs these are), and they're in folders called "F00," "F01," etc. (Mine go up to F49 since I have over 7,000 songs.) I copied all of these files to my external hard drive. At the time this seemed like a really smart, thorough way to do it.
Then I went to the Apple Store and got my iPod fixed, which involved them restoring my iPod. So now I need to recreate my music library in my iPod using the external hard drive.
I thought this would be pretty simple: plug in the iPod and external hard drive to my Macbook at the same time, then drag and drop all the folders -- F00 through F49 -- from the external hard drive to the iPod, right? Well, I did this, and the cryptically named files do appear in the iPod when you look at the iPod's contents in the desktop. But if you try to use the iPod as a normal music-playing device, it doesn't work -- there are no songs that show up for you to listen to (whether you're looking at it in iTunes or disconnected from the computer).
I again thought I was being smart by seeing what happens when I "open" one of the hidden files. Hey cool, a random song gets copied to iTunes! And it's a normal song -- not "VCKT.m4a" but something I can actually listen to, with a song title in English, etc. Of course, I can then drag and drop this song from iTunes into my iPod. At first I thought this would be the solution: just do the same thing for all the songs.
But there are a couple problems with that, and I'd really appreciate any help getting around them. As I said, I have over 7,000 songs, roughly 70 GB of music. My computer's hard drive has about 4 GB left. So if I were to just open all the hidden files from my iPod into iTunes at once, it'd be a disaster: at best, I'd quickly get a message telling me my computer's hard drive couldn't hold any more. (And I'd be afraid I wouldn't be so lucky -- the hard drive could get filled up and paralyzed. This happened to someone I know.)
So, should I just copy the hidden files one folder at a time? I could do that, but that would mean opening up the songs from "F00," waiting for them to get copied to iTunes, then waiting for them to get copied to the iPod, then deleting those songs from iTunes and emptying the trash, then moving on to "F01" ... and repeating that whole thing 50 times. I'd like to avoid that if I can.
So my questions are:
(1) Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to be able to just get it started, then sit back and let the computer handle it.
(2) I already feel kind of silly for how much of a minor ordeal this has turned into as a result of my backup method that I (mistakenly?) thought was so clever. Could someone please assure me that there's a way to follow through with this that won't mess things up even further?
(In case it's relevant, my external hard drive holds about 500 GB, I have a 160 GB iPod, and I'm using Mac OS 10.4.11.)
(Apologies in advance for the lengthy/convoluted question.) I recently started having problems with my iPod and realized I should make sure to have a perfect, up-to-date backup. I started by turning on the iPod's hidden files. If you're familiar with these hidden files, you know that they have randomly generated names like "VCKT.m4a," "BBLC.m4a," etc. (no apparent indication of which songs these are), and they're in folders called "F00," "F01," etc. (Mine go up to F49 since I have over 7,000 songs.) I copied all of these files to my external hard drive. At the time this seemed like a really smart, thorough way to do it.
Then I went to the Apple Store and got my iPod fixed, which involved them restoring my iPod. So now I need to recreate my music library in my iPod using the external hard drive.
I thought this would be pretty simple: plug in the iPod and external hard drive to my Macbook at the same time, then drag and drop all the folders -- F00 through F49 -- from the external hard drive to the iPod, right? Well, I did this, and the cryptically named files do appear in the iPod when you look at the iPod's contents in the desktop. But if you try to use the iPod as a normal music-playing device, it doesn't work -- there are no songs that show up for you to listen to (whether you're looking at it in iTunes or disconnected from the computer).
I again thought I was being smart by seeing what happens when I "open" one of the hidden files. Hey cool, a random song gets copied to iTunes! And it's a normal song -- not "VCKT.m4a" but something I can actually listen to, with a song title in English, etc. Of course, I can then drag and drop this song from iTunes into my iPod. At first I thought this would be the solution: just do the same thing for all the songs.
But there are a couple problems with that, and I'd really appreciate any help getting around them. As I said, I have over 7,000 songs, roughly 70 GB of music. My computer's hard drive has about 4 GB left. So if I were to just open all the hidden files from my iPod into iTunes at once, it'd be a disaster: at best, I'd quickly get a message telling me my computer's hard drive couldn't hold any more. (And I'd be afraid I wouldn't be so lucky -- the hard drive could get filled up and paralyzed. This happened to someone I know.)
So, should I just copy the hidden files one folder at a time? I could do that, but that would mean opening up the songs from "F00," waiting for them to get copied to iTunes, then waiting for them to get copied to the iPod, then deleting those songs from iTunes and emptying the trash, then moving on to "F01" ... and repeating that whole thing 50 times. I'd like to avoid that if I can.
So my questions are:
(1) Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to be able to just get it started, then sit back and let the computer handle it.
(2) I already feel kind of silly for how much of a minor ordeal this has turned into as a result of my backup method that I (mistakenly?) thought was so clever. Could someone please assure me that there's a way to follow through with this that won't mess things up even further?
(In case it's relevant, my external hard drive holds about 500 GB, I have a 160 GB iPod, and I'm using Mac OS 10.4.11.)
If I were you and I'm understanding the situation correctly, I would do a FIND or SEARCH on the external drive using your OS for all files that have the *.mp4, *.mp3, *.m4p, etc, etc extensions. There shouldn't actually be that many extensions to account for - in fact I think I've listed the three primary ones here.
Anyway, you'll get a list of approximately 7,000 files. I would then open iTunes and (assuming you have an empty iTunes library) drag these files (by selecting all from the search result window) into iTunes. iTunes will chug for 20 minutes or so as it processes all that and, if you have it configured to do so, copies it to a local drive on your machine.
Once it's in iTunes, I would hook up your iPod and just drag it all on over to that. Or sync it. Or however.
posted by kbanas at 7:20 PM on October 15, 2009
Anyway, you'll get a list of approximately 7,000 files. I would then open iTunes and (assuming you have an empty iTunes library) drag these files (by selecting all from the search result window) into iTunes. iTunes will chug for 20 minutes or so as it processes all that and, if you have it configured to do so, copies it to a local drive on your machine.
Once it's in iTunes, I would hook up your iPod and just drag it all on over to that. Or sync it. Or however.
posted by kbanas at 7:20 PM on October 15, 2009
You could also do it hippybears way, by pointing iTunes to the external drive directly and dragging over the folders. But I find sometimes dragging multiple hundreds of folders like that can sometimes make iTunes go a little sideways, so I prefer to search.
posted by kbanas at 7:21 PM on October 15, 2009
posted by kbanas at 7:21 PM on October 15, 2009
Response by poster: Why aren't your songs in your computer's iTunes library to begin with?
I can't do that since my computer doesn't have nearly enough space. That's why my practice has been to keep my music in my iPod and external hard drive. I use iTunes as a temporary place to hold music that I've recently acquired.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:25 PM on October 15, 2009
I can't do that since my computer doesn't have nearly enough space. That's why my practice has been to keep my music in my iPod and external hard drive. I use iTunes as a temporary place to hold music that I've recently acquired.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:25 PM on October 15, 2009
Response by poster: Oh, I see what you mean. I didn't even realize iTunes had an option to grab its library from a source other than the computer.
Unfortunately, when I go into preferences and select the external hard drive as the source, nothing shows up. It's not perceiving the songs.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:28 PM on October 15, 2009
Unfortunately, when I go into preferences and select the external hard drive as the source, nothing shows up. It's not perceiving the songs.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:28 PM on October 15, 2009
Response by poster: To clarify, I do know how to drag and drop a whole bunch of files at a time. I could drag all 7,000 of them from the hard drive straight to the iPod. Or I could drag all of them into iTunes. But either of these actions is problematic for the reasons I described in the post. (Specifically, dragging to the iPod doesn't produce the songs in listenable form, and there's no room to drag all of them to iTunes.)
I'm still not seeing how I'm supposed to actually get the songs to show up.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:38 PM on October 15, 2009
I'm still not seeing how I'm supposed to actually get the songs to show up.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:38 PM on October 15, 2009
Response by poster: 2) point your iTunes program (Preferences Advanced tab, I believe) to that new folder you just made. Click the checkbox on that same page which says something like "keep iTunes library organized".
I'm trying to do this, but it doesn't seem to have any effect. I'm just seeing my normal old iTunes library.
3) drag data from your extracted iPod folder into your iTunes program. It will copy these files into the new library you're creating and will put all the correct data with it, organize the folder, etc. Do this in tiny chunks until you have moved all your extracted iPod data into your iTunes program
That sounds like the same method I was considering before that would either be incredibly laborious (a series of time consuming steps, repeated 50 times) or impossible since there's no space in my computer. I'm probably missing something, but it's still not making sense to me.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:01 PM on October 15, 2009
I'm trying to do this, but it doesn't seem to have any effect. I'm just seeing my normal old iTunes library.
3) drag data from your extracted iPod folder into your iTunes program. It will copy these files into the new library you're creating and will put all the correct data with it, organize the folder, etc. Do this in tiny chunks until you have moved all your extracted iPod data into your iTunes program
That sounds like the same method I was considering before that would either be incredibly laborious (a series of time consuming steps, repeated 50 times) or impossible since there's no space in my computer. I'm probably missing something, but it's still not making sense to me.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:01 PM on October 15, 2009
Response by poster: Ah! I'm pretty sure I've got it working the way you've described it, hippybear. I'll post an update if/when it's complete. In the meantime, thanks a lot ... I reeeeeally appreciate it!
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:25 PM on October 15, 2009
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:25 PM on October 15, 2009
You backed up your files in a weird way, which is why you're having convoluted problems now. If you'd just dragged all the files out of iTunes to your drive instead of the "hidden files" trick, you could indeed just drag them back now.
As others above have said: iTunes is all about the library, and the library is an index to where your files are... they may be in many different places.
Confusing the index with the data is the source of many, many iTunes mishaps.
posted by rokusan at 8:33 PM on October 15, 2009
As others above have said: iTunes is all about the library, and the library is an index to where your files are... they may be in many different places.
Confusing the index with the data is the source of many, many iTunes mishaps.
posted by rokusan at 8:33 PM on October 15, 2009
Response by poster: rokusan: I would have had an easier time with that if the computer didn't give me problems every time I try to drag new songs into a backup that already contains some old songs that happen to be by the same artist. If I've just bought the new Camera Obscura album, and I want to add it to my external hard drive backup, which already has Camera Obscura's previous album, I get a dialogue box asking me if I want to replace the old "Camera Obscura" folder with the new "Camera Obscura" folder, or if I want to cancel the operation. Of course, I want neither of those -- I want the computer to sort everything automatically, but it doesn't seem to do be able to do so reliably. That's why I switched to the hidden-files method in the first place.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:55 PM on October 15, 2009
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:55 PM on October 15, 2009
Response by poster: Jaltcoh: using the iTunes library you've now built on your external drive coupled with the "keep music folder organized" checktab will allow iTunes to build a very logical set of nested folders for you
But the problem I described in my previous comment will still happen when moving songs from my computer's hard drive to the backup external hard drive, right?
posted by Jaltcoh at 5:27 AM on October 16, 2009
But the problem I described in my previous comment will still happen when moving songs from my computer's hard drive to the backup external hard drive, right?
posted by Jaltcoh at 5:27 AM on October 16, 2009
But the problem I described in my previous comment will still happen when moving songs from my computer's hard drive to the backup external hard drive, right?
No, it won't, if you do it the right way -- that is, open the files on your computer, which should prompt iTunes to open (if it isn't open already) and automatically copy the files to wherever iTunes is keeping your library (in this case, your external drive). I'm pretty sure this is the default setting for iTunes, but if it isn't it's very easy to set in your preferences.
Really, everything you want to do should be done through iTunes to make sure that everything is in its rightful place and save yourself all the headache.
posted by macdara at 5:54 AM on October 16, 2009
No, it won't, if you do it the right way -- that is, open the files on your computer, which should prompt iTunes to open (if it isn't open already) and automatically copy the files to wherever iTunes is keeping your library (in this case, your external drive). I'm pretty sure this is the default setting for iTunes, but if it isn't it's very easy to set in your preferences.
Really, everything you want to do should be done through iTunes to make sure that everything is in its rightful place and save yourself all the headache.
posted by macdara at 5:54 AM on October 16, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
Make sure in your preferences that you have the program copy files it is importing on to your hard drive.
Good luck.
posted by mr_felix_t_cat at 7:10 PM on October 15, 2009