ipod amnesia

October 14, 2007 3:37 PM

How do I recover music from an iPod that has suddenly reset itself?

A friend lent me her iPod a few months ago. I never connected it to my computer, but I’d charged it and used it a few times. The other day I turned it on and it had mysteriously returned to the factory settings. No music on it at all. Unfortunately, my friend had several original, irreplaceable copies of songs she’d written on the iPod. I need to recover those songs!

Important to note: I have a pc, and do not currently have iTunes installed. Also, the computer my friend had the iPod synced with has since broken.

posted by Doug to computers & internet (10 comments total)

If you plug your ipod in to your (or anyone's) PC, it will appear as an external hard drive, which you can then use a disk repair or file recovery utility on. No need to use iTunes (and actually that will probably do more harm than good)
posted by misterbrandt at 4:11 PM on October 14, 2007

Oh, and the files on the iPod are probably hidden—enable "show hidden files" in Windows Explorer (tools | options | ... ? i'm on a mac at the moment...)
posted by misterbrandt at 4:14 PM on October 14, 2007

Hmm, I tried that this morning, and every time I connect it the My Computer folder crashes. That isn't a good sign, I'd imagine.
posted by Doug at 4:17 PM on October 14, 2007

Hmm. Can you access the ipod from the command line?
Start menu | Run | cmd etc.

Or, maybe try a Live CD
posted by misterbrandt at 4:27 PM on October 14, 2007

If the songs are priceless it might be time to consider professional data recovery, which will be in no way cheap.

Hopefully, you'll both learn a lesson about keeping important data in one place (and one easily damaged/lost/stolen place at that).
posted by 6550 at 5:15 PM on October 14, 2007

If your friend had a Mac, I don't think it'll show up on your PC without extra software (something that handles HFS+ partitions). Maybe some flavor of Linux would work.
posted by unmake at 6:34 PM on October 14, 2007

Sharepod might help in this situation.
posted by gottabefunky at 7:07 PM on October 14, 2007

There's an option to rebuild the database in EphPod.
posted by codger at 9:42 PM on October 14, 2007

oh dear. something similar to this (i.e. no music visible, iPod deciding to reset itself, the my computer folder crashing...) happened to my iPod too, almost two years ago. i went to the nearest Apple store for help and they couldn't save/retrieve anything; the best they could do was, uh, give me the contact info for some professional data recovery center... which (according to them) would cost quite a bit.
hope your friend's iPod can still be saved somehow though. would be interested if you find a solution to this; i couldn't really afford to do the professional data recovery stuff so my iPod is still dead and inaccessible. :(
posted by aielen at 4:15 AM on October 15, 2007

What's the whole story on the friend's PC? When you say "broken", that could be something as simple as a power supply, etc, while the hard drive (and precious songs) are in tact.

Even if it has some weird OS problem where Windows won't boot, it's quite likely that the data is in tact -- unless the hard drive has actually died.

I recommend putting that hard drive in another system as a slave drive and copying over all the files you need. And then back them up. Several times.

Re: the iPod: When you plug it in (before opening My Computer), go to Start > Run and type "diskmgmt.msc". This will open the Windows Disk Management tool. If the iPod is attached and working, it should show up the list of attached media/drives. Ensure that it has a drive letter and doesn't show any problems. If it shows up and has a drive letter assigned, try to access it from the command line as misterbrandt suggested.

Note that if you have any network drives on your PC it may prevent the iPod from being discovered and given a proper drive letter. Make sure to disconnect them before attaching the iPod (right click on the network drive and click "Disconnect").
posted by sprocket87 at 1:59 PM on October 15, 2007