How do I recover deleted songs?

Question

Level 1

4 points

How do I recover deleted songs?

I have an external hard drive hooked on my dell pc (running xp) for storing music files. Recently I added some music to the drive and then synced it with my iTunes (latest version). However, after doing this I noticed that many of my music files had different extensions and were encoded at different rates. So, I highlight all of my songs in iTunes and and set them to be converted to the highest quality mp3. The process was taking quite some time so I let it go overnight. When I came back to my computer in the morning I realized I had duplicated all of my songs (iTunes doesn't delete the old songs when converting). Having over 10k songs I thought it best to delete the first set of songs which were still highlighted. Next I synced my iPod with my iTunes. But then I noticed I only had 500 songs!

I looked in the Trash but no luck. I have tried Dell's recovery application but cannot get the files back that way. Any ideas on how to recover all of those songs via the drive or my iPod? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.8), * Also use a Dell running Windows XP

Posted on Apr 17, 2008 11:11 AM

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Answer 1

Zevoneer

Level 9

52,705 points

Apr 17, 2008 11:22 AM in response to grahamjcjg

*Any ideas on how to recover all of those songs via the drive or my iPod?*

If you have any iTunes Music Store purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer

The transfer of content from sources such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well. Have a look at the web pages and documentation, this is just a small selection of what's available, they are generally quite straightforward. You can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers

TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod2PC Windows Only
iDump Windows Only
SharePod Windows Only
iPodRip Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac and Windows
Music Rescue Mac & Windows
Floola Mac & Windows
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible - Windows version only)

There's also a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to a Mac or PC. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available on page 2 at this link: Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide

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Answer 2

grahamjcjg Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 18, 2008 2:09 PM in response to Zevoneer

Thank you...but any idea on how to recover all of the songs?

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Answer 3

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Apr 18, 2008 2:37 PM in response to grahamjcjg

So, I highlight all of my songs in iTunes and and set them to be converted to the highest quality mp3.

If the songs were at a lower bitrate to begin with, you didn't do anything except make the files bigger. You didn't gain any quality.
When iTunes converts songs, it makes a new copy of the song in the new format, leaving you with 2 copies.