iTunes deleted songs from my iPod, help pls.

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iTunes deleted songs from my iPod, help pls.

iTunes deleted songs from my iPod, is there any undelete utility I can try to recover the songs?

My PC's hard disk failed. I had to recover my itunes library from a backup which was 2 weeks old.

All the music that I'd added to my library and to my iPhod in those two weeks was then deleted from my iPod when I synced it. Since my disk crashed and it wasn't backed up my iPod was the only repository containing these songs.

I do not fancy having to re-rip a whole load of CD's from my collection nor see why I should have to.

Is there an established process to recover from this?

Thanks
Nick

Message was edited by: nicke1

Windows XP

Posted on May 15, 2008 8:26 AM

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Answer 1

Zevoneer

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May 15, 2008 9:14 AM in response to nicke1

When you connected did you get a message that your iPod was linked to another library, and then press Erase and Sync? When an iPod is set to update automatically and you connect to a computer with an empty iTunes and accept the message above it will erase the originals completely. Since there is nothing there to replace them with and complete the sync part of the process the iPod ends up empty.

If you have no back-up there are some data recovery programs on the market. I've no personal experience of them so I can't say how effective they are, here's an example: iPod Data Recovery

None of the recovery programs are particularly cheap so you have to decide if in your particular circumstances it's worth it to get your songs back. It may be if you have a lot of purchased tracks which you will have to pay to download again. If they came primarily from your CDs then it's most likely not as you can re-rip them.

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Answer 2

nicke1 Author

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May 16, 2008 1:58 AM in response to Zevoneer

Many thanks for the reply.

I can't remember to be honest what messages appeared. iTunes wasn't totally empty, I had restored from a backup but it was missing 2-3 weeks of music and it was this that was deleted from the iPod.

Do you know of any free utilies to undelete or if this is the only method to recover the songs?

I'm reluctant to pay for a utility that I'm not convinced will work 100% and where I have the original CD's anyway.

Nick

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Answer 3

Zevoneer

Level 9

52,705 points

May 16, 2008 6:33 AM in response to nicke1

I don't know of any free recovery programmes, this type of utility normally comes at a price and as I've said none I've seen are particularly cheap. If you have the original CDs then the cheapest and simplest option is to load them back into iTunes. In addition, I would also advise that you get yourself an external hard drive and back your stuff up, relying on an iPod as your sole backup is not a good idea and external drives are comparatively inexpensive these days, you can get loads of storage for a reasonable outlay. In the long run having a back up is always going to be a cheaper option that paying to recover lost data.

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Answer 4

nicke1 Author

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May 16, 2008 6:53 AM in response to Zevoneer

Hi,

Per my posts above I do back-up (to an external drive) but I hadn't backed-up for a couple of weeks hence the iPod was the only device to hold the detail that had been added to iTunes since the date of the last back-up.

Perhaps I did receive a warning message but it's frustrating that iTunes does not give a stronger warning that files will be deleted from the iPod.

If I'd received such a warning I would have obviously manually copied the files from my iPod to my PC then added them back into iTunes prior to syncing.

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