iTunes cannot read contents of iPod - all music seems to have dissapeared

The new update to iTunes may have fixed it version 10.1.2. I first exported my music library playlist to an xml file. Then I uninstalled everything apple and used CCleaner to remove any residual files. Downloaded the new version and installed it and loaded my old playlist back in and so far so good.

I've had a similar problem that I was able to fix today:

You do not need to restore the iPod (in my case, a 160GB Classic with at least 80GB of music on it) to get your music "visible" again.

1) If you can read your iPod in Windows Explorer, make sure you can see "hidden" files and folders and locate the folder [Whatever your iPod drive designation]:\\iPod_control\iTunes. Close iTunes if its open.
2) Locate two files: "itunesDB" and "itunesDB.old_mlpmp". The 1st file is your current (and now corrupt) library database file, which iTunes needs to refer to to know whats on your iPod; whilst the 2nd is a backup of the this database that hopefully is not corrupt (because it should be a backup of your last successful sync).
3) Rename "itunesDB" to "itunesDB.old" (or you could even delete it I think) and then rename "itunesDB.old_mlpmp" to "itunesDB". This effectively restores the backup of the library that you had as a backup but didn't even know about!
4) Open iTunes. It should now read your iPod and its contents without telling you that you HAVE to restore.

Note: if you cannot find "itunesDB.old_mlpmp" then this solution won't work.

I found this solution at this link: http://macosx.com/forums/ipod/295524-music-wont-show-up-but-still-ipod-80gb-5g-i pod-2.html

Credit goes to "GoldenArm"... What a life-saver!

Hopefully this will work for you.

AxleKO

i am having this exact same problem. my ipod came in the mail 2 days ago (160gb black), and i have been syncing it in the morning. when i come home in the evening, itunes is not able to read the contents of my ipod. the music is on the ipod's harddrive after i plug it in, but once i connect it to itunes, my ipod can no longer play any music.

don't want to have to keep restoring my ipod everytime i add a song to my library or whatever.

i hope this gets fixed sometime soon, ***, just spent so much money on this thing.

yeah i just bought a brand new one too and its doing the same thing to me, i hope apple patches this quick!

yup that renaming trick worked for me but will it stay good or will it mess up again? AxleKO? is this permanent fix from the itunes saying the classic is corrupted and need to be restored?

well its seems that solution isn't a permanent fix cause the classic is still saying it cant read the contents of the ipod so u will have to keep going through this to keep your music without restoring it

I've had this issue for a few weeks now and it would happen randomly even with the latest iTunes update on my Classic that is only 4 months old.
I altered the drive letter of my ipod but it still happened.

Obviously it's very very annoying but thanks to AxleKO/GoldenArm and the workaround it has saved me a lot of time reuploading "lost" music to my pod.
I can finally go ahead and add more to it now that I know it won't actually disappear next time I plug my iPod in!

Hope that a proper fix for this issue is found soon.

I'm glad to hear this solution has worked, albeit only temporarily for some of you.

@jahuda and @nas2344: I wish I was an expert and could help you guys out with a permanent fix!

It's been two weeks since I've used this solution on my iPod and it has behaved well whenever I've connected it to my PC and iTunes.. so for me it seems it has worked "permanently" (hopefully for good).

I've had this problem before on an older 60GB iPod.. back then I didn't come across this solution. What I did to save my music back then required another empty iPod (the iPod 160GB I'm using now) and the software iPod 2 iPod, which was able to read the music and playlists on the 60GB that iTunes couldn't. I used iPod 2 iPod to transfer the music to the empty 160GB iPod, and I was able to read the music/playlists again in iTunes when the 160GB was connected to the PC. I connected back the 60GB iPod and restored it... then used iPod 2 iPod to transfer the music back from the 160GB to the old 60GB and it was fine again. It was a lot of effort though, and I paid for the iPod 2 iPod licence to transfer the thousands of songs I had. The great thing is the songs maintained the original "date added" attribute, which allowed me to keep track of when I added the songs, but the album art had be downloaded again as they had disappeared!

Maybe this is an alternative "solution" that might be a permanent fix for some of you.

AxleKO

Having the same problem. Windows XP, newest iTunes. Seems to have deleted the index for my entire iPod and did not reclaim the space. I don't have a backup of most of the data on here and won't restore to factory. The fix going around about renaming the old backup index doesn't work for me (don't have that backup index). Has Apple really not offered a fix yet?

I was reading the questions and did the diagnostic. Today I aded a playlist, click eject, it said ok to disconnect but when I went to use the iPod all my music was gone. Everything is on my computer so no loss there but now I can't add anything back on. I did "restore" several times but when I go to add music it says it can't write/copy anything to it.
The diagnostic read Reallocs:1928. You mentioned a high number was bad. Do I need to get this serviced or get a new iPod?

@axleko thanks for the sentiment!

strangely, the day after i posted my comment, my ipod did not have this problem anymore. i never used the temporary solution either. did apple fix the problem?

Message was edited by: jahuda

i doubt apple fix it cause i haven't seen an update to itunes in like a month!

This issue is still happening to me. I've got the latest version of iTunes. I use the fix detailed in this thread to stop me losing my music but it's just really annoying because it happens at random. On average I'm getting it about 5 or 6 times a week when I connect my iPod to my computer. Is there a fix for this coming? There are obviously a fair few people having the same problem. It's not very user friendly as it stands.