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Ok, here's the deal. About a month ago, my hard drive crashed on my iBook and had to be replaced. As luck would have it, all my itunes were lost. But, I still had them on my Mini, so I figured I'd use Senuti (the free program that gets iTunes from your iPod into your computer.) Well, I ended up screwing it up somehow because the program deleted all the songs from my iPod too. I was a bit miffed. Fast forward to now. I just bought a video iPod, and today my iTunes was acting funny. ALL my songs were missing from the program, but they were in the iTunes folder itself. Long story short, I got them back into iTunes where they belong. But when I update my iPod, my computer asks me this: "The iPod [My iPod] is linked to another iTunes music library. Do you want to change the link to this iTunes music library and replace all existing songs and playlists on this iPod with those from this library?" When I ran Senuti, I answered "YES" and lost all my music. But I don't know which to click now, yes or no. Sorry this is so long. I don't want to lose every file all over again, it made me sick :/ Thanks for the help.
iBook G4,
Mac OS X (10.4.4),
Hope to get a MacBook Mar. '06 :)
If your songs are on your harddrive, they are safe.
When you see the words "replace all existing songs and playlists on the iPod", you should be very afraid that it's gonna delete your iPod. But there's nothing that's gonna automatically delete anything on your hard drive.
Basically the difference is that iTunes has no respect for your iPod as a storage device, an intentional "feature" to prevent file swapping.
Next time you want to get files off your iPod, you can use iPodAccess which seems to work well for me at least, or else use the terminal to get into the hidden folders on your ipod where your music is actually stored.
This looks more complicated than it really is; i just wrote it out very long because I assume you've never used a command line in your life. You've gotta do these commands, but in the end you'll just open up a bunch of finder folders, so you'll end up in the finder with your music layed out in front of you in the folders it lives in. Just try it; you'll feel like a hacker.
COMMANDS:
ls = list out the contents of the current directory
cd = change directory
open = open in a finder window
<tab> = if you are typing in a file that's in the current file, it'll autocomplete
* = anything, even a string, so P* means any file that starts with P.
You'll need to boot up the terminal, which should be in /Applications/Utilities. I don't know good excplicit commands, but type cd /Volumes, then type ls which will show you the names of the volumes. hit cd then start typing the name of your ipod that's listed, caps sensitive. Type one or two characters and then hit <tab>, it'll autocomplete. go in, type 'ls' and there'll be some folder with a sketchy name. hit cd [that folder's exact name] then ls again and there should be a music folder. cd [the music folder's exact name (get the pattern?)] and in there should be a bunch of folders that all start with a letter followed by a number. I can't remember what the letter is offhand, but let's pretend it's 'P'. If it's not P, just replace 'P' with whatever it is. Type open P*. Voila, all your iPod music should be right there in front of you.
If you can't find it, it's possilbe that your command line doesn't automatically show hidden folders. If that's the case, you'll have to type "ls -A" instead of "ls", which will reveal hidden folders.
The point of doing it yourself like that is basically so you don't take any risks by trusting a program when you can just do what you need to do yourself.
Hm... i feel weird having posted that on the Apple website. It's not against the rules though or anything, I don't think. I mean, what else are we supposed to do with the command line?
Do you automatically update your iPod or manually manage? If you automatically update, you'll lose everything from the previous library. If you manually update, then you should still have everything. I keep music on different computers and it's no problem.
