Manual transfer *replaced* my iPod contents! How prevent this?
New iPod owner here...
I have a very large collection of music on my hard drive already (I have a Squeezebox). Much of this is in FLAC and WMA formats, but there's enough mp3 content to get going. Ultimately, it is my intention not to even try to keep the iPod in sync with my disc collection, but to transcode and transfer albums from time to time (then delete the transcoded copy on the hard disc). I hope that iTunes can support this way of working; if it can't, then I might as well return the iPod.
I installed iTunes, and let it loose... Thankfully, I opted not to automatically convert the WMA files, for it is abysmally slow even for the few albums I've tried since (never mind 4000+ tracks in one mouthful!)
Whenever I connect the iPod, iTunes and indeed my PC grind to a halt for about 10 minutes; then iTunes complains about all the files it can't transfer; finally, it synchronises. So even if I've only changed or added a few tracks, any sync takes forever. (So a subsidiary question is: how can I stop iTunes from doing this 10-minute rescan on each sync?)
So I decided to switch to manual updates (which I will want ultimately anyway). At first, I thought this was working fine. I used "Add Folder" to convert a small number of WMA albums, then selected the results and dragged them onto the iPod icon.
It was only after doing this a couple of times, that I realised that the last drag-and-drop had replaced the entire contents of my iPod with the newly-selected files!
Why did this happen? And, much, much more important: how can I stop it from happening again?
-- Brian
I have a very large collection of music on my hard drive already (I have a Squeezebox). Much of this is in FLAC and WMA formats, but there's enough mp3 content to get going. Ultimately, it is my intention not to even try to keep the iPod in sync with my disc collection, but to transcode and transfer albums from time to time (then delete the transcoded copy on the hard disc). I hope that iTunes can support this way of working; if it can't, then I might as well return the iPod.
I installed iTunes, and let it loose... Thankfully, I opted not to automatically convert the WMA files, for it is abysmally slow even for the few albums I've tried since (never mind 4000+ tracks in one mouthful!)
Whenever I connect the iPod, iTunes and indeed my PC grind to a halt for about 10 minutes; then iTunes complains about all the files it can't transfer; finally, it synchronises. So even if I've only changed or added a few tracks, any sync takes forever. (So a subsidiary question is: how can I stop iTunes from doing this 10-minute rescan on each sync?)
So I decided to switch to manual updates (which I will want ultimately anyway). At first, I thought this was working fine. I used "Add Folder" to convert a small number of WMA albums, then selected the results and dragged them onto the iPod icon.
It was only after doing this a couple of times, that I realised that the last drag-and-drop had replaced the entire contents of my iPod with the newly-selected files!
Why did this happen? And, much, much more important: how can I stop it from happening again?
-- Brian
iPod video 80GB, Windows XP