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This procedure will fix Error -48

I'm confident the following will cure everyone's -48 error.

First: Select your iTunes Playlists that you use to synchronise to your iPod.

Select View > "Find duplicates"

Now remove all duplicate tracks (files) from the iTunes Playlist(s) you have chosen to sync with your iPod. The playlist(s) must contain no duplicate tracks. (Don't delete files with the same name but by a different artist or on a different CD...these are not duplicate files, just different versions of the same song, etc.)

When you are confident that no two tracks are the same click on the iPod icon in iTunes and select the "Summary" tab and press "Restore". This will wipe the iPod, update the software to 1.2.1 (if it's needed) and copy your new Playlist(s) with no duplicate tracks over to the iPod.

THE TRICK IS TO MAKE CERTAIN YOUR iTUNES PLAYLIST HAS NO TRUE DUPLICATE TRACKS BEFORE COPYING TO THE iPOD.

For some reason when you drag tracks to add to your Playlist in iTunes they sometimes get duplicated...I don't know why this happens but it is what causes the directory errors on your iPod. Checking you have no duplicate files in your iTunes playlists before syncing to your iPod will prevent this error from occurring.

Many different Macs since 1984, Mac OS X (10.4.7), I have one XP PC for playing games...but the OS is rubbish & the games too buggy

Posted on Dec 13, 2006 6:53 AM

Reply
90 replies

Dec 13, 2006 7:22 AM in response to Neal Jackson

Neal,

This is interesting as I had been trying to track down a "duplicates" solution.

I'm not quite with you though. Do you mean that no single playlist can contain two copies of the same track or do you mean that across all playlists there cannot be two copies of the same track? Or do you basically just mean that the ipod cannot handle what Itunes defines as duplicates ?

I've been (wanting to) auto sync everything so I guess I'm a little different. I have quite a lot of "duplicates" though most of them are not because they are (for example) live versions and studio versions of the same song. I think I'll live with restoring the ipod until a fix comes along rather than deleting all of them.

I did read somewhere that itunes 7 changed how it handled duplicates and maybe this is what is causing the bug.

thanks for your post Neal.

Dec 13, 2006 8:05 AM in response to rob-48

Neal,

This is interesting as I had been trying to track
down a "duplicates" solution.

I'm not quite with you though. Do you mean that no
single playlist can contain two copies of the same
track or do you mean that across all playlists there
cannot be two copies of the same track? Or do you
basically just mean that the ipod cannot handle what
Itunes defines as duplicates ?

I've been (wanting to) auto sync everything so I
guess I'm a little different. I have quite a lot of
"duplicates" though most of them are not because they
are (for example) live versions and studio versions
of the same song. I think I'll live with restoring
the ipod until a fix comes along rather than deleting
all of them.

I did read somewhere that itunes 7 changed how it
handled duplicates and maybe this is what is causing
the bug.

thanks for your post Neal.


I'm not certain how it works across multiple playlists. But I have one playlist I call "To iPod". I looked at this playlist under the iPod icon in iTunes and found that the number of tracks in that playlist did not match the number in my iTunes to iPod playlist...though, of course, they should have been identical.

That's when I selected "Show Duplicates" in the iTunes "To iPod" playlist and sure enough many tracks had two entries. So, I set about deleting every duplicate track. Though I was careful not to delete tracks with the same name but were different renditions/versions.

Once I'd deleted every duplicate I restored my iPod and everything now works perfectly...though I'll keep a close eye on files I add to my "To iPod" playlist in future to make sure they don't self-duplicate before syncing with the iPod; that is until Apple come up with a true fix for this playlist duplicates bug.

To test my theory create one small Test Playlist in iTunes with say 2 CDs worth of tracks (check that when you have created the "Test" playlist there are no duplicate tracks). Under Manual Sync select only the "Test" playlist and then press restore. Restoring will wipe everything from your iPod and copy the "Test" playlist... but it will function perfectly after that with no other input from yourself. To restore your iPod to the way it was before you ran the test just un-select the "Test" playlist and re-select the Playlists you used to sync from.

In answer to your question; I suspect it is on a Playlist by Playlist basis. It wont matter if you have three Playlists with all three of them having the same tracks. They simply shouldn't have duplicates of those tracks within the individual Playlist. So, you could have Help! by The Beatles in Playlists 1, 2 and 3 but not two copies of Help! within each individual playlist. It appears it is any single corrupt Playlist structure which is at fault.

I had to go through 15,000 tracks in my "To iPod" playlist ... that was painful and very time consuming...but it worked. No duplicates, no -48 error code.

Message was edited by: Neal Jackson

Dec 14, 2006 2:10 AM in response to Neal Jackson

Thanks Neal,

One thing I did try that was similar to your suggestion was restoring and syncing to a near empty library - different user same computer.

I got the error when i first connected but after a restore it seemed to work and sync ok.

This seems consistent with your procedure.

I've given up trying to workaround this one and am waiting for a fix - I see apple are collecting info now which is a start

Rob

Dec 14, 2006 7:25 AM in response to Neal Jackson

Sorry Neal, but I'm afraid I disagree that this is the solution to -48 ...:

My wife's new nano doesn't contain any user-created playlists; It only contains the default iTunes smart-playlists, & even those don't generate any duplicates.

(Unless of course there are other 'duplicate' files on the iPod's drive that are causing the problem...)

All the best,

Jason

Dec 14, 2006 7:46 AM in response to Jason Creasey

Okay, but try the following:

Create a New Playlist in iTunes to copy to your wife's Nano add a few music files and select sync manually using only that new Playlist. Before syncing click on Restore and let iTunes do the rest. The error -48 should go away after the restore and copying of the playlist has been completed. Remove the ipod add a few more tracks to the playlist and re-insert the ipod and it should just sync with no errors. Tell me if it doesn't. Cheers

Dec 14, 2006 7:56 AM in response to Neal Jackson

Thanks for the solution! I did find your initial post a bit unclear though; not everyone uses one single playlist to sync their iPod. In fact, you're only prompted to create it if your iTunes library is larger than the capacity of your iPod, something that may well not apply to owners of the 80GB model.

I just sync everything in iTunes that's 'checked', so to find the source of the error, I had to look at every playlist in iTunes and look for duplicates in each one.

In my case, the culprit was a playlist called "iPod-on-the-go" or something like that. I definitely didn't create it, so it must be something that's automatically generated by the video iPod. When I looked inside, it only had two podcast tracks in it and they were identical, presumably the result of some bug surrounding podcast updates.

I simply deleted that entire playlist (as I don't use it), then restored my iPod to factory settings, whereupon it actually restored it with the new 1.21 firmware. After that, I was able sync it up and it's all working perfectly, so thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Dec 14, 2006 8:27 AM in response to Neal Jackson

Thanks for the suggestion Neal.

Trouble is:

(a) I've already wasted enough of my time trying to resolve Apple's c__k-up already, &

(b) the whole point of buying a nano for my mildy-technophobic & 8-months-pregnant 'better half' is that all she wants to do is auto-update the thing, & not to have to faff about with manual updates & creating playlists....

To be honest, at the moment I'd rather just advise her to run a repair in Disk Utility each time before she launches iTunes (which is another workaround for the time-being. ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=767941&tstart=0 ))

All the best,

Jason

Dec 14, 2006 9:05 AM in response to m0thr4

Thanks for the solution! I did find your initial
post a bit unclear though; not everyone uses one
single playlist to sync their iPod. In fact, you're
only prompted to create it if your iTunes library is
larger than the capacity of your iPod, something that
may well not apply to owners of the 80GB model.


I simply deleted that entire playlist (as I don't use
it), then restored my iPod to factory settings,
whereupon it actually restored it with the new 1.21
firmware. After that, I was able sync it up and it's
all working perfectly, so thanks for pointing me in
the right direction.


Okay, I don't use my 80gb iPod for anything other than music and diaries...I have over 700gb music on three HDD's. So the duplicate file error could be any of the iPod Devices Playlists: Podcasts, Movies, etc., within iTunes. But it's definitely duplicated files causing the -48 problem.

I trust Apple will find a fix sooner than later... It's going to make a terrible Christmas present should someone get an iPod they can't fathom how to sync without getting error messages. Most un-Apple, most un-Mac. Seems the Windows users are getting it better than we Macites.

Dec 17, 2006 9:39 AM in response to Joanne Slade

Hi Joanne,

I think Neal's referring to the 'LIBRARY / STORE / PLAYLISTS' panel on the left side of the main iTunes window, BUT, the your iPod's icon only appears (under the heading 'DEVICES' in the left column I seem to recall) when the iPod is physically connected to your Mac (& possibly only when it's mounted on the desktop... I've got a feeling it disappears from the menu when 'Enable disk use' is NOT switched on in the iPod pref's, but I'm typing this from memory & can't remember its exact behaviour...)

Once you've selected the iPod icon on the left, you can then select the various pages relating to your iPod in the main area of the iTunes window.

All the best,

Jason

Dec 18, 2006 9:33 AM in response to stacks100

I can just see all those frustrated people on Christmas Day -
not going to be good is it?


Absolutely, stacks100....

In fact I said the exact same thing to an Apple 'Genius Bar' employee in their Bluewater Store (in Kent) today, who, funnily enough, knew NOTHING about this -48 error, had not been told anything about it from Apple, nor was he aware of any of the threads about it here on Apple Discussions! So much for being a 'genius'....

Frankly I felt really, really sorry for all the kids in the store cooing over the iPods with their parents alongside. Imagine how they're going to feel by lunchtime on the 25th.....

JC

This procedure will fix Error -48

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