All music gone, won't reload!

I recently plugged my ipod mini into my computer to do some updating, adding music and so on. Then a message came up that said," iTunes can not read the contents of ipod "Mal's ipod". Use the ipod software updater application to restore the iPod to factory settings." Then all my music was no longer on my ipod. Nothing, it was like I had never used my ipod before. So confused, what happened and how do I get it back on, nothing has worked. I've updated my itunes and ipod and I nothing seems to work. I've reset my ipod, as far as I know. All my music is still on my itunes it just won't connect to my ipod. Please help me!

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Try resetting your iPod with it connected to your computer...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61705
Open iTunes. See if it recognizes the iPod. If it doesn't, close it and try opening it again.
Also, does your iPod show Do Not Disconnect?
Either way, read through this...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61711
btabz

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Please help! Restarted iTunes, all music gone and my backup won't work ...

Hi,
please can anybody help me...
I am using iTunes 5.0.1.4 on Windows XP with service pack 2.
Today I restarted iTunes and the library is empty. All music gone, all playlists gone.
I checked the FAQs and older articles and tried everything (reloading the itl file etc.), but nothing worked. Seems when restarting iTunes has overwritten the itl file with an empty one.
The iTunes Folder is still there with all MP3s still in it. So I could just let iTunes read the folder and by this rebuild the library.
But what about the playlists? I had almost a hundred different playlists, and now they are all gone.
I exported the library to an XML file a few weeks ago and made a backup copy of this. Now tried to import it again. iTunes did so, but it just added the names of the playlists to its list - however, they are all empty!
What am I doing wrong? And how can I get the playlists back?
Many thanks in advance for any hints!
Frank
PC Windows XP

Make sure your importing the XML file correctly.
Close iTUnes, goto My Music>iTunes folder and delete BOTH the xml and itl file.
Now open iTUnes and import the backup XML file you have by going to File>import and selecting the XML file from backup

All music gone from iPod & it won't synch

I updated my PC & 20 gig click wheel iPod to iTunes 5 & updater 2005-09-23. I got my iPod for my birthday in April and seem to remember updating the iPod software at least one other time with no trouble. But now my iPod won't synch. I ran restore (my only choice) and plugged it in to flash the firmware. Then I connected it to my computer to get my music back on it. I have quite a bit of music and it was taking a long time so I left my iPod connected to the computer and went to bed. The next morning the computer had the "update complete" message but the iPod had the "do not disconnect" message. I used the button on iTunes to eject my iPod. That made it disappear from the source list but did not make the "do not disconnect" message go away on the iPod. Even though the computer was going through the "updating x of xx" there is still no music on my iPod. So I plugged the iPod into my computer and the "do not disconnect" message came on the screen. However iTunes did not see the iPod. Then I ran the updater from the start menu and then tried to synch it with the same results as the first time. Any ideas?

It happens to me every time I get an iTunes/iPod updater. It all started when I copied a few new cds into iTunes yesterday, and got both iMac and iPod frozen when updating my iPod. AfterI failing to update a few times, I restored the iPod, got the 09/23 updater, and now it takes forever to copy songs from iTunes to iPod. Even worse, the whole process stops, and iTunes tells me it failed to write/read from the iPod hard disk. I restored once more, but nothing has changed. I am tempted to format the thing in the Disk Mode. Suggestions?

All music gone, transferred to 'other', can't enable disk use on iTunes

it seems like there are a lot of people with similar problems but nothing exact..here goes:
-doing research on my macbook and i get a popup from itunes saying that my ipod was disconnected improperly (i didn't touch it and i wasn't even messing around on itunes)
-ipod restarts and reconnects with itunes and i get another pop up saying that "itunes cannot read the contents of the ipod. go to ipod summery and preferences and restore.
-i would just restore it and reload all the music butttttt like an idiot..i dont keep my music in my itunes cause it takes up way too much space and i never used any external hard drive or anything to back my music up (again..idiot..i know)
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-the problem with that is that i can put my ipod into disk mode but that does me no good because i can't enable disk use on itunes because literally..my only option when i plug in my ipod is to restore it. under devices on the left hand menu, it just says ipod..not ipod with a bunch of sub categories like music and playlists and stuff..just ipod.
-normally..i would just give up and restore it but when i go to the about section on my actual ipod, it says that i have 50GB of "other" so that means that stuff is definitely still on it.
-so finally..my main question is:
is there ANY way to enable disk use on my iTunes without doing it through my iPod?..like i explained..when i plug my iPod in..that is not an option. and also..would i benefit from just bringing my laptop and ipod into an apple store and asking for help there or will that just be a waste of time?

The library on the iPod will have been damaged - hence the reason it appears empty, but the media files are still there taking up space and reported as "Other". Check out this post from Zevoneer for some iPod recovery options.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6273675&#6273675
Some of the tools mentioned will require a working library, but I know from experience that you can use the manual recovey method when the library is missing or damaged. If you're struggling for space you probably need to go & buy an external drive before you start. Stick the iPod in disk mode. Hold Menu+Select > 6 seconds (resets iPod) followed immediately by hold Previous & Select > 6 seconds. You can now drag the contents of iPod_Control\Music to your new hard drive. You may need to reveal hidden files & folders. Once they are on your hard drive you can create a new empty library on the drive, then import the files you have reovered and consolidate the imported library so that the files are in a standard artist\album\## track structure rather that the iPod's obscured names.
tt2

All music gone after update

After updating yesterday I clicked on iTunes and all my music is gone. No playlist. This happened a few weeks ago while using the old version. I took the laptop into the Geeks and they were able to find my music on my backup drive. They said they could not help me today because of the new update. I don't understand why this keeps happening. I have had iTunes for a while now and never had a proble.

You know, I had the same exact problem. Updated my phone to 4.2 and left the house went to play music and it was all gone!!! I was so upset! Turned it off and on, Reset it, re-synced, and still the same problem. All the music showed up while synced but not with iPhone alone. Until!!! While it was synced I played a couple of the songs that appeared to be still in my iphone library. I then gave up thinking i would just have to restore to factory settings and just start over. but one last try and shock of all shocks my music reappeared! Dont know if it was just a fluke but I wanted to share the info in case there is something more to it. Good luck Iphone users! I hope you find some relief from your problems as I have

All music gone after update to 4.2 !

After i updated to 4.2 Nothing shows up when I load the ipod app. It just says " no content".
It will take me awhile to re-download my playlists and 300 songs.

You know, I had the same exact problem. Updated my phone to 4.2 and left the house went to play music and it was all gone!!! I was so upset! Turned it off and on, Reset it, re-synced, and still the same problem. All the music showed up while synced but not with iPhone alone. Until!!! While it was synced I played a couple of the songs that appeared to be still in my iphone library. I then gave up thinking i would just have to restore to factory settings and just start over. but one last try and shock of all shocks my music reappeared! Dont know if it was just a fluke but I wanted to share the info in case there is something more to it. Good luck Iphone users! I hope you find some relief from your problems as I have

All music gone...due to Cloud?

Updated my phone yesterday. Today I go to my music library to play something. It freezes so I restart the phone and now all my songs are gone? What the ****? Does this have something to do with cloud? Cause now I'm stuck at work with no music and no way to sync my phone until I get home. Does anyone know how I get my music back and why it suddenly dissapeared?

Yes I know what a crash is. The problem is that when I restarted I had 10 songs on my phone all of which I recently just downloaded. Also the freeze happend when I was on the itunes recently purchased section because one of my songs was not showing up after I had bought it. If it crashed all the music would be gone. So that's not it.

Ipod updated to 1.2.1 now nothing shows up on my ipod, all music gone?

After constantly being told that a new ipod version was availble, I decided to go ahead and update, I made this mistake before and apparently did not learn my lesson.
Advice to others, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
I selected the option to let the updater go ahead and download and install the ipod update.
I let the installer go ahead and do it's thing.
I came back awhile later and it appeared as though the update was complete, so I ejected my ipod, powerded it down, put it in its case and took it to work.
When I got to work and turned on my ipod and went to artists
all that showed up was "ALL" and nothing else no playlists, no albums, no songs, no nothing like everything was erased.
I had about 60 megs worth of songs on the ipod before the update.
Where did everything go????
Did anyone else have this problem?
Is everything still there and I just need to do something for it all to show up again?
Or, is everything really gone and has been erased?
Boy, Once I get this resolved and my ipod working again,
I will never update again unless I have no choice.
Thanks so much for any help offered!

I have a nearly similar problem with my 20G iPod with photo display. The only difference seems to be that mine does not appear to be caused by the update to 1.2.1. I updated long ago and had no problems. Now I constantly need to reset. My iPod just stops working, usually after clicking to play a song it will just start and not play and not pause and not allow me to select another song. So I have to reset, and reset....
I did a restore too, but the problems continued.
Then recently it started having the same trouble you are having. First, it showed nothing on the iPod and I just assumed I'd have to sync it to iTunes when I got home. But then it seemed that the songs were there after another reset. Anyway, it did start working again, that is, back to playing for awhile and then needing to be reset. I started searching here to see if this is battery problem or hard drive problem. My ipod is about 2 1/2 years old, no prior problems.
Right Now, it is in the same state yours is in: my About page shows:
Songs: 0
Photos: 0
Capacity: 18.5 GB
Available: 5.5 GB
Version: 1.2.1
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If I do take it to Apple I will submit an update.

ITunes losing all music and won't redirect to correct folder

Hi there,
This morning, iTunes has lost all my music. The whole library has the little exclamation mark. Using the 'Find info' comand, I can see that iTunes is looking for them in the music folder of my internal drive. However, they've always been kept on an external drive, and when I redirect iTunes to an individual track in it's correct location, and it asks me if I'd like to use the location to find the other missing files, it fails to correct the location of the rest. I am getting this message: “iTunes was able to find 1 of 18083 missing files.” Rather frustrating...
I'm using iTunes 10, on OS 10.7.3
I have the correct iTunes media folder indicated in the advanced preferences tab.
In case it's relevant, I'm also syncing with a new iPhone 4s, which I've only had for about 3 weeks, though in terms of audio, I only sync recently added albums + podcasts.
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Thanks for any help,
Emma

I have finally solved this issue. Here is the solution:
1. Open iTunes
2. Select Music
3. In the upper right hand corner select Albums.
4. Under "All Albums" highlight the first album, then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, hold down the shift key and select the last album.
5. All albums should now be selected.
6. Place the cursor over one of the albums. Press with 2 fingers on the trackpad to bring up the menu.
7. Select "Check All"
8. Congratulations - no more grayed out songs and they will sync now.
9. Go into your iPhone sync and check the songs you want to transfer and click the sync button.
I hope this helps you to resolve your issue.
NO MAX

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Hello,
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This sounds more like a hardware issue, possibly a failing drive if you had mysteriously vanishing files and there are problems writing to your drive.. You could get better support on a forum for your Mac model or at lest one for your operating system version. Have you verified the disk with Disk Utility to see what it reports?

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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=653877&tstart=0
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Ipod self-erased all music and won't download it again from itunes!!!!

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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607312&#607312

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I have somehow managed to lose all my iTunes music. Over 8000 songs. I made a backup with SuperDuper to external hard disk and after that only some music was left. There seems to be however files left because space on my laptop has not freed.
When I'm trying to find some artist/songs using spotlight I can get result as many iTunes Music Library.xml-files. So this might means that music exists but where?
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Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Not sure what you did - I use SuperDuper! and I've never seen that before.
What are your settings in SD!?
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Mac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) iPod 80G Video
Mac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Use the instructions in this article to turn off photo synchronization for that iPod.
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All music gone, won't reload!

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