All songs have vanished from iPod and iTunes won't read it

Question

Hi there. I’m experiencing a rather distressing problem with my 60GB iPod Photo.
I was listening to the iPod yesterday morning and nothing was out of the ordinary. Then I plugged it into my work computer (a desktop G4) and iTunes popped up with the “iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPod… please Restore…” message. However, the computer still recognizes the iPod as a drive (and my files are still present).
More problematic is that when I ejected the iPod, all my songs were missing, even though they are still in there somewhere because I only have 15GB of space available.
I have tried resetting the iPod and that hasn’t worked. Does anyone have any suggestions? I will only restore as a last resort because I don’t have all my music on my computer’s harddrive.
Powerbook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

Hi yodini,
sorry to hear that. If, as you say, your ipod is still recognized as a drive, you could try to copy all your music (assuming it is still on your iPod) from your iPod using the following method. This is a major operation and it definitely helps if you are a little familiar with the terminal. You need to have Apple Development Tools installed for this, otherwise you have to work with hidden files. If you do not have Apple Development Tools installed and first want to see if your music still works and it is worth the effort, follow the steps 1-6.
1. Connect your iPod.
2. It should show up on the Desktop as "YouriPodsNameHere".
3. Go to the terminal (Applications->Utilities->Terminal)
4. Now we need to navigate to your iPod. In the terminal window type "cd" (without the quotation marks), add a space, (do not hit return yet) and drag your iPod from the Desktop and drop it into the Terminal. On your terminal prompt should now read "cd /Volumes/YouriPodsNameHere/". Hit the return key.
5. Then we need to navigate to the hidden music files. Type "cd iPod_Control" hit return and then type "cd Music" and hit return, always without quotation marks.
6. Let's check if your music works. Type "ls" and return. A list should appear, starting with something like F00, F01, F02 etc. Take the first entry in the list, let's say it is F00 and type in "open F00". A finder window appears with all the music in folder F00. The files will be called something like AAVP.m4a. Right click or control click the first one and go to "Open With" and choose "Quicktime Player". One random piece of your music should play now. If we got that far, we know (at least some of) your music is still intact.
7. Let's copy the music from your iPod to the computer. Create a new folder on the Desktop and call it "Music". Go back to the terminal, make sure a) that you have enough space on your computer hard disk (60 GB) and b) that you are still in the folder
"/Volumes/YouriPodsNameHere/iPod_Control/Music/".
If not, repeat steps 3 to 5.
Now type "cp -r * ~/Desktop/Music/". Hit return and wait until the prompt reappears. This can take quite a while (hours), your computer has to move gigabytes of data through a USB or FireWire connection! If your prompt reappears, you can enter "ls ~/Desktop/Music/" to see if you succeeded. This should list all the F00, F01 etc. folders.
8. We have now copied all the music to the Music folder on the Desktop, but it is still invisible in the finder! This is where you need the Development Tools. If you have the tools installed, type
"/Developer/Tools/SetFile -a v ~/Desktop/Music/*"
and hit return. Then restart the finder (For example  Menu-> Force Quit -> Finder -> Relaunch or log out and log in again). Now you can see all your Music in the finder.
Now you only have to copy your stuff back to your library without creating a lot of duplicates or without deleting ratings and play counts... This is another story, which creates a new set of challenges. Let me know if you got that far and we can discuss what to do next.
Please note that there are also commercially available programs that can get music off your iPod onto the computer (e.g. Yamipod, Senuti, iPodRip) that will be much more userfriendly. However, I am not sure if they will work if iTunes does not recognize your Music and it does not show up on your iPod.
Disclaimer: Everything described above is a bit tricky and working with the terminal has always the potential to ruin your data. So please be careful and decide if the music on your iPod is worth the effort. Let me know if you have questions and/or need specific help.
Hope that helps, Lars
12" PowerBook G4 - 1.25 GB RAM - Mac Pro - 2 GB RAM -   Mac OS X (10.4.9)   - 40 GB iPod 4G