Hard drive crash or something else?????

A few months ago my ibook G4 starting acting funny, sometimes I'd turn it on and it would not boot, then I'd try again and it would boot fine. One time I turned it on and instead of booting it stayed at the gray screen and a small picture of a computer with a question mark in the middle came up, a friend of mine said crashed hard drive but the next day I turned it on and it worked fine. It continued to work fine for a while and then about 3 or 4 weeks ago I turned it on and that REALLY loud fan sound started and I couldn't get it to boot past the gray screen with the apple logo. That persisted for about a week and I finally took it into the Genius bar, they declared crashed hard drive and told me to take it to a local store to get my data recovered. Well I was in the middle of moving out of state and didn't have time to go in, so my computer has sat for about 3 weeks untouched. Tonight on a whim I started it up and low and behold it works PERFECTLY! Is there a possibility that it's not the hard drive and something else or is my hard drive just slowly failing, the comp isn't more than 2 and half years old and I only put pictures and music on there, how could it fail already?!? Any insight I would GREATLY appreciate, thanks!
Message was edited by: Krystal Y

Hi Krystal Y,
+how could it fail already?!?+
It's not if but when a drive will fail. Even though it may have 300,000+ hours before failure on average that just means some will fail much sooner and some much later.
There are a few things you can do to further test the drive. Launch Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities), highlight the drive (upper most in the list) on the left and look at the SMART status at the bottom of the window. If it says Failing believe it. You can also run Apple Hardware Test (on the install disc) but it may just use SMART reporting too.
John

Similar Messages

Boot Problems- Hard Drive Damaged? Something Else?

Yesterday my MacBook Pro went to the blue screen of death after freezing for a few minutes. When I restarted it, I couldn't get beyond the apple with the spinning graphic below it. I tried resetting the SMC and PRAM, archiving and reinstalling (which hung up every time), and ultimately backed up the files I could (many generated errors and could not be copied) using Target Disk. After backing up, I did an erase and reinstall, which was successful (mostly). After getting the system running again, I attempted to update from what I think is 10.4.5 to 10.4.11. At the end of the download, it crashed, and on restart would not boot again (apple logo with random flickerings of the "no" sign).
At first, I assumed hard drive damage for the following reasons:
-Something fell and landed right over the hard drive, putting a small dent in the open case
-The files that would not copy seemed like they could have been corrupted by physical disk damage
-The hangups seem like they could be caused by the same issue
The things that worry me about this diagnosis are the fact that the erase and reinstall worked, and that the problem seems confined to boot errors (it has only successfully booted once since the first crash).
1. Can I confidently call this a hard drive failure, order one from OWC tomorrow morning overnight, and consider it solved?
2. If not, are there any diagnostic tools I can use to help zero in on my problem?
3. What, if any additional information would he helpful?
Before today's successes/failures, I was all ready to pull the trigger on a new drive (Hitachi 7200RPM 200GB). However, now I'm not so sure. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for your advice.
At this point, I am amazed to say I have it up and running and was even able to upgrade to 10.4.11, which caused one of the recent crashes. I have in fact prepared my data for "the unthinkable" (which has now happened four times in the last forty-eight hours), but this whole "working" thing is pretty creepy. (I tried to pop the top to see if the hard drive has any physical damage from the dent, but apparently the only thing harder to find in this town than a FireWire cable is a Torx T-6. I guess I'll be ordering OWC's lame eleven-piece $17 tool kit. Oh well.).
Is this normal? Can I expect another crash soon?
I think I'm going to try copying some large files to see if I can't repeat my failure. Maybe I've just been really lucky this particular time.

My MacBook Pro, 15 inch, purchased in 2006 may have a virus or perhaps has crashed. When I power it up, I get strange patterns. Nothing else loads. Is this a virus or has the hard drive crashed? Thanks.

When I power up my MacBook Pro, I get patterns. Nothing loads. Has my hard drive crashed or do I have a virus. I had been burning a DVD from an iMovie project on an external hard drive when problems began. Thanks for any insights.

Sounds like the video card is going, mine did that after I installed the P.O.S . OS X called Lion.
Was working fine under 10.6, little did I know that Cupertino was compromised at that time, likely the hackers corrupted the firmware updates.
Take it in, they will run their little test and say it's the video card and it's not worth spending $350+ plus whatever else you need to fix it.
Scrap it for parts and buy a new one.
However, you can extract the hard drive and use a SATA to USB adpater cable to the new Mac, transfer files manually or use Migration/Setup Assistant.
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/
you'll need a tool kit too.

All of my imovie events are stored on an external hard drive. How do I backup this external hard drive? If the external hard drive crashes, how do retrieve the imovie events?

I have all of my imovie events stored on an external hard drive in order to save space on my MacBook Pro's internal drive. I currently back up both my MacBook Pro and the external hard drive using a second external hard drive via Time Machine. I have a few questions:
1. How can I be sure that the external drive is actually being backed up.
2. How do I retrieve the imovie events if the 1st external hard drive crashes?
Thank for your help!

Let me give you some thoughts. I can tell you my plan, but ultimately you will need your own plan that makes sense for you.
I do not think that your idea of having two separate Time Machine destinations will work. You can have two external drives as Time Machine volumes, but they will both back up the same data set. You cannot dedicate one to iMovie and one to everything else. They will both have everything, so you may still have a space problem.
One way to overcome this is to back up the iMovie volume by using a tool like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. The good news is that your Event files should be pretty stable and there is no need to back them up every 15 minutes. So something like SuperDuper, which you can set to automatically backup once a day, for example, is probably fine. I am pretty sure that this would work if you kept the Projects on the same external drive. As long as Projects and Events are on the same drive, then the cloning stragy should work (but you should always test.)
Because projects change more often than events, and projects can become corrupted, I would definitely back up the Project Library to Time Machine. You can do this even though it is on an external drive. (And even though you may be periodically backing up the entire drive that contains the projects.)
Here are some thoughts on how I approach backup, copied from an earlier answer...
============================================================
Great question. I think the issue of backup is a important one, and one I always worry about since I have a lot of video footage that is irreplaceable.
For back-up, it is helpful to define the risk you are trying to protect from.
For example,
1) risk of corruption in iMovie --> I use Time Machine
2) risk of hard drive failure --> I use SuperDuper! nightly for bootable backup) and Time Machine all the time
3) Risk of theft or fire --> offsite backup
Here is what I do...
1) I back up my boot disk with SuperDuper automatically each night so I always have a bootable system.
2) I back up my original video files. For my Motion JPEG, VHS-->AIC, DV, and 8MM to DV, the EVENT is the copy I back up. (I keep the tapes, but I never want to have to import the tapes again.)
For my AVCHD high def video, I back up the camera archive of the AVCHD, but I am not currently backing up the Event files, because I would need from 4 to 8 TB to back up these events depending on whether I made one copy or two. I can always re-create the Event from the camera archive.
3) I use CrashPlan for my offsite backup. It costs less than $4 per month, and I seeded the initial backup to an external drive to minimize having to transfer video files over the Internet. I currently have over 2TB of data backed up to CrashPlan, which includes my entire boot drive, and the files described in #2.
4) All of the above is automated, so I don't have to think about it too much. If I have to manually do stuff, I tend to get behind.
You have to consider the value of total multiple redundancy vs. the likelihood that 2 or three unlikely events would all happen at once. For example, CrashPlan could lose my data. My hard disk could fail. I could lose everything in a fire. But it is unlikely that they would all happen at once, except in nuclear war, in which case, who cares?

Macbook hard drive crashed, i lost windows for mac, bought a disc when i got the mac, no longer have the disc, need my apps, don't wanna pay for it again. know how to get it quick without having to give my mac to the genius bar at apple store overnight

macbook hard drive crashed, i lost windows for mac, bought a disc when i got the mac, no longer have the disc, need my apps, don't wanna pay for it again. know how to get it quick without having to give my mac to the genius bar at apple store overnight?

What is it you need - Windows installer disc or something else? Your question is unclear. Could you be more specific?

Help reinstall cs3 from hard drive crash

I have cs3 installed on a pc and a laptop. My laptop crashed so I installed a new hard drive. When I went to reinstall cs3 an error message came up saying it can't complete installation due to licensing. I have to deacivate any of the previous unused licenses to be able to reinstall right? Any help on how I can do this? Or is there something else I have to do?
Joe

The one on the laptop activated fine but the PC one says: the maximum number of activations have been reached then it tells me to deactivate or to buy a new license
Which doesn't make sense because before the hard drive crashed i had cs3 installed and activated using the same serial number on both the PC and the laptop.

External Hard Drive crashed with all songs on it. HELP!!!

Hello. My kids have used my work PC as their itunes playground for over the past year. I added a Lacie external hard drive to help them save thier music and had itunes on it, as well as my pc. The external hard drive crashed and won't communicate with the pc at all so when we bring up itunes on the pc it shows exclamation marks next to almost all of the songs and won't play them. I still have almost all of our music on my ipod, except about 170 songs that they purchased since I last plugged in my ipod, they have their own mini's. I want to know how to get the songs back to my computer. I am afraid if I connect the 60GB ipod to the pc all of our songs will be wiped out since my ipod is on autosync. Can anyone give me a reliable way to get everything back to normal? PLEASE!!!!

Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual and use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Also when using a lot of the utilities your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button: Managing content manually on iPod
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. If you have any iTMS purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers has been introduced with iTunes 7. A paragraph on it has been added to this article:: Transfer iTunes Store purchases using iPod
The transfer of non iTMS content such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there's a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to your Mac. The procedure is a bit involved but if you're interested it's available at this link: Two-way Street: Moving Music Off the iPod
If you prefer something more automated there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve music files and playlists from your iPod, this is just a selection. I use Senuti but have a look at the web pages and documentation for the others too, you'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos and games as well. You can also read reviews of some of them here: Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Senuti Mac Only
iPodRip Mac Only
PodWorks Mac Only
PodView Mac Only
iPodAccess Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac & Windows
PodUtil Mac & Windows
iPodCopy Mac & Windows
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync.

Hard Drive Crash-round 2

Last night, I'm pretty sure my Macbook hard drive crashed. AGAIN. I first ordered it online on July 5th of 2007 brand new right from the Apple Store. On January 11th of 2008, my first hard drive crashed. System locked up, heard clicking under the keyboard, blinking folder with a question mark inside of it whenever it was powered on. I took it to the Apple store, the Genius Bar guy took the HD out and checked it-dead. It was replaced on the 17th-I kept the receipt just incase. Last night I was typing a paper up for my Child Psych class when iTunes stopped responding. When I tried to quit it (command+q), nothing happened. I clicked the Apple in the top left hand corner to force quit it, and the whole system locked up. I heard clicking under the keyboard again, so I manually shut it off. And now I have the same blinking folder with the question mark again, and this time it even makes a beeping sound for me sometimes.
I called Apple this afternoon, and they keep wanting me to reset this, reset that, try this and try that. I've tried everything just as I did in January when this first happened, and no luck again. I was told to make an appointment at the nearest store (which is 65 miles away, 130 round trip) so they could tell me it was dead and give me a new one just to crash again in a few months and I lose everything all over again.
Anyway, the whole point of this is to find out what could be causing me to lose HD after HD? I really know nothing about Macs as a whole except for hard drive crashing issue; I've only used the OS for a little over a year so I'm putting this out there to anyone who knows more about them than I do. The machine mainly stays on my computer desk, but sometimes it ventures over to my bed. I charge it as needed, it doesn't leave the house (been too scared to do a lot with it since the first crash) so isn't slammed around in a backpack or dropped. Could it be actual hardware inside that is causing the failures, and if so, is that something that Apple could potentially check out and diagnose?
Thanks!

Same for me, MacBook bought in December 2006 in Germany with 2 GHz Processor, 2 GB of RAM and 160 GB hard drive,
first drive crashed in december 2007, second drive just crashed in november 2008,
both drives were the Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00
now the replaced drive is again a Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00
I asked the Apple Service Center to put in a drive of another brand (I would pay the difference to the drive covered by the Apple Warranty Program) but Apple said they could only put in the HTS541616J9SA00 drive, otherwise I would need to pay the entire price of a different hard drive of my choice.
After doing some research on the internet, the Hitachi HTS541616J9SA00 seems to be a good hard drive, no known issues of premature breakdowns.
I have used many Apple and Windows notebooks since 1995 and never experienced a drive crashing after less than one year. Now I have repeated drive crashs in the same Apple notebook.
Since the drive model seems to be OK, I really have a suspicion of a hardware bug in the MacBook.

IPod hard drive crashing problems

Sorry this is going to be long, as I want to give some background, because I would love to hear opinions about this:
I had a 6th generation 160g iPod for just over 3 years. I was on vacation using it over a long weekend a week ago. I was listening to music and decided I was going to watch a Simpsons episode that I bought from the iTunes store and was in my "tv shows" section of my iPod.
As I went to switch to the episode, the iPod froze black. I had been having issues with it randomly resetting itself or pausing during songs, so I thought it might be on its way out. - Sure enough when I did the reset it never booted back up. I tried several times. So when I got back home 2 days later and plugged it into my computer, I was not surprised that it still would not reboot.
I was bummed. 3 years is not a long time when you spend that much money. I am broke right now and since I am a music fanatic, with a huge music library I was wondering how I was going to carry on. I cannot afford to buy a new iPod.
My dear father came to my rescue and showed up at my house with a brand new 7th generation 160g iPod on Saturday evening, just as a nice jesture. - I let it sync up, went to bed. Sunday afternoon, I was taking my daughter to the park and I brought my iPod into the car. I noticed that much of the artwork was not popping up as I looked through both coverflow and sampled some songs in playlists. And when I went to try a video again... BAM, the iPod locked up and wouldn't reset, just like the old one.
I thought... maybe this is a fluke, but how strange that a brand new iPod would crash again on legally purchased iTunes video. So after trying to get it to reset, I plugged it in and again, it would not reset and my computer would not recognize it. The hard-drive just wouldn't boot up.
Then I thought... even though it wasn't plugged into my computer either time and I had used the old one for a while without syncing, maybe it was something on my computer... so I plugged it into my wife's laptop and it said "found new hardware" and then there was a new message saying something along the lines of "there is a problem with your new hardware and it cannot be installed".
My dad had gotten the 2 year warranty, but since it wasn't even 24 hours, I went to Best Buy and brought them back the iPod. They checked it out and said "wow, it's rare that out of the box it would crash, but it's crashed" and they gave me a new one. - I asked them about the possibility of something corrupting it, but they said it was unlikely and they since it's a hard-drive, hard-drives crash.
So on Sunday evening, I did the same routine, I synced my iPod. This time, I tried a little bit of music and a little bit of video without syncing my library and it worked... Then that night I let the whole thing sync.
This morning (Monday) I took it to work and played some music while I dropped my daughter off, and all of a sudden all the artwork is gone again... I figured I deal with that later, because although it bothered me, at least it was playing song after song with no issue.
I'm at work now and I was letting a playlist play on shuffle. It was working just find and was so happy to have an iPod back.
Then I hit the menu button and it takes me back to "coverflow" (the last place I was browsing) and all of a sudden the sound starts buzzing and the whole thing locks up. It's stuck, so I go to reset it...
And low & behold, it won't reset, like the hard-drive crashed AGAIN. This is the 3rd iPod in a row. I plugged it into my work computer, just to see if it would recognize it. (I downloaded the latest iTunes on there) It won't. Again it just won't reboot.
Now the first one, I was having hard-drive troubles, and hadn't been synced in a while, so unfortunately I think the product just doesn't last very long.
But now with 2 new ones, it's making me think that there could be a problem with something in my computer. But I can't imagine what. Everything is either ripped directly into iTunes from a CD, bought from the iTunes store or were WAV files I put into iTunes and converted to aac files. I am a musicians and don't believe in illegally downloading music and don't use torrents. I can't imagine what could corrupt anything I'm syncing.
I have about 110g of music that I am trying to sync. And then some tv shows, which I don't always sync all of them. Most of them were purchased from iTunes, but I have a few that I took from DVD and converted and put into my iTunes.
I have called the apple help line, but they want me to call them back when I'm at my computer at home and we can trouble shoot, even though I know they won't be able to help me, because my iPod won't be able to be read.
I would love to get some opinions and help.
Thank you,
Paul.

Okay, by looking at my previous posting in this forum, it has apparently only been 2 1/2 years since I got my last iPod.

Hard drive crashed, how do I reclaim my music?

My Windows based notebook's hard drive crashed and has since been replaced. Everything was backed up with the exception of my music. Is there any way to get the music from my iPod back into iTunes (it was not stored as data).
HP Windows XP

You can't sync or drag your music back directly from an iPod to iTunes, the transfer of music is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there is a manual method of accessing the iPod's hard drive and copying songs but not playlists back to iTunes on Windows posted in this thread: MacMuse - iPod to iTunes
If you prefer something more automated then there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod, this is just a selection. Have a look at the web pages and documentation for these, they are generally quite straightforward.
iPod Access Mac and Windows Versions
YamiPod Mac and Windows Versions
PodUtil Mac and Windows Versions
iPodCopy Mac and Windows Versions
PodPlayer Windows Only
iGadget Windows Only
If you haven't already done so, change the update setting for your iPod to manual. If you are using the iPod in manual update mode, your iPod is safe from being accidentally erased when you connect to an empty iTunes after reinstalling your operating system. However if your iPod is set to automatically update you will get a message that your iPod is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press *No*. Pressing "Yes" will irretrievably remove all songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual.
You can use a keyboard command to prevent your iPod auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer on Windows hold down the Shift + Ctrl keys (on a Mac hold down the Option and Command (⌥ and ⌘) keys). This will stop the iPod from auto-syncing with iTunes and the iPod will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 20 to 30 seconds depending on your computer. Then go to Preferences>iPod and check the "Manually manage songs and playlists" box: Managing Your Songs Manually
Whichever of these retrieval methods you choose, keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync again.

Old hard drive crashed, how do I re-install my music from iPod to new drive

My hard drive crashed and I received a new hard drive from Dell. Reinstalled most applications, however, prior to downloading iTunes - how do I ensure that the songs I purchased, playlists, and other songs I added from CD's are available?
I also have other users - with iPods, and they had (and have reestablished user accounts) their own iPods and music libraries. I want to be sure their music is transferred as well.
I do have access to all iTunes music file for each user from the damaged drive. Any assistance is greatly appreciated!

1). Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to sync automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from your iPod.
2). When your iPod appears in the iTunes source list change the update setting to manual, that will let you continue to use your iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button. Also when using most of the utilities listed below your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default: Managing content manually on iPod and iPhone
Alternatively open iTunes first and go to Edit>Preferences>Devices and check the box "Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods" and choose Ok. Then connect your iPod.
3). Once you are connected and your iPod is safely in manual mode there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. iTunes will only let you copy your iTunes Store purchases directly from an iPod to the computer, you'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
For everything else (music from CDs, other downloads and including iTunes purchased songs and in some cases, videos and games) there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well. You can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers
A selection of iPod to iTunes utilities:
TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
SharePod Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod2PC Windows Only
iDump Windows Only
YamiPod Mac and Windows
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows
Floola Mac & Windows
iPodRip Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
Music Rescue Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
There's also a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to a Mac or PC. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available on page 2 at this link: Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide
4). Whichever of these retrieval methods you choose, keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync.
5). I would also advise that you get yourself an external hard drive and back your stuff up, relying on an iPod as your sole backup is not a good idea and external drives are comparatively inexpensive these days, you can get loads of storage for a reasonable outlay: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive

Hard drive crash - How to restore data from my iPod?

Hi there,
I had to replace the hard disk and in my daughter's PC and now need to get the songs back from her iTouch to her computer. As you can imagine, I had no backup prior to this hard drive crash... Now how can I get the songs and applications from the iTouch back in the PC? I have authorized iTunes using the same account but it does not allow me to do any tranfer from the Itouch to the PC.
Please help... I don;t want to loose everything we have purchase and installed on the iTouch...
Thanks,
Christian Dubuc

That post of mine linked to above is quite an old one and isn't meant to specifically address an iPod Touch. You might want this more up to date information.
If your iPod is set to sync automatically you need to take care connecting to an empty iTunes. You can use a keyboard command to prevent your iPod auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer on Windows with iTunes installed hold down the Shift + Ctrl keys together. This will stop the iPod from auto-syncing with iTunes and the iPod will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 20 to 30 seconds depending on your computer: iTunes - Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows
Alternatively open iTunes first and go to Edit>Preferences>Devices and check the box "Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods" and choose Ok. Then connect your iPod.
If at any point you get a message that your iPod is linked to another library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from your iPod.
iTunes will only let you copy your iTunes Store purchases directly from an iPod to the computer, you'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
Purchased applications can be downloaded over again, see this article for details: How to redownload purchased applications from the App Store
For everything else (music from CDs, other downloads and including iTunes purchases) there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod Touch or iPhone. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer data (such as playcounts and ratings), movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well.
A selection of iPod/iPhone to iTunes utilities:
Senuti Mac Only (iPod Touch & iPhone compatible)
SharePod Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPodRip Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
Music Rescue Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)

Hard drive crash trying to update iTunes with my iPod

So my hard drive crashed all data on it erased, have most of it backed up except for more recent songs in iTunes, which are on my iPod. How do I transfer my iPod data to my newly installed iTunes?

There is a manual method of accessing the iPod's hard drive and copying songs back to iTunes on Windows posted in this thread: MacMuse - iPod to iTunes
If you prefer something more automated then there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the files from your iPod, this is just a selection. Have a look at the web pages and documentation for these, they are generally quite straightforward.
iPod Access Mac and Windows Versions
YamiPod Mac and Windows Versions
PodUtil Mac and Windows Versions
iPodCopy Mac and Windows Versions
PodPlayer Windows Only
iGadget Windows Only
If you haven't already done so, put your iPod into manual update mode. If you are using the iPod in manual update mode, your iPod is safe from being accidentally erased when you connect to an empty iTunes after reinstalling your operating system. However if your iPod is set to automatically update you will get a message that your iPod is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press *No*. Pressing "Yes" will irretrievably remove all songs from your iPod. Your iPod should appear in the iTunes source list from where you can change the update setting to manual.
You can also use a keyboard command to prevent your iPod auto-syncing with iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer on Windows hold down the Shift + Ctrl keys (on a Mac hold down the Option and Command (⌥ and ⌘) keys). This will stop the iPod from auto-syncing with iTunes and the iPod will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 20 to 30 seconds depending on your computer. Then go to Preferences>iPod and check the "Manually manage songs and playlists" box: Managing Your Songs Manually
Whichever of these retrieval methods you choose, keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync again.

Hard Drive Crashed and Ended Up with older iphoto- Library wont transfer

I have been using my macbook for two years now and have used iphoto since I got it to start saving all my pictures (some 6 to 7 thousand pictures) though I never did check what version it was. I had made a back up of my iPhoto Library and good thing I did because my hard drive crashed.
I had kept all my photos organized by Events, rather than dates and such because I scanned photos in here and there as well. However, after I had my new operating system installed, I plugged in my external drive to transfer my iPhoto library into iPhoto (by clicking on the iphoto icon while holding option/shift to choose a library) but it came up with an arrow message saying that I needed a new version of iPhoto for it to work. Sure enough, when I just let iPhoto open up with a new library it would not in any way let me sort photos by events, just by year.
I tried reinstalling iPhoto with the original disks my macbook came with and even downloaded an update. This may not seem like a huge problem because thankfully i still have all my pictures but they are all over the place and organizing all of the pictures again would take a ton of time.
I do not get how I started with a newer version of iPhoto that let me organize my photos by events compared to the one I have now that came on my installation disk. I dont want to pay for a new copy of iPhoto if my macbook already came with it installed when I first bought it but I want my Library and its Events and albums to work (which it does because I tried it on a newer macbook) Any ideas? Thanks

Okay Sory about that. Here is the problem- i think- When I bought my laptop in May of 2007, the iPhoto that came preinstalled was a better version than the one that came on my Mac OS X install disk that I now have to use since my hard drive crashed.
In iPhoto 6, you can not sort photos by Events, only by date. In iPhoto 7.1 you can because when I tried opening my library on another computer with that version of iPhoto by holding down option/shift and choosing my library from my external drive, it worked since all my named events showed up.
I never bought an update for iLife, nor did I ever have my computer worked on. I only downloaded the free updatess for my specific version from the internet, what ever version it was.
I have always been able to sort my pictures by Events because when I bought my macbook, I immediately put pictures on it (my Library can prove that). I really do not want to buy the iLife 08' if I had already had the better version of iPhoto on my computer before it crashed.
I guess, is it possible that I did have iPhoto 7.something installed on my computer when I bought it (or at least an iPhoto that can sort pictures by events, since that is the main problem) and have an older version on the install disk it came with? That is the only conclusion I can reach.
Thank you for your help.

Can I install Snow Leopard over Lion to install old software after hard drive crashed?

My hard drive crashed and I lost everything. I have a new hard drive, but when the repair shop installed my operating system, they installed Lion and I no longer have my prior updates. My computer had been updated a few times. I have a lot of software that only can be installed up to 10.7 such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, Office Mac 2011, etc. I was wondering if I installed Snow Leopard over Lion, would I lose Lion? Should I install Snow Leopard and then Lion again? I don't want to damage my like new computer and I don't want to have to go out and buy all new software. Is there a solution? Thanks in advance!

Sounds complicated! If I repartition the drive and install Snow Leopard onto the blank volume, will Lion still be there? Or, will the computer basically have two operating systems that I have to go back and forth from. Is this something a novice like myself can do?

Hard drive crash or something else?????

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