iPod problem
 

So the roommate has a problem with his iPod. When he turns it on, he is getting a folder with an exclamation point, which I think means is a corrupted file error.

After doing some googling, I read that it's best to do a restore when you get this error. But when you restore, you lose all your files.

Problem is, we don't keep our music files on my hard drive. Once we load the songs on to the iPods, I delete them from my hard drive to save space.

Isn't there some software out there that allows you to copy all your files from your iPod on to your hard drive? Then I can do a restore, and just copy them all back to the iPod without losing any info.


Thanks.

:mad:

sorry. i wince every time somebody's asks this question.

I think you can do a search in the forums for a similar thread. There have been a couple posted here (versions of software).

CopyPod Plus worked for me. I found it through the ipodlounge website.

I agree. Try it out at least. There is a 14 day free trial.

http://www.copypod.net/download.php

You don't need a program... when you plug your iPod in it should appear in explore as an external hard drive. All of the music is in a bunch of subfolders so just copy all of the folders and paste them somewhere on your hard drive.

On mine the physical names of the mp3's are renamed to random alphanumeric names, so that wouldn't work. You'd need software that could read the database and then rename the corresponding files. Which may be what the above linked software does, didn't check it out.

Actually all of the names and such are in tags in the file. Just add the songs to your iTunes library and they will have the right names, and iTunes will even rename the actual files for you (if it really matters).

I bought a 100 gig external hard drive specifically to store my music. I highly recommend doing the same. They're not that much money, and a heckuva lot easier than possibly losing all the music on your iPod (or my wife's iPod, in my case).

What do you do if the hard drive fails?

It's one of the reasons I'm very glad to have a non-ipod where i can freely pull stuff off and put it on. It's the backup to my HD, and my HD is the backup to it.

about every two months I burn the purchased music to a cd. it's a worst case scenario, but at least I have a hard copy of everything.