Really, it was all my fault, but Apple could do a bit better job at warning a guy.
I was playing around with the new iTunes 7 when I came across my iPod stats. Pretty nifty. I clicked on the Music tab and decided to sync a playlist. My wife hates it when she downloads or rips a song and I don’t get it on my iPod. So I decided to sync the ‘Recently Added’ playlist.
Yes, there was a warning message, however I interpreted it to be related to that playlist. After all, I didn’t click the ‘All Songs and Playlist’ radio button. Two seconds later, my iPod was wiped clean.
Crap.
Now I admit that it was my fault. However, a secondary warning that said “Are you sure you want to delete all 4281 songs or 8gigs of music?” (or whatever I had) That kind of message would have gotten my attention.
Now I’m digging to find all my music. I hope it’s all backed up. It’s like a fresh start. I’ll admit it was my fault and surprisingly, I’m not to upset. 🙂
Hmmmm……I am curious to why the deletia of songs from the iPod? I am ready to upgrade to iTunes 7 but need to wait a day or so and read up on others experiences.
It was an accident. 🙁 iTunes 7 is great and it’s not an application flaw.
That sucks, dude! I haven’t had any funny things happen so far. I’m not sure about some of the new design changes, but the new features are sweet. Good luck getting all that music back on that iPod.
I’ve come to realize, life without playlists makes the iPod no fun. That’s what I’m missing the most!!
I just watched someone go from “completely happy with Apple, her Powerbook, and her new Ipod”, to “wanting to kill everyone responsibel for all three with a harpoon.” I don’t think she will recover. The reason? She wanted to delete some songs off the Ipod. So she followed the only instructions she could find, on the Apple website. The result? EVERYTHING ON THE IPOD got deleted with no warning whatsoever.
Now, I’m pretty shocked myself that there’s essentially a “rm -rf /” command that you can send by accident. My friend is looking at it a little differently — a lot of time was spent setting up that Ipod, and she sees erasing it as a total violation of her privacy. I don’t disagree. In fact, I am 100% certain that I will not be buying an Ipod for myself after witnessing this.
ITunes should warn, clearly, that it’s going to erase material!
How did this user interface pass the first round of quality control?
The original poster in this thread seems to think his problem was an accident on his part. In my case, my friend just wanted to delete a file, and without warning ITunes deleted *everything* that had been synced. And this is the device they are selling to millions of computer novices? How can they handle the angry call volume that results from this?
I’m screwed. I’m just a joe, not a techno geek that just wanted to play music. I spent a lot of time compiling my playlists, and setting the ipod up. I had to get my 15 year old to finally figure this out,. So much for user ease of use. The I made the mistake of ripping my entire CD collection, and wanting to load it on my 16GIG freakin I Poop! A simple sync from my PC to this little device.
I sync my blackberry all day long. But this i Tunes site wants to ERASE ALL my current music on the i Poop! What gives, Apple is supposed to be this really great USER friendly company? They can’t even figure out how to get music files that are on a PC (and already owned) to transfer to their crappy device! I have now spent more than 4 hours researching this on the net and reading all the other woes.
I will never buy another Apple product in my life, nor will I purchase one for any of my kids!
This i Poop Tunes library should be an alternate source for music if a customer wants to purchase music. This whole temporary ownership of digital files and limited “transfer” rights is BS.
HD’s fail! PC’s are designed to have information transferred at will. And some of us are old enough to remember LP’s, cassette decks and buying music to copy for our stereos in both cars, home, school, and walkmen. And we did not have to pay again and again and again!
Once again Apple ranks dead last for ease of operation, portability and interconnectivity.
Buy A ZUNE!
i agree with you i connected a friends ipod to upload more songs and it said sync and erase and i misinterpreted and i said yes and deleted all my songs. excuse my language but i got extremely fucking pissed off, my friend had ten gigs of songs on there, i dont know what i;m gonna tell her. i’m fucked.
I’m not so sure about the “flawless” bit; iTunes 7 REQUIRED me to update my iPod, or it wouldn’t read it….so when I did, it blew my whole iPod library.
Then, after it updated it, it kindly told me that I now had a “corrupted iPod” and I needed to restore it.
Um…
I’m not a neophyte to upgrading / updating / uploading this stuff, but there was no choice.
There was no warning about what would happen, etc.
That doesn’t exacly “flawless” to me. It’s also happened to two of my coworkers in the same way.
I attached my iPod Touch to my itunes finally thinking “hey i’ll just do the stupid update that keeps popping up”….Now i’ve done many updates in the past with no problem…….”Your ipod could not be updated”…..So then I thought to my self…..ok so i’ll just go back to listening to my music and adding the CD I just bought to it on…..NOPE…..Itunes wiped out my ipod and now i’ve been doing a recovery for the past 2 hours…fun times with Itunes.
I hate iTunes…once this iTouch breaks i’m buying a zune
This was no mistake on your part. The new iTunes wiped 50 gigs of music from my iPod without warning (my g4 powerbook was freezing due to me working directly on my ipod)… I don’t recall any warning messages, just a lot of freezing on my computer, and my iPod seemed to be doing something as well. I am very computer savy, and this is a terrible design flaw. When apples releases a new program, it takes a bit of time to acclimate- deleting your iPod shouldn’t be this easy. I’m very upset.
You’re all being too hard on yourselves, way too many of us have experienced this same problem, the reason why is because that warning message is very vague, and either of the two choices it gives you on that small pop-up window in the new Apple iTunes 7.0 offers little answers to what will happen next to your music —so it is easy to pick the wrong option (and its also being discovered there is not a correct option) which results in your iPod being erased in one way or another. Apple needs to be held liable for our losses.
yeah me too, it JUST happened. 3879 songs wiped off my ipod. i dont know how it happened. i just plugged it in, ipod showed up, i changed to ‘manual sync’ then bam songs gone. im soooooooo pissed…what gives apple!!
dude this just happend to me.. I Do Belive this is a design flaw.. i was chekcing my memory bar. adn went othe movies tab on my ipod… and i CHoose to update the movies only.. wich it what i thought it would do….no.. it totally erased my music too… no my picture just my music and moives…. Yea it did give me a warning the warning said.. all the videos on my ipod will be erased and replaced with the ones in your libralsy… IM really pissed off… that was YEARS worth of music thisis my 3rd ipod.. my compuer crashed beror i moved to italy so i had to putt all the songs on my laptop by copping them from my old ipods…. and i delted them from my computer.. it took forever.. i guesss i will have my old ipods shipped to my from oklhaoma so i can put them all back on here.. it it a bitch thoe… it went from 6000 songs to 700(alll i have on my laptop)
Wow, I hope that someone from Apple sees this thread. I thought it was a stupid mistake I made, but it’s happening to all sorts of people.
I’ve just lost the contents of my ipod. I downloaded the new version of itunes (having been asked if I wanted to several times, in the end I thought, what the hell: it’s new, it has to be better!). So I’d downloaded it, then I plugged in my iPod… and now I have nothing. And because I didn’t want all the music from my Cd collection clogging up my PC, most of it wasn’t backed up in the librar… all that’s left on iTunes is the music I’d bought online. So I’ve got to start again, painstakingly downloading my CD collection. I guess someone will say it’s my fault, I should have backed up, etc, but I honestly don’t expect to lose 4,000 songs without even having clicked yes or not to anything. Suddenly I’m not feeling very warm towards Apple.
This is not cool, I just got my iPod a little while ago, and since I got a new laptop, I had no music. So I went around getting music from other peoples itunes and had accumulated 30 gigs of music for my enjoyment. These SOB apple people pretty much forced me to download itunes 7 and all my music is gone. Even like half the music I purchased online, and it would be impossible to retreive all that music. I am a freshman in college, my refuge is my music, and iPod. This devastation brough me to tears! I want to throw my iPod at a brick wall!
Itunes 7 JACKED my playlists! the songs that i click OFF (to not play on my ipod), STILL PLAY!!!! i even down-graded to itunes 6, and it still does it. iTunes 7 jacked up my ipod! typical Apple bull/junk. glad im a PC user. anyone else have this issue?
This just happened to me too. I wanted to put a video on so i said sync selected video. Then this little message appears and says what you have will be erased, and i figure its talking about my videos, and since i didnt have any others on there i didnt care so i click ok. All of a sudden the little memory bar goes to zero. This is hard for me to say, but i threw a trantrum like a 5 year old kid. I just spent two days in a row organizing everything perfectly. I MEAN PERFECTLY. Album covers and all, now i get this. I would shoot the iTunes programmers all in the head right now if they were here. Sorry just had to get that off my chest.
wow. at least I don’t feel like an idiot anymore. ditto. i go to update a TV show i downloaded. it warned me that it wil replace all my existing videos. not the music or anything else. BAM! all 9000+ songs gone. Movies gone. videos gone. pictures, games notes, contacts all still ok. i was quite convinced that it was my fault but that i see that im not the only one, im beginning to believe that this one slipped by the programmers. I also feel the need for violence towards apple. what were they thinking?
Wow, can I just say that I never expected to get this many comments on my post. It really is a big design flaw I guess. At least we know we are not all alone.
Many improvements can be made to iTunes. I plugged my new ipod shuffle 2nd Gen into another computer running iTunes 7 and wham, all my iPod tunes were gone. No warning whatsoever. No way of turning off Autosync too – not in my iTunes 7.0.2.16 anyway. 1. You should receive a warning that the playlist is out of sync, are you sure you want to obliterate the ipod etc. and 2. You should be able to copy files from the iPod back to your computer, not just the other way around. I have to recreate a playlist by Autofilling or Smart playlist etc from the new computer which still requires a lot of tinkering after its done. iTunes is just too heavy handed. Sure, if I want it to autosync, then let me control it at least not subject me to it. 3. Lastly, give me a way of viewing the playlist once its in the shuffle, sure I’ll use iTunes as a console if I have to. I just wanna see what’s on there.
regina- i just had that happen too! i borrowed my friends 30gb classic and i wanted her to have a full charge so i charged it, unplugged turned it on to make sure it had a full charge, everything was perfect and there then i put it away, the next morning i turned it on and everything was gone except her pictures. i feel so bad because i charged my ipod after and everything on mine is still there! does anybody know what happened?
this is awful. this morning, i plugged my ipod to my computer to charge it and upload some pictures. at the same time i was listening to music from the ipod. later I disconnected it and took it with me to college. when i was turned it on and went to playlists everything was gone. I went to artists and everything was gone also. I checked the ipod’s settings and it said Songs 0, Movies 0…it just left the pictures!!! can’t the apple people fix this already?!?!?!?!?!
Regina, your issue seems more of a mystery than ours. Still, it sucks to loose all your music. 🙁
well, i plugged my ipod nano into the laptop to charge, and when i unplugged no music, i went to re add all the songs and it says not enough memory… the memory is showing the songs are still there, but i cannot see them in the ipod.. i now only have 14 songs on the ipod at a time… this is truely upsetting
I keep my music on my desktop & have my iPod synced to that. I just wanted to be able to charge my iPod of my laptop while travelling, but when I plugged my IPod into my laptop, it erased all 2617 songs in about 3 seconds. With no warning or dialog box whatsoever. The only dialog box that came up asked if I wanted to transfer the purchased songs from my iPod to this computer (the laptop). I said no, and it just went and zapped my iPod. This has happened before, so I was prepared for it, but it takes about 12 hours to reload my iPod back up, so it’s annoying. I checked online before I did it this time, and everything I found said that I should see a dialog box asking if I want to sync my iPod to this computer, but there was definitely no such dialog box. I’m pretty computer savvy, and I didn’t miss anything — exactly the same thing happened with both my and my wife’s iPods.
Sorry to hear Tony. However, as far as I know, there is no ability to sync songs from the iPod to a computer.
Thomas, yeah, I also thought that there was no way to transfer songs from iPod to iTunes. However, this is the first and only dialog box I saw after plugging in my iPod:
“iTunes has found purchased items on the iPod “Fran’s iPod” that are not present in your iTunes library. Do you want to transfer these items from this iPod back to your iTunes library? [Don’t Transfer] [Transfer]”
When I clicked “Don’t Transfer” it quickly erased 20Gb of data from my iPod. It never asked “Do you want to sync to this computer?” And there was no time or opportunity to change any syncing or startup options. After it erased my songs I was able to change the setting so that iTunes won’t open automatically when this iPod is connected. Both computers are authorized for my iTunes store account, so maybe that’s why it asked that question about transferring my purchased music. But erasing my songs without asking certainly isn’t the helpful, polite question or behavior that I would expect from a user-friendly computer program.
Here’s a grab of the dialog box with the question about transferring purchased items: http://www.cybermesa.com/~champagne/iTunesQuestion.jpg
Very interesting Tony. It seems that iTunes 7 has had more ‘accidental erases’ than other versions.
Yea same happened to me. But I got a little bonus…….30gigs are missing!!! When it erased all my stuff it showed 27.1 gigs left out of a 60gig ipod!!! WTF. I seriously better get my 332 or so gigs back or Apples going to get it.
Same thing here….updated to iTunes 7 and lost the entire library plus can not reformat the thing so it will even work again…fury here…..
Has anyone gone to an Apple Store to discuss this? I’m curious to hear what they’d have to say.
Ok so how do you prevent the iPod from doing this again
? Everytime i plug it into my computer, it deletes everything i have listened to before or thats not on this computer.
Lats night i updtated my brothers 80gb with seasons 1-5 of futrarma and now thats all he has on there. 60gb of music gone by simply plugging it in… How can you fix this or at least prevent it
Thanks for any halp.
lol this is so funny it gets me mad!
like all of you guys i had the same problem with itunes 7.0, one night i plug it in to charge, the next morning as i was in school, i went into my songs and everything was gone! i was like wtf?, without a warning i tunes deleted everything, at least i only had like 600 songs, but i was mad! now im afraid to add some videos to my friends ipod, she has over 5000 songs and after reading all of this i dont think ill do it!
To prevent this, turn off any auto synchronization in iTunes.
Also, iTuens can backup an iPod very easily and you should do that once a month or so to prevent a total loss.
Thomas, the problem is there is NO such option to turn it off in the latest version of iTunes. At least not with it hooked up to my 2nd Gen shuffle.
In addition, iTunes can’t back up the iPod. If you know of how to do it, we would all be eager to hear how you accomplished this.
There are a couple of ways to back up and ipod. CopyPod is a useful utility to get songs back from the ipod. also you can just go into the ipod folders and copy all the songs to your hard drive (the folders are hidden so make sure that your folder option allow viewing of hidden files and folder. they songs will all be names weird names like AGHY.??? and xypt.??? ??? will usually be m4a or mp3. just copy all those files into some folder. then you can just import them all into itunes and itunes will figure out the names and even rename the files for you if your options are set right.
I’m really pissed of at Apple/ Itunes becasue i just lost like 20 gigs worth of music. Yes i have the music backed up somewhere, but I had it arranged just the way i wanted it and that took forever. It seems to be a sinking thing but god dammit apple fix your shit we all paid good money for these ipods.
“god dammit apple fix your shit we all paid good money for these ipods.”
Actually, it is because of this unprompted erasure experience that I will certainly *never* pay money for an ipod. I may not even buy the Macbook Pro I was planning to. Some seem to be able to laugh off this erasure issue, but I see it as an extremely huge problem. Big enough problem to cost my business forever, even if they manage to fix it.
Fred – When iTunes opens, click on the iPod and select ‘Manually manage music’ That should do it unless there is some sync only options on the shuffles. Never thought of that.
Out of curiosity, how many people are having this ‘auto delete’ issue with a shuffle? Mine wasn’t a shuffle and was basically my fault.
To backup an iPod, hook it into iTunes and click on File -> Backup to Disk.
James, if you don’t want an Apple product due to a few issues, then that’s your biz. But I’ve had iPods for probably around five years now and I couldn’t be happier. Same goes for the the Mac’s I’ve owned going back to like 1996
Thanks for the hint Thomas, but selecting File – > Backup to Disk backs up the current computer’s selected playlist – NOT what’s on the iPod right now. There seems to be no way besides what Chris said (which I haven’t tried yet) to copy files from the iPod somewhere else.
As far as wiping out my shuffle is concerned, it’s really too bad (and awful software design) that ‘Manually manage music’ is not an option unless I hook the iPod in first! This puts whatever is on the iPod in jeopardy if this happens to be already checked. This would be the case on another computer with no way of changing it before plugging in the device. The Summary Tab in iTunes 7 cannot be viewed or its options selected (or de-selected) unless the iPod is connected to the computer – thereby leaving it wide open for frying (according to iTunes Help menu).
I should be able to disable autosync BEFORE I plug the iPod in but I cannot.
Wait, it’s not even an option AFTER I plug the shuffle in, yikes, there goes my entire library again… oh wait again, even if it was available, the iPod would be toast since it syncs before I even have a chance to select the Summary tab.
iTunes would actually be a decent program if it treated the iPod as the master device and not the computer. Must be a DRM concern for them.
I’m sure many users have banged their heads (and probably returned their shuffle) against this software issue too.
I’m not one of those partizan Apple or Microsoft types and don’t care what computer people use – I just want software that works properly and has been well thought out in the user’s favor, not in digital rights management’s (some lawyer’s) favor. Here Apple fails too since Chris’ comments show a workaround anyway.
“James, if you don’t want an Apple product due to a few issues, then that’s your biz. ”
A few issues? It’s like asking me to go to a doctor that is known for amputating the wrong limb. What’s the big deal if most of his patients come out okay?
Sorry, you and I don’t see this from the same point of view *at all*.
I come from the point of view of a musician. Most of the material that ends up on my players is my own work. I don’t like being locked in or out or erased. I see it as not a protection of the authors rights, but an abridgement.
There are other players that don’t erase my media for me, and that don’t try to tell me what I can and cannot listen to or copy.
So, I went to put some TV shows onto my Ipod, saw the same pop up box, but I didn’t care, they were my first TV shows. Like alot of you, my computer froze up for a while, I just thought it was that “Gapless playback Information” stuff again, so I left my Ipod to sit. Now, 30 gigs of music are gone. I’m going to go talk to the Tech Deck at my local Apple store, but I am anticipating a generic “You should have backed up” response. I’ll post back soon, maybe they will actually have some valuable insight, Apple has usually been really good tech wise.
Right now, I am extremely pissed at this freaking ipod 7. I am trying hard not to hurt someone. I deleted 41 gigs of very hard to find music!! This “new and improved” itunes 7 is a bunch of crap; a pretty interface with horrible functions!! Ever since I uploaded this new softwared it has erased a total of 100gigs!! Tonight was the last straw! I was trying to recover my lost songs after they were erased the 3rd time. Itunes 7 said something like, ” we cannot update files”. Then, all 41gigs of my music which is blue in the summary page turns orange (“other” in the summary page). Then the ipod starts updating. So I think once its finished it will revert back to normal. While it is updating, I notice my gigs are shrinking from 41 to 38 to 25; it keeps going down. Finally it erases everything. I loved my ipod up until this itunes 7 came out…..
I guarantee you, when Apple finally fixes Itunes 7, that “gapless playback information” crap will be found to be the cause of all of those accidental erasures. For those who want to back up their ipod, check out http://www.zeleksoftware.com.
I have used it previously with no problems. They are the only reason why I’m not driving a truck through the Apple store’s windows right now. I was able to back up 27 out of 41gigs thanks to their “ipod music liberator”.
Thank god I’m not going mad. I had no idea where my music had gone until i came across this page. I tried to go online and find an email address to contact apple and tell them about this and they don’t have any contact us tab on their site. If they do it’s well hidden. I wonder why?………….
You can call Apple for support or you can post something in their forum.
My prob is a little different…version 7 didn’t erase my ipod (yet) IT erased my library on my laptop. I travel a lot and like to have my library on both my home and travel computers…worked fine till now. Version 7 says I may only have one library on one computer…What the F___!!!??? Anyone know a work around on this one?
I’ve had the same thing happen to me on multiple occasions. The funny thing is that it never happens on any PC. Low and behold, about once ever other month, I’ll plug my ipod in at work and it will see fit to wipe out my entire music folder.
No warnings at all, except for the fact that my machine will run slower for a few minutes. Sometimes, and only sometimes, the ipod updating icon will animate in. However, since it is windows format and always up to date, not to mention that every setting is set to manual (meaning the ipod and itunes will do nothing without my permission), this should never happen.
Oddly enough, all of the information for my music will remain intact. The ipod still lists all of my songs and the space that they take up, but it also lets me know that I have nearly 100% free space.
This leads me to think that maybe it is some form of copy protection. Maybe occasionally wiping out your ipod is Apple’s way of getting around the archaic protestations of the music industry? Does it pertain only to Mac machines (as this only happens on a Mac for me)? Does it have something to do with me running my ipod on multiple systems? I really don’t know.
Either way, it’s a pain in the ass and should never happen. I mean, comon, I pay for my music, I spent hours ripping my CD collection, I was overjoyed (not to mention broke) to finally get an iPod so that i could carry my collection with me, stop punishing me for simply wanting to listen to music. Honestly, you all know how long it takes to re-upload 30+ Gigs of music to a sluggish ipod HDD. Pain in the ass.
just happened to me too.
i was trying to move a tv show from itunes to my ipod so i clicked the box to sync the tv shows (clicking no other boxes mind you) and it erased 1400 songs that i had chosen to not keep on my pathetically old and small hard drive. no they’re not backed up elsewhere, i spent too much money on a freakin’ ipod to keep my music on. or so i thought.
how can sync-ing 1 video erase 1400 songs?
this ipod is my first mac product. and probably my last.
Did you get a warning elaine? Also, keep in mind that this issue doesn’t effect everyone. Only a small % of users. Unfortunately a high % of iPod users don’t backup their music. I see that as the bigger issue here.
Ok, I’m no techno freak, but who says you should have to have a degree in computer science to own an ipod? Exactly the opposite, this is supposed to be an accessible form of technology that makes your experience of listening to music easy and portable in accordance with a modern lifestyle!
So why has itunes deleted all of my music from my ipod (all downloaded legitimately) without asking me?
I had removed the music from my laptop to save space (as many people do), and wanted to update my ipod with a new CD (Old fashioned i know) i had just imported to itunes. Needless to say, after plugging mt ipod in to my laptop, I was left with nothing but my new CD! It is only luck that I had backed up my purchases before I removed them from my laptop. Still – I now have to wait 2 weeks until i can get to that disc!
WELL DONE APPLE – GREAT DESIGN FEATURE!
So if the boys and girls from apple are monitering this feedback (which they should be) here is some objective advice:
When I plug my ipod into my laptop, i want an idiot’s interface that shows me files and categories visually (like we are all used to seeing in windows or mac interfaces). And yes – we know that you are different, but we all have to be able to use your products instinctively if we are going to get maximum enjoyment from them.
I don’t want my itunes library to show song titles that have been deleted from my harddrive (making me think they are still there). I also want to see a clear ‘actions’ area that tells me EXACTLY what task is being performed by your software while it is running on my hardware. And i need clear warnings and descriptions of each action before the task is performed.
Not much to fix on what is essentially an OK product. Unfortunately I fell for the hype like everyone else, so now I have to like it!
Well, i’m just another sucker who thought Apple designed products well.
I, too, got my iPod wiped clean by iTunes without a warning. Luckily i back up my songs, but i got shafted on my playlists, which were erased, of course. i spent many many hours creating and tweaking these playlists – those run mixes, driving in the car mixes, chilling out on a bus mixes, and many more.
iTunes SUCKS.
I was wondering if Upgrading to itunes 7, would delete or wipe out my ipod. I have version 1.1.1, and the reason for that is because in the past I have had problems with updates. I have 62gb of memory on my Ipod, 30,000 songs or so, and a few movies from Limewire and mp3around.com. Well anyways I do not want to lose everything, I want ot update mainly because that is the only way You can buy movies andtv shows from Itunes Music Store. Well Please Answer this question….If I update to itunes 7 will everything I already have be wiped out, or will there be problems? Please email Me at [email protected] asap, and Thank You so much.
Jacob – There is no way of knowing if any issues will come up. Probably 1 out of every 1000 users have an issue. If you don’t have your stuff backed up, I’d start there. You can never be to safe.
Yes, there is a way of knowing. If you plug an iPod into a computer without a matching playlist, you run a major risk of deleting the iPod. Oh, and your “guestimate” of “iTunes issue” frequency is based on what exactly? I would argue that this discussion thread is just the tip of an iceberg.
This is more than an “issue”, its a serious design flaw as I tried to enlighten you (and hopefully Apple) about. All it would take is for Apple to enable a Manual/Disable Autosync feature prior to plugging in the iPod. A bonus would be to provide users with a backup utility within iTunes and not force users to go third party or to the filesystem.
“If you plug an iPod into a computer without a matching playlist, you run a major risk of deleting the iPod” Not quite. I plug my iPod and my Wife’s iPod into three different computers and haven’t had one issue. Now if you automatically sync items, then that may hold true.
“Oh, and your guestimate…” – That’s what I was trying to get at, the tip of the iceberg. 🙂
I too am a victim of apple’s bullshit. Last night I plugged in my ipod, added about a gig and a half of songs into my itunes library, changed some id3 tags, and dragged my new stuff onto my 30g ipod. When I tried to view my updated ipod library in itunes i saw nothing in the music subdirectory and figured I had too many programs running in the background and my 20 gigs of music just weren’t being displayed because my laptop is slow. Nope. This morning when I went to play some music in my car my ipod is completely blank, just like the day I got it. The thing I don’t get is that I never clicked anything that said “delete” or “update” or “sync” or anything lke that. I simply dragged and dropped my songs from my computer library to my ipod library like I have many times before. I have been using the”enable disc use” and “manually update ipod” selections because I have to delete the songs from my computer after they’re on my ipod due to space limitations on my laptop hardrive. I never changed these settings and yet last nite, for whatever reason, not even the songs that were still on my computer that I had JUST PUT ONTO MY IPOD WERE GONE!!!
I hate apple! I always have! Stupid apple with your smug, one-sided commercials and your “simple” product design. Try including a manual with your product!!! “Oh, your so ahead of the curve and unique”. Yeah right. Its times like these that remind me why I’m a pc user.
I just updated to iTunes 7 after months of putting it off. What a BIG mistake, apart from it taking it’s sweet ass time time to ‘determine gapless playback’ of 11188 songs, it decided that I didn’t need 4000+ of them when it sync’d!!
No warnings, no apparent reasons, just gone.
Lucky for me, I haven’t trusted the integrity of iTunes and my iPod for a while and so, in November, I bought a 200gig drive to back mine and my girlfriends iPods up (I’ve already had to replace her hard-drive as it crapped out and lost everything). So, I am now in the process of re-loading my iPod.
It is a joke, a complete joke. iTunes runs like complete dogshit (always has) on a PC. When are Apple gonna realise the majority of their iPod users are bloody PC users?!
So people, if you use an iPod, buy an extra hard-drive for your machine and back everything up. NEVER assume your iPod is gonna keep everything for you!
“NEVER assume your iPod is gonna keep everything for you!” I think this is what Apple says. They tell everyone to backup.
So I just bought a shiny new 80gb iPod.
6 days later and Im finished tagging many of my 14000 MP3s which were untagged or badly tagged and hard to search for on an iPod….
So Im smiling, finally done plugging and unplugging the iPod (did it about 15 times total due to iTunes locking up repeatedly on sync). Everything is well I think.
Then, I have one more album that I want to send to it, right. So I plug it back in, drag and drop the album to the correct playlist, and hit sync.
About 10 second later, its done. I look at disk usage… and what do you know? I have 1 album loaded. 100mb used out of 74gb.
I did NOTHING but drag another album into the playlist, and poof. ALL that time spent for nothing.
I have only owned this thing for a few days so Im still under my 30 day warranty. If this happens again… the NEXT time I want to send it a new album.. Ill demand a refund and send this POS back.
So, same thing happened to me. I upgraded to IT 7.0 last week, plugged in my nano and it erased all the songs on the nano…all the play lists, etc. It gave me NO warning at all, no “do you want to…”.
And I also hate that stupid “gapless playback” analysis thing.
Yes, I have the songs backed up – double backed up, aamof. But that doesn’t make it ok that Apple releases software that wipes out the iPod.
ITunes sucks. Apple sucks. Why isn’t Steve Jobs on this site appologizing? Why aren’t they using one of those services that monitor whats going on about your company in the blogsphere.
Apple you have a serious issue here. Stop running (clever) ads that portray how stable you are. You blew it with me. I’m not even going to use itunes anymore – I’m moving over to Red Hat’s Anapod.
that just happened to me!!!!!!! if any one knows how to bring back all the songs please e-mail me at [email protected]!!!!PLEASE
Yep, same thing happened to me and my boyfriend. We received a pair of Ipod videos as an engagement gift and I was pretty excited about them, being my first mp3 player. I spent a long while creating the right playlists and so on, gym, car, honeymoon…*laughs* I had about 30 gigs of music on there and it was great until I decided to add a couple videos…as soon as I plugged the thing in to i tunes 7, it erased everything. I still haven’t been able to figure out how to add things without deleting the whole music library. Exact same thing happened to him like a day later on his computer. SUCKS.
Alrighty, I’ve found something that may, or may not, fix the issue of the incredible erasing iPod. At least for some of you.
I’ve found that the only times my iPod gets erased is when it’s attached to a computer other than the one that it was formatted/is always updated/added-to on. On top of that, it doesn’t seem to happen every time … sometimes once a month, usually more frequently.
Anyway, it turns out that iTunes, for whatever reason, compares the playlists on your iPod to the ones on your machine. According to Apple, this is part of its playlist synching function. According to Apple, you can turn this off, which you can, although this doesn’t seem to stop the iPod from checking. On your own machine, this really isn’t a problem. However, go to your friend’s house and you could be in for a treat! And by treat I mean get screwed out of your music.
I primarily use my iPod on two machines: my home PC and my mac at work. All of my music is on my home machine, which leaves my work machine as the oft-nefarious purger of tunage. So, after turning off all synching, I made duplicates of my iPod’s playlists on my work computer. The lists are duplicates in name only, I’m not copying the music files.
My theory is that the erasing is a devious little anti-piracy function of Apple’s. When iTunes scans your iPod, it finds that the lists on the computer and iPod match, and doesn’t bother checking for contents. Thus, your music stays where it is, you remain happy, and there is much rejoicing!
Like I said, I don’t know if this is REALLY a fix. It has been 4 months since my work machine has pillaged my iPod, though … so who knows … maybe.
Happened to me also. This really, really sucks. There is NO excuse for a program that deletes data with no warning. Oh iPod product manager, wise the F**k up, or NOBODY will use these devices. This has taken me from a Apple fan to a close to Apple hater in a short 30 minutes.
IF YOUR SOFTWARE INTENDS ON DELETING, MAKE SURE YOU WARN YOUR USERS. It is practically a pre-written use case for functional design.
yea im pretty mad, apple will hear from me in the morning. I just lost a full ipod worth of music. i can not believe i have wasted countless hours setting up my music on my ipod only to have it erased. apple should pay for the time we have all wasted
I’ve posted this problem on the Apple support forum. Other people are posting after me, denying that it happens.
We need to warn people NOT to upgrade to iTunes 7.0. That iTunes 7.0 will delete their music – indescriminately, without warning, even if you have manual synch turned on.
Please post on the Apple forum. Perhaps together we can get Apple to respond, take responsibility and fix it. Not to mention some sort of restitution to all of us that went through this.
Here are the links (assuming Apple doesn’t pull down my post:)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=887707&tstart=0
Topic: iTunes 7.0 erased deleted all the music on my ipod
The two other places I posted, both with subsequent posts denying that iTunes 7.0 randomly erases all the music on your iPod.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4223526#4223526
Topic: Will updating to itunes 7.0.2 erase all of my music on my computer?
AND:
ooops – they are too fast for me. looks like i have been blocked out of the second one. It says that I don’t have permission to view it.
The URL was:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4223568#4223568
Topic:
Re: my music disappeared after updating to itunes 7.0.2
(they have already erased my posts from that second thread.)
this ridiculous bullshit just happened to me. i have no backup b/c i deleted all my music from the HD in order to save space. i plug in my ipod after d’ling some new stuff…*POOF*, all my music on the ipod is f’n gone, no more, goodbye, see ya’, adios muchaco…hasta la vista, baby.
I’m so happy to have found this thread! The same thing just happened to me. I updated to the new version and Itunes ate all my music! Its all gone! And now when I try to start over and add music it wont let me! So even though I tried to not be so pissed off and tried to just re-start I can’t drag any music into it! What can we all do?
I just got a new laptop from my work, however, my old computer has my itunes library where i sync my ipod. My cousin has a zen mp3 and tried to plug it into my old computer and it zapped all of her songs. On the new laptop, i just downloaded itunes 7…. if i plug my ipod in, im afraid it will delete all of my songs….. is there any way to get my old library onto my new laptop without it eating all of my songs?
so my ipod had done the same exact thing as most of the comments above state… i was sinmply updating my ipod all of a sudden my entire ipod was wiped clean!!and now it won’t let me reload anything!!!!! and it won’t let me restore my ipod either!! anyone what the heck to do!
so i had the same problem that you guys described — not being able to turn off the auto-sync function in itunes 7 (and the option+command shortcut also didn’t work).
What i ended up doing was:
1. before plugging in the ipod, drag the itunes app into trash
2. plug in the ipod
3. use ipodrip to get songs transfered to my hard drive
4. unplug ipod
5. open itunes, import all the new songs you saved to your hard drive, verify they work
6. plug in the ipod, do the sync
hope this helps
Omg! I think this just happened to me.
I recently redid my computer, so had to download itunes again. I got iTunes7…. I loaded it up then connected my iPod Nano.
I got some weird message and clicked “no” (thank god). My library in iTunes was empty! I knew something was messed up, so I unplugged my iPod. My songs are all still on the Ipod. I quickly backed up my files… What am I suppose to do? How can I get my library back??
Please help!
How can I get my Ipod tv shows off of my Ipod and onto my laptop that just had to reinstall windows after a wipeout?
Thanks in advance…
Please go tot Apple’s Support forums.
Try this out for size, if the songs are still on your ipod hardrive this will save them to the cpu and save your songs for free. I did this too and deleted my damn ipod and didn’t have the songs on itunes to begin with, but the songs were still on the F harddrive when I plugged ipod in and itunes did not recognize it. I simply followed these steps and after I got the songs on my cpu from my ipod and then copied them to itunes I had to update my ipod to factory settings and it reset after that so I could put the songs back on Ipod and it was not all clogged up.
http://playlistmag.com/help/2005/01/2waystreet/index.php
Try this if the Ipod still has songs on it but will not show up, meaning the hard drive is still full but the songs do not show up. This is very easy to follow.
Apple better figure out this problem that we are all having and fix it asap. We should be getting our money’s worth. Having all 4,000 songs or so deleted from our ipod’s is not really what we deserve.
I was working on my computer and setting up Itunes because everyone in my company uses it and they wanted me to share what I had so they could listen to my playlist while I was at work and I loaded up the program, told it to look to the music folder on my second drive where I have all of my music, made sure that itunes would not change any of my files and then went through the process of adding the files to my library. I noticed when it was done adding the files that it was converting files (which I told it not to do) and after I stopped it from doing that, I looked in my music folder and noticed that I went from 15 gigs of music down to 4 gigs. I went into my music folder and noticed in many of the album folders (all of which were still there) that there was no music, but now there was album art instead. I guess being able to see the cover of the album is just as good as having the music. I think I have my music folder backed up to an external hard drive but it is frustrating to know that I told the program not to change anything whatsoever and it randomly decided to delete files from my computer. After a situation like this, I highly doubt I am going to get an iPod, especially if the program just randomly decides what it wants to delete and what it wants to keep. The funny thing is, the program made copies of the music and started putting it in their own folders in the itunes folder (the only problem is, those files are the only files that still exist on my computer so now i have two copies of the same music instead of all of my music that I had to begin with). I am very computer savvy being a programmer but this is making me love my PC more and more.
Just lost 80Giga of music without a warning, good there was nobody around to kill…
CopyTrans can recuperate some of the lost files of your iPod, but it’s not for free (what is anyway, in this world..)
Also, it allows to backup – copy – transfer your iPod Music to your PC. Ideal after a hard drive crash or viruses, before sending your iPod for repair or simply to move your iPod Music to a new computer.
Features include: backup all song types (MP3/AAC/WAV/AIF), backup directly to iTunes saving your Playlists and Ratings, cool iTunes like design, rename songs on backup, backup albums in separate folders.
Just lost all my itunes without any warning. You’d think with the hundreds of millions Apple pours into its research budgets it would have picked up on this blatant software floor.
I just did this. I dont recall a warning window Im so angry!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bought a new shuffle and was told by friend how easy it was to use. When I plugged it into my computer I recieved a message that I would need to up date to 7.2 I did and all my library was cleared. I have it backed up but I am SO FRUSTRATED. I am seriously thinking about being done with ipod esspecially now that amazon.com will carry music.
So, this problem cannot be solved by buying another iPOD? This is a software issue right? My iPOD library disappeared except for two tracks of my most recently downloaded stuff. Happened when I tried to import new music. NO WARNINGS.
Any recommendations of other MP3 brands, especially for listening to audiobooks?
Thanks for this blog. I thought my lack of technical savvy had caused the problem.
I just bought myself an 8 GB ipod and today I accidently erased all of my songs, but luckily I only had about 80 songs anyways when all songs were erased I was expecting the capacity to return to its 8GBs but instead it still read 7.41 GB even though there is nothing on it. I am wondering if everytime you erase songs it keeps the GBs until you eventually have no GBS left, but I am probably wrong.
Rosalee – There is now way for any device to actually have ll the gigs they state. iPod, portable hard drives, or phones. No matter what the device, some room is reserved for the operating system of the device.
Elaine – The issue is so random that it’s hard to track down. Manually sync to only one computer and you should be fine. Always backup too.
Extremely annoying!
I thought it was just a fault as I upgraded whilst the ipod was plugged in. I restored the factory settings and imported the music again. Which was fine for a short while. But as soon as I tried to make any kind of favorite folder on the ipod, everything was wiped off… Well, the pod casts stayed… Luckily I have spare laptop with an older version of itunes. I lost a lot of music though 🙁 I hope there’s a new version of itunes available soon! All though I will be skeptical for future updates!
Pls. help lost my songs twice while using itunes how can i avoid this in the future.
Wow, I must say I am glad I am not the only one! At first I thought I was crazy but apparently I’m not. I plugged in my iPod two days ago and I noticed my gig count was slowly decreasing after my computer became unfrozen. I immediately went to unplug it to see what was going on with my thousands of songs and realized my iPod had been wiped clean of EVERYTHING!! Needless to say I was livid b/c I just plugged it in to add a few songs. I hope everyone recovers their music. I had about 1000 of my songs on my external hardrive and I’ll have to reload all my cds but good luck to everyone else and I too hope someone from apple sees this b/c I’m now selling my iPod and buying a Zune!
This happened to me last year. I was furious; I’d just bought a new ipod, loaded it up painstakingly and then lost everything. Like some of the others here, I’m a musician and a lot of the work was my own. Now I’m downloading itunes 7.2 — this had better not happen again. Is there ever going to be a serious competitor to itunes and the terrible ipod? i hate this product so much. It’s funny, I used to want to get an apple computer. Now I never, ever would! I just talked my sister out of buying a mac as well.
One issue Farge and you’re ready to throw in the towel? You better avoid Microsoft for sure then.
I just downloaded iTunes 7.5, installed it and plugged my iPod, 8 seconds later 72GB of music dissappeared!!!…
This is really big sh*t!!!, and it doesnt seem to be a design flaw, it seems to be apple including barbarian measures to cover their ass to prevent any possible piracy, they are not doing anything to improve this situation!!!… When are they gonna learn that users should use devices and not the other way arround!!!… awful!, I am selling this piece or crap and buying a nice MP3 player
Slightly different post, my daughter logged on to her account on our I-Mac whilst my Ipod was plugged in on charge, she opened up I-tunes and it auto updated all my tunes off (around 800) a few films and video’s, I now have around 30 songs that my 11 year old daughter likes. I bought a file recovery utility “recover my files” for $69.00 and its useless.
My I-tunes library has been wiped for no reason at least three times without warning. Also my i-pod has been wiped twice losing over 4,000 songs which it has taken me ages to sort out and now they’re all gone and I don’t even know how. When I ejected my ipod there were songs on it, then when I went to play them they were all gone. I can’t just copy my whole Library back onto ’cause it got wiped not to long ago as well. What’s up with that? D:
I am so glad it is not just me I got a new computer and decided to download itunes into it, it is a Vista by the way which has its own issues I heard. Anyway my ipod was totally wiped out and the computers music libray was in its place the only thing that saved my sanity is that I still had my old computer and set that back uo and redownloaded everything again. So I am allexcited and think great I will delete Itunes from the new computer and start over wrong I redownload this new Itunes plug my ipod in to get the 12 new songs I bought and guess what poof deleted everything all over again. So again I go to the old computer and had to start over. What am I doing wrong?
I think iTunes 7 is CRAP!!!! Just read the HUNDREDS of bloggers complaining about the “Gapless Playback PC Freezing” problems which Apple has yet to fix. Tons of suggestions but no fix by Apple. And try to get version 7 off the iPod. Any suggestions???
i had the same problem, i bought a new PC and connected my ipod 80GB and then it required me to sync with new library or something like that it asked, then i did and suddenly it erased everything. up until this point i’m still trying to remember what i had on my ipod.
yer just happened to me ive just restored my factory settings on my ipod nano 4gb. and now itunes 7 is not reading my ipod at all what do i need to do
the same thing happend to me nd i do not know how to get the singz back in ma ipod
Yes, Itunes is not good. they are a part of this whole downloading problem which is in actuality a problem. Artists want their money for the pirated versions and this is how Itunes is helping them. I was given an IPOD For My Birthday… personally I have always stuck to RCA but i like the little bugger they call the shuffle. Im tired of losing all my songs though… sometimes you need to change things up and they wont let you. 🙁 Sorry Apple….Greed has gotten the better of you.
DITO DITO DITO!!!!!
I am extremely unhappy. I have over 30 hours of flying to do this week, and I just lost 30 gig of music!!! What to do???
My ipod just got wiped yesterday, I put 1 song on it( drag nd drop, not sync) and I thought it was fine, but when I tried to play the song everything was gone!! Songs,Movies,Podcasts,Pictures, ALL GONE! I thought it was a simple read error of sumtin so i installed the latest software on my ipod. When it finished installing it restarted (as they usualy do after an update) but it kept restarting and failing in a cycle, ITUNES 7 BROKE MY IPOD!!, I dont know what to do, i can get all the music again probibly, but my ipod wont start now, im waitin for the battery to die but dont know if that will fix it, nthe drive keeps staring and stoping.If it is fully broken apple have to give me a free repair cos i aint payin for what there “BETTER” software did, anyway there already makein me pay by puting me through thge situation of gathering up my music and putting it back on IF my ipod isint gone. \ /
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my entire ipod got erased and all my playlists are gone too. How can I get my automatic playlists back??
I sure hope people realize that they need to backup their iPods!
just an update on what I said before, I had to buy a new i-pod as it was sooo messed up it kept freezeing! 🙁 not happy with apple
Thomas: How exactly are people supposed to “back up their iPods?”
It does not help to make suggestions that are *impossible* to do.
James M. Use PodWorks ($8) or YamiPod (free) and drag all the music on your iPod to your hard drive and burn to CD or DVD or put on an external drive. Flash drives are cheap and may be a good place to store the music.
This happened to me, but I have a 4 gig iPod, so I don’t have so much songs and stuff, although, I had about 7g or so on my iTunes library. Completely took away around $100. pisses me off.
Apple is doing me and favours either. I just got a new laptop for my birthday (a dell inspiron 1525 if it matters) and i wanted to download itunes onto the computer so i didnt have to worry about going back to the family computer to listen to music. I downloaded it, plugged in my nano and waited til it told me that i couldnt have any of the songs on my ipod because i wasnt authorised to have them. Whats wrong? i still dont get it, and i miss my music. Someone please help me
Maddy. To authorize your computer, log in to the iTunes account that purchased the songs.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014
Thomas
do you work for apple? Because a lot of your comments are pretty partisan and seem to follow the party line. I have purchased 8 ipods starting from the very first to the present version. As I continued upgrading it has gotten harder and harder to keep my info on my ipod. I am an M.D. and keep patient files on my ipod and back up my files. However, I have lost countless hours of sleep, music, photos, podcasts dealing with these later versions of itunes. Is itunes a “virus?” If not then why does it continue to be updated by apple and each version becomes more virulent than the last version. I have been reading posts for over two years? Why haven’t these problems been corrected? Of course it is about money, but you can’t keep making money if the product eats everything it sees. People will just go elsewhere. POWER TO THE PEOPLE! ! !
Recently a Apple store opened up in my area, I had a similar experience where my whole Ipod deleted all my songs, I was luck because I was switching to a new computer and still had the old one to reload everything. I deleted everything from the Ipod website from the computer. When I went into the store a friendly sales tech person told me to make sure I authorized the new computer and that should work is it really that simple? So hesitantly I downloaded the new Itunes7 off of apple back onto the new computer and it worked, I do not know if apple changed the software but it had a new loading program. My suggestion if you can is to back up your files then reload this new and improved Itunes7 and good luck to all….I wish the website and tech line were more insiteful…that friendly sales tech person was great.
My brother in law just lost all his music. When talking with him, he had it setup to automatically sync and when he hooked it into a new computer, he didn’t read the warning messages and everything was wiped clean.
Users need to do a better job of reading the warning messages and Apple should do additional work at warning people.
Ohh and if you manually manage your music, you’ll be better off. 🙂
I just wana update: Ive all my music + more back now! But still, I had to hand 230 euro 2 over 2 apple 4 a new i-pod because of their product faults.I would also like to agree with Melissa about the customer service
I can’t believe it, did the same thing, manually just wanted to add the recently added items and bang it wiped everything else off my iPod. 🙁 not happy
I am so annoyed the same thing just happened to me no warning atall 2355 songs gone !!!!!!
All my music just went out of my ipod classic! im pissed and have might done something stupid.. I reformated the ipod into ntfs because it didnt work to reformat it into fat-32! how do i get fat-32 again?….. HOPELESS!
Gah! Recently I got a message saying ‘Ipod cannot be synced. Directory or file has become corrupt and unreadable.” I took this as a bad sign, but nothing happened to my iPod. Then, just today I plugged in my iPod and everything was erased. I had nearly 600 songs on my 30gig iPod, which may not seem like a lot, but I went through a lot of trouble managing the songs, adding artwork, etc.
I wish iTunes would have said, “We’re going to delete all of your crap. Please don’t throw rotten socks at us.” Dammnit..a lot of songs came from another computer. *sigh..WHY APPLE, WHY?!
My ipod deleted all of my songs after having it connected to my mac to charge for a few days; maybe this wasn’t such a good idea – I don’t know. But now – after one week of just leaving it turned off – they have all magically reappeared. I’m amazing.
I just had the same problem. I was playing music all day today. I went out and when I came back my new mac book pro itunes account said it can’t recognize my ipod. It asked me to restore, I didn’t but that didn’t make a difference because apple deleted all 30 gb of my music. I’m so pissed off. I don’t understand why this would happen. You better believe that apple is going to get an earful tomorrow.
my computer had a virus and i had to have it cleaned to fix it, and then i went back on my itunes and it was blank. my friend broke my ipod a while ago – i dont have another copy of that music. but i wasnt worried, because i remembered that when i first uploaded itunes it asked me if i wanted to put all the music on my harddrive into my itunes. but when i downloaded itunes, it didnt ask me that and i only had two random sample songs. theoretically the songs are still hiding somewhere on my computer, but i dont know how to get at them, or send itunes to go search for them. i’m very frustrated, because i’m sure if i could just figure it out i could get my library back, but i dont know how. ive gone without my library for about a month now, and i’m slowly losing my mind. i’ve searched around, and the only solution it seems is out there is how to put your songs from your ipod onto your library, which i already knew about. but i dont have an ipod, so thats worthless. i need to figure out how to make itunes search my harddrive for the songs and put them in the library. does anyone know how to do this? i really hope its possible, because otherwise i’m totally screwed.
Yea that happened 2 me too. My ipod erased all my songs when i plugged it n2 my computer and erased a few songs and put one or two on there. So do i just have 2 buy a new ipod now and start over? I had like 798 songs n sum of em i kant get back. I’m rele upset
try downloading a program like anapod and pull all your files off your ipod. then format it and copy the folder back. the files are still on the ipods hard drive . Itunes is just too stupid to see them.
I only have the 1 gig shuffle, which is all the music I need at a time, but I sure am glad that I keep saying “no” to updating my old version of iTunes. I got the shuffle for free and should my music get wiped out, I won’t spend money on another one.
I submit that endless hours spent in front of a computer trying to convince some software program that your music is really yours and to leave it alone is most certainly not “convenient”. Digital music shouldn’t be more trouble than the clunky yet reliable physical music of old, and yet here we are. Money spent on players and music still means we must have the right player or accessory to play music in our cars, through a stereo, on another computer, and we are tied to charging through a main computer which may or may not be nearby or working anymore. Why the hell are we accepting of this?!
I’m going to get a more generic player when this thing dies, keep playing tapes in my older car that has a player with the auto-reverse feature (doesn’t play adapter tapes properly) that the “powers that be” will not release a fix for, and keep playing CD’s on my perfectly functioning stereo that lacks an iPod feature and my home computers which don’t question my ownership. Yes, it’s old school but it’s hassle free, affordable, and I still have (my)tunes.
And Thomas:
I like that you started the blog and all, but it is kind of distracting how pro-Apple you are. A few (or even less) flaws are more than good enough reason for people to steer clear of a product or company. For some of us the nuisance of rigged software coupled with the injustice of restricting my owner’s rights completely trump any appeal factor of the iPod.
Just joining the club, 30 GB-s – 5000 songs – GONE WITHOUT A TRACE.
I demand an alternative to this bloody itunes
“A few (or even less) flaws are more than good enough reason for people to steer clear of a product or company.”
Kinda make you wonder why so many people run Windows then doesn’t it?
i put a bunch of purchased songs on my new mac computer from my old windows laptop but now it wont let me authorize them. when i click on it it says to authorize it put in your password, when i do that it just goes to an itunes update page for itunes plus but when i try to download it, it says i have to have mac 10.4.9 and i have 10.4 so it doesnt work. HELP!
Thomas, this isn’t a pc/windows vs. mac issue. I love my ipod and was about to buy the new iphone and maybe more. But it’s become obvious to me that apple is very concerned with DRM and controlling who people buy from. So concerned that they don’t mind if thousands of man hours of work by thousands of customers organizing music gets erased because it wants to sync to only one computer. -I mean seriously, who has only one computer… (half-kidding)
I would bet that a lot of people are having this problem.
Itunes 7 needs some work…
Yes, users should back up…
…but not backing up shouldn’t cost them their ipod because of a software problem
anyway, I didn’t erase the info on my ipod, I’m just trying to figure out how I can access the library on my ipod from itunes 7. I could do it with itunes 6, but now it won’t let me downgrade either… *sigh*
Yea well, i gotta add my two cents. I was just trying to charge my ipod when i got home from work and like everyone else i got a message that didn’t really make me feel like i should be careful about my actions. next thing you know my ipod tells me i have no music. However, i’m looking at the disk space and it is still being used up. now im looking to recover that disk space fortunately i had everything else backed up but i have to figure out how i am going to get that gigs back that my ipod touch says is all used up by “other” types of media other than Music. im sooooooo pissssed right now.
Can someone please tell me why I’ve updated my iTunes to version 7.7 and now my iPod has zero music or videos??!! I’m still using the same amount of GB but I have nothing to show for it! Can someone help at all??
i can’t belive it! I’ve been using iTunes for about 5 months now and it had to be today that this happened. All i did was plug in my ipod to download a movie. Suddenly without no warning my whole date was erased from my ipod. All the photos, songs. i was left with ZILCH. Why did this happen. I only downloaded a movie from limewire….Yet it works for others :S am annoyed!
Same thing happened to me. I dragged a new song onto my iPod and when I unplugged it, everything was gone. None of the files were backed up. It still says the amount of GB used up, but there are no songs anywhere. I hope I can get my music back.
I’ve had the same problem as most of the people here, only now the ipod is in permanent need of “restoration”. This is my SECOND 40gb ipod that has become a paper weight. My next mp3 player will not be an ipod. Give me a simple MP3 player that I can drag and drop to.
Omg, I’ve had the exact same thing happen to me using Itunes 7.7. I plug my ipod in to upload a few things on to it, and all of the sudden everything is gone. I’m so mad.
hi,
im new to this blog but am in kind of a pickle and was hoping maybe could help me out. when i installed itunes 7.7 something realy strange happened. i have a macbook and when i triet to sync my 80 gb ipod video ( latest series) ti it, my itunes just froze up. and i cant do anything with it. which sucks, like u can imagine. anyone else have this kind of problem?
kind regards
I have an issue with my ipod. I had about 800 songs on my itunes library and it was all going good from there, but a couple of days ago, my computer got restarted. I then tried connecting my ipod to add new songs, but a message popped up saying “Ipod is synced with one library and cannot be synced to 2 libraries at once. Erase and sync?” Now, I want thos new songs on the ipod, but I do not want to delete the old ones. Is there anything I can do to avoid erasing everything? I’d appreciate the help.
It’s gone. All gone, all of my f-ing songs and videos, GONE!
Videos I can replace abit easily, but the songs I had deleted off my computer because I was running out of space.
I hate you Apple :'(
1,000 songs gone.
Equals, 1,000 songs to download.
Equals very pissed guy.
Dear user,
We understand, as in we the people, that you are upset for losing your tunes.
Also note that many of you state you erased the original files because you were running out of space (so you move it elsewhere.. but where did the backup go?) — also you state you did get a warning, you all got the warning, and I do not want to say it is a Windows attitude to just do risky things and not asessing the damage if a loss were to occur. and when it does ocurr no one had a backup! —
Just back it up, stop whining.
Backup refers to making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. These additional copies are typically called “backups.” Backups are useful primarily for two purposes. The first is to restore a state following a disaster (called disaster recovery). The second is to restore small numbers of files after they have been accidentally deleted or corrupted.
Crashed my 200g computer awhile ago. Had to get back up software. Reload programs, internet etc. Reloaded Itunes from 6.0 disc and had to update for a week to 7.0+ get it to recognize my 30G Ipod. Wouldn’t burn a cd to the Ipod. Just says “track 01etc..”Found out Gracenote was sold to Sony. Doesn’t run automaticaly on Itunes like it used to? Oopsy! Hit the “SYNC” button! They don’t call it Sync (SINK) for nothing. ‘WIPED” the Ipod. 2700 plus songs from C.D.s I purchased or exchanged with friends. Never paid $.99 in my life. Now have half of my c.d collection and can’t replace it. Friends stole the rest of them. What’s a poor boy to do? Can’t even get a c.d. to load without hand typing everything back in it. Thanks Apple! Thanks Gracenote!
That will teach you to have a backup.
Here’s a good article from Wired:
5 Reasons Why I’m no Longer Updating iTunes
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/09/why-im-no-longe.html
It really has become bloatware. And starting with 7.0, it will sometimes erase all your songs with no warning or reason. Even if you have them backed up (which of course you should!), you’ll need to rebuild your playlists, etc.
Oh, and thanks to Thomas for starting this page where the frustrated can go and vent.
MINE DID THE SAME THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM SOOOOOOOO MAD ALL MY MUSIC GONE!!!!!!!!!!!! ;(
Same thing
I have an 8 gb iPod touch.
Went to add ONE song to the iPod.
Checked statsm went back to my library(on the iPod)
And just that one song i had just added was there.
I lost 700+ songs.
This NEEDS to be fixed.
Me too! I just plugged in my friend’s ipod to upload a few albums and now I have to give it back to him completely empty… wtf? How does Apple let this happen?
I have no idea.
But really…I’m thinking of contacting Apple personally and giving them quite a lecture.
One reason why I use Songbird to load songs onto my iPod. It has its quirks (crashes sometimes) but I love how I can discover new music, browse music blogs using Songbird itself without a diff browser. It scrobbles songs too via lastfm.
Updated to iTunes 7 recently, but it won’t recognize my iPod…says it’s corrupted, yada yada. Tried to update my iPod. Lost my entire library. Yes, I do have back-ups of my songs but it’s a bitch to load everything onto your iPod again and rebuild your favorite playlists from scratch
@GenaDaviss
It’s a bit hard to back up 1,000 songs when you don’t have anywhere to back them up… At the time that I deleted the songs, buying 1-2 gigabyte memory sticks still cost quite abit in my city, so I wasn’t prepared to do that.
Also as for a warning, I got no warning, I just deleted or added a song and then everything got deleted.
I can’t add music to my ipod right now. I don’t know what itunes problem is. I think I already updated it. I don’t want to manually manage music and videos.
I downloaded itunes 7 and it erased my ipod completely and there is no way of getting it back. After talking to customer service I have to actually go into the store and see if they can fix it…sucks…don’t do it!
OMG Could you all whine an complain a little more, Take responsibility for your own stupidity. If you hate Apple so much stop using there products. I hear the Zune sucks just as bad.
At least the Zune’s manager doesn’t completely wipe the Zune when plugged in for a charge.
k guys, i havent had as much trouble as you…i only lost 3 episodes of lost..but still…i have sent an email to apple about everything…here is the link if you want to complain to iTunes too:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/browser/
Just want to add my voice to this uproar. I have recently started using an iPod and iTunes and I am shocked at how horrible iTunes 7 is.
Thomas, I’ve been reading almost the whole thread and I can’t believe what you’re saying here. I am not a fan of MS, but, as many others have said before, this is not a MS/Mac issue, this is an Apple issue entirely.
You write:
“One issue Farge and you’re ready to throw in the towel? You better avoid Microsoft for sure then.”
WHAT?!? That ‘one issue’ is the unauthorized erasing of private property. And it’s not only the loss of information, but also the time wasted by meticulously filling those darned pods. I can’t believe people actually put up with this. Just reading this thread made me so angry that I will never ever buy anything from Apple. Nothing, ever.
I am not a fan of MS, but too much a noob to use Linux. So I put up with Windows.
No Windows has ever erased anything without asking me first. It tries to do stupid stuff, but I have always been able to stop it doing that.
By using mostly freeware and open source programs I now have a nicely running machine, which does what I want, and does nothing I don’t want.
Until I got this friggin iPod shuffle (1GB) as a freebie, and thus (I thought) had to download iTunes to use it.
You see, I have my very own peculiar way to sort my files and use my Comp. I don’t want any “My Music” folders, I am not interested in buying online, I don’t need album art, I sure don’t need any pre-made playlists, and Winamps playlists are intelligent enough for me.
Many people love what iTunes offers, and that’s cool. It’s uncool though that iTunes doesn’t let me have things the way I want them.
It’s also incredibly slow, and to get stuff on the pod in the first place is quite cumbersome.
After iTunes erased the music that took me ages to upload via iTunes, coz I thought it would be nice to add some more tracks to the pod(which also meant I had to import my music folder yet again, and where tf do all those duplicates come from?!?), I had enough. And that took only 3 days. I thought about smashing the pod – I wouldn’t give it away or sell it, coz I really don’t want to spread the disease any further.
Instead I deleted all Apple software from my Comp and got the Winamp plug-in. Works great. A sleek, fast and polite program.
I will never ever buy anything from Apple. I don’t care how great their other stuff is. Even MS isn’t that arrogant, insolent and greedy. I am disgusted.
I made a search on google on “Itunes erased all my songs” and i found this site… Well, just recently, all my songs got deleted too, without even clicking a button, my computer auto shuts when It’s not being used, maybe it’s that that cause the problem… Happened once before aswell and i don’t now what the fucking problem is, I’m really pissed off right now… anyways, i never synchronize, i handle the songs manually. Could that be the problem? I don’t like having all the songs on my computer so i get them to USB drives or cd*s which i always seem to lose.. So now I’m sitting here, trying to dig up as many songs as possible that got deleted.. THIS SUCKS…
Hello. Today I tried to connect my Ipod to my PC, the Itunes turned on and said that Itunes is unable to connect to my Ipod. And then erased EVERYTHING. 8000 songs (full discographies of Zeppelin, Sabbath, Ministry, NIN etc) , 20 movies that I have wasted my time converting to right format – ALL GONE! Screew that, I am so pissed at the moment. And this btw happened for the 3rd time during last year
I just purchased a classic, my first iPod. The music on the iPod been wiped 3 effing times in one week. I’m about ready to take the damn thing back. I’d really like to know what it is that causes the thing to be wiped clean.
I’d suggest calling Apple or stopping by an official Apple store and ask them.
Hmmm something like this happened to me… I managed to recover all my 1000 songs but for some reason they will not add to library after i repeatedly tried to drag the songs one by one to the box, added folder to library, and i even tried to totally wipe Itunes and all its apps from my computer. But the result is the same, the songs won’t go on my Itunes library… And right after this happened, my Ipod was connected and it automatically synced, erasing every single song in it. This really ticked me off and there is no way to put these songs in that i know of… anyone know a solution?
Thomas, you are being retarded, along with all others trying to suggest that we should be forced to back up our music. I spent hundreds on an ITouch and music; that’s enough as it is. I don’t need to spend more to buy an external hard drive to ‘back up the songs’ as well. Don’t try to turn this on the user; it’s all on Apple. Because I didn’t buy something to backup my music onto(as I don’t have enough space on my computer) within the first two days I bought my Ipod, it all gets deleted? Bullcrap. Sure, I didn’t back it up, BUT that is no Freaking excuse for Apple and lovely Itunes deleting my(or any others’) files like that. An 80$ Sansa doesn’t cause this much shit.
Just to be clear here, I’ve NEVER had the iPod erase itself on me. I got a warning message before hand. Other than that, I’ve never had an issue with 4 iPods and I’ve had them since they came out. If there are issues, contact Apple for support. Complaining to me won’t bring your music back. Backing up is a good idea for any digital medium. That’s just my two cents.
Just had the same thing happen to me yesterday. I’m out of town and forgot my charger and my IPOD had one mini red bar. I went out and bought a new one and plugged in my ipod to my laptop. When I plugged it in, I installed the IPOD update. It asked if I wanted to sync up my recent purchases and I think I said yes (I thought the new files would be ADDED to my ipod). Anyway, a second later I noticed itunes said I had over 120GB of free space! I got a cold chill. I have a 160GB ipod with about 100 gigs of music and some podcasts and all that is gone.
Luckily, I have all my music backed up to an external hard drive at home but I won’t be home for a few days. So I spent last night trying to download something just to get by on. I know I still have my music saved, so I’m not too worried but it sucks to lose my playlists.
I’ll have to look for another alternative to iTunes – this is not the first time this has happened and it seems to happen all too frequently for IPOD users.
We’ve got two types of problems here:
A – People did one honest mistake (such as Thomas not noticing the brief warning, or choices made around manually managing music) but they are pissed that it was so easy to do. That’s a design flaw.
B – Very tech-saavy people who experience a complete failure on itunes part and it erased all music with no warning (this is what happened to me.) We are even more upset because we did everything right. That’s a flat-out fuck-up on Apple’s part.
Both problems are annoying; we are angry all our playlists are gone, and we have every right to feel that way. People in the “B” camp are understandably more upset.
But if you’ve permanently lost all your music due to either of these occurrences – that’s not iTune’s fault. You should be backing it up.
BTW…………………………..
Folks with the “iTunes erased my iPod” problem – this is a great forum to vent and know that you are not alone. I think we are so shocked at this issue b/c Apple portrays themselves as so stable. And this is clearly a major design flaw in iTunes. But there isn’t really a solution to it, unless you use a different song management system.
And stop attacking Thomas! – he isn’t the cause of your problem. Neither is he the solution. Yes, he does seem to be defending Apple to an unreasonable degree. But who cares? He created a forum where we get to vent.
Thomas – Thanks for creating this forum. I think some of the hating might be because so many of your posts defend Apple to a rather strong degree, and the level of your pro-Apple posts has increased over time. Also, you don’t really seem to ever agree (at least in the last couple years) that this is a significant design flaw on Apple’s part. I guess it makes you seem quite biased. But hey – I’m just trying to shed light on the silly “Thomas-bashing” posts. You have every right to be biased – that’s human nature.
OMJ same problem wid me… everytym i connect my ipod 2 d system, all d songs get erased…. without any warning… i hv got a brand new ipod..n i hv 2 spend atleast 2-3 hrs everytime i want 2 sync even 1 new song…
dis is sooo crap… i hate itunes….
Hope U Get All Your Songs Backk…
Same Happened To My Brother Kobi…
But He Had Them Backed Up.
i decided to check my itunes and when i opened it up All of the music was deleted, gone. So i tried pulling music from my files onto itunes and all of that was gone too!! im sooo mad! So what do i do now? Help someone? is it possible to plug in my ipod and just take my ipod music and put it on my itunes? will my songs delete? itunes sucks!
The exact!!! same thing happened to me this morning. i don’t know what box i checked “yes” to but i connected my ipod to my laptop and the next minute everything was gone. I think I’m sad, but it was full anyways…*sigh* it’s just an old nano though
I have many years’ experience in developing software and writing requirements for user-interfaces — It is considered a basic software-design principle to provide user-warnings and get at least one, even a second-level of confirmation from users before performing en masse, erase-operations such as what we are discussing here. I had the same thing happen to me today, with ZERO warnings. When you do a fresh-install of iTunes the default setting should be set to manual-sync, not automatic as is currently the case. The software should ask you if you want to turn on automatic sync.
A software application without the necessary checks and balances is considered to be poor-quality software. While having such checks may make it a bit less efficient for the expert user, it would’ve saved the day for the average user.
Given this thread has been running for nearly 3 years, I am assuming that Apple may simply not be interested in fixing the issues. This is even worse and quite shocking.
Today iTunes deleted all my music and videos from a 160 Gb iPod full with content bought over 3-4 years.
Apple reached a similar Y2K issue and kill it’s business and our money invested in content
That’s becouse the famous 5 devices for content counts also the computers and during the years we throw away computers and keep only the ipod’s (I have only 4 ipods and changed a lot of computers)
I did not know that when you change job or computer or before you throw coffee on your computer you have to deauthorize it. I will ask the HR Managers of all the companies in the world to put this in the termination procedure. And at HD repairing shops a similar procedure – get my dat in order to declare it unauthorized
From now on I will keep my money at home and try some torents and crack programs that should do the file transfers
Until the Apple guys wake up – My first invoice with music was a lot of years ago – 5 is not enough
They want to protect from people who steel music on 200 computers but they kill our content and our money
I bought content and ipod’s – I don’t care about computers and it is not my problem if they authorize computers. If it was for computers I did not buy ipods. It a nonsense here
Apple will die soon – it is a Y2K issue in this 5
Dorin
I found the formula
Licences should have (0,1) values going lower with age.
For example: now=1, 1 year ago=0.75, 2y ago = 0.5, 3y = 0.4 ………
This will permit Apple to cannibalize itself with new versions of iPods and other strange inventions
So if I will have in the end 10 or 20 iPod, iPhones, Mac, PC, book-readers with audio ….. I will be able to use my content even if older equipment is dead in some garage, filled with coffee, dust and cola and unable to deregister
This will also stop the content thiefs who need fast money from tones of content, NOW not in 3 years as Apple is killing our content now
Maybe Microsoft will implement that 🙂
Dorin
The same thing happened to me last night. I plugged my ipod in – I deliberately clicked on ‘DONT SINC’ option, as I knew this stuff happened – and what happened next? 3 years worth of music gets deleted without warning. Thats it, nothing, no music on there. I cried. Apple is shit – this happened through no fault of my own and I can’t believe they’ve gotten away with
The same happened to me after weeks of downloading cds and transferring my MP3 library. I’m looking into alternative programs to work with my ipod, such as copytrans, than itunes, especially after hearing all this. I also had problems reloading cd covers and heard that once itunes loads a cd once it won’t do it again! I can’t find any forum on that but haven’t had time yet to manually retry.
So I decided to import a CD, right? By accident instead of clicking Import I clicked Sync, it then told me that it was going to delete all songs – unless I allowed it to resync with my computer. Now that computer only has 100 of my songs on so I clicked out of it. There was no cancel option so that was what I had to do.
I had 2000 songs on my Ipod. Now I have around 700, and am trying to find all the CDS that I haven’t used in years, to get my music back.
:/
I just hooked up my shuffle gen 2 to iTunes, and it blew away all songs on it. Why? I believe I have it set up to operate manually. What do I check ?
I eventually bought an iPhone. And I would like to listen to music with it. But after transferring music to iTunes library, learning the hard ways what “Keep iTunes Media Files organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to library” means, then trying to drag and drop songs to the iPhone without succeeding, searching the web, looking in forums, changing the iPhone settings to manully handle songs and videos and then consequently deleting all the songs on it because they I had added them on another computer in another library, I think it’s time to give up.
I try once more, empty my library and import all music currently on my PC, some 50GB of 9 000 songs.
A quick look after the import to only notice that most of my neatly organized folders are each broken up into 3 or 4 different “albums” just because they don’t have the correct tag or haven’t been bought on crappy iTunes Store. Not much Genius here. Or user-friendlyness.
The fact that iTunes still, on Windows 7, uses way too much resources, that their Bonjour-Service-crap-exe-process-file prevents my computer to go to sleep or hibernate and that once I have iTunes opened before I connect my iPhone it says “USB Device Not Recognized”. Although it’s the exact same USB-connection that works perfectly fine if iPhone is connected before it automatically opens iTunes.
These are just a few more examples to why I realise that I begin to hate Apple. Not just because they’re Apple, but because the products are supposed to be so good, everyone supposedly loves them, Steve Jobs knows exactly what we want and need.
Someone else said it very well. Love the hardware, hate the software.
I NOW HATE APPLE. BOUGHT NEW PC, DOWNLOADED NEW ITUNES, CONNECTED IPOD, GOT POP UP THAT IT WOULD ERASE ALL MY MUSIC SO I CANCELLED. WENT BACK TO OLD PC TO ADD MUSIC THE WAY I ALWAYS HAD AND MY IPOD GOT COMPLETELY WIPED OUT WITHOUT ANY WARNING. 4690 SONGS GONE!!! TOOK OVER 4 YEARS TO COMPILE ALL THAT AND MOST OF THE ORIGINAL FILES ARE NOT ON MY COMPUTER ANYMORE. WHY DOES APPLE MAKE SHIT SO DIFFICULT. VERY SAD BUT AT SAME TIME KIND OF LIKE FRESH START…TIME TO REORGANIZE!!
omg i just did that to my daddys ipod now im in big trouble omg here he comes wish mii luck <3
so my cousin disabled my ipod that i got off a friend and i cant enable it again and my friend will not give me his itunes password and stuff so i cant enable it . what do i do?
Well f me.
120 gig ipod wiped clean in seconds….
with any warning…
apple…
I hate you
35 Thousand song gone from one wrong click. FML