Printable View
As some of you already know I am not the most technical savvy guy here ,,,
I am beginning to think buying the wife one of these is going to turn out with me putting it in the Clay Pigeon launcher and dusting it one morning with the 12 guage...
Does any one have some experience with these to tell me how to back up and protect the music and video library???
We seem to be having issues every time it downloads any of the updates from the ITunes store...
Thanks in advance
Are your files not stored in your itunes library?
Does it wipe the ipod everytime you update it?
Yes the files are stored but I am reading horror stories on the Itouch Fora that those can get wiped too... Maybe that is old info???
The Touch has lost the library twice now, once while downloading at a Hot spot from Itunes and once yesterday after a Sync that did an update with an automatic downloads from Itunes...
While I don't have any experience with the itouch I do have an iPhone and twice it got wiped and since it wasn't on the computer yet I lost everything. If you do loose anything just shoot apple an email and they'll give you a free copy of whatever you lost if they can find where you lost it. I lost about 50 songs and 10 apps the second time and I told tech support ad the next day they sent me an email to redownload them and I had vouchers for them all
I've got the 3rd gen but I'm horrible about remembering to update it. I almost never sync it with my PC, so maybe I won't be much help... however, I have been using itunes and an ipod since 2004ish. I just backup my stuff to an external drive once a quarter or so. Not feasible for some people but I only buy a few albums a year. I stream Pandora a bunch or I'd probably buy more... anyhoo, just get an external HDD and backup to it. You can usually get 250g for under $100. I've got just shy of 2tb worth of externals. My first 250g drive from 2003 still works fine but I like the new small drives that don't require an external power source.
I'm not sure if this is considered a kosher way to back up the music, however it will work -
When you connect your ipod/itouch, you can access your mp3's by changing the settings thru your computer by opening "my computer", right clicking on the drive and changing the settings to "view hidden folders." In the folder that pops up are all your mp3's in your ipod/itouch. You can drag all the files to your computer an presto - instant backup. The only caveat is that they are not named in the same convention, so you will see files like XnAScn3.mp3 and you have to listen to them and rename them (which I've done twice and then purchased a new ipod). Then if you have an issue with your iTunes you can drag them into iTunes the same way and it will reupdate your directory.
If that's confusing feel free to pm me and I can walk you thru it.
Glen, you obviously are missing the point. You need mac computer and time capsule (make it two just in case) and then you'll about halve your chances of losing the musak :)
How do you think Apple became No.35 in the Fortune 500 list?!? You better start supporting the american business :)
P.S. On OSX the itunes library lives by default under Music/iTunes/iTunes Media (and can be changed in the preferences) so backing up any of these folders is enough to restore things. I'm don't know where it's on Windows, but I suspect the directory structure is pretty similar. As long as your computer is good you can always restore it back on the ipod. The other way around is just slightly more complicated but it's not terribly hard either - the filenames on the ipod are hashed but usually most of the important info is stored in the id3 tags and itunes picks it up right back and restores the organization.
I want to own a business where I can
• make products that fail on a regular basis
• have customers that anticipate the need to fix the failed product on their own
• have people lining up to buy said product with expected failage
• become one of the most successful companies in the world
I guess I need to start a tech company... It's worked out for both Apple and Microsoft.
In settings for Itunes edit>preferences>advanced be sure keep itunes folder organized is checked and on that same page at top it will tell you where you music (itunes) library is, ideally you back your entire pc but if not be sure to back up that folder depending on size to some type of external drive. If Itunes is the only music player you use you may want to just copy your entire music folder to an external drive.
Then should your itunes get corrupted in future you can just copy the files from external drive back to default location, you may have to uninstall corrupted version then reinstall itunes and update to newest version before copying over your library.
Alternatively you can also turn off updates and or be sure to wear eye protection when shooting it from you clay pigeon launcher.
I got a couple Ipods and never had an issue with Itunes itself or any updates of it but I did have a hard drive on a laptop fail and was able to reinstall it and copy over from backup.
good luck
Thanks Jim, that sounds like a course of action...