Aqua-Soft Forums

Transferring from one iPod to Another

The title pretty much says it all. I'm pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. I have a 30 gig video Ipod, and I'm thinking of getting a classic because... well, I only have about a gig left. Didn't see that coming.

Now we know that the Ipod is real touchy, likes to cause problems at times, so I'm a little afraid to mess with it. I know all the songs I put on it are archived in hidden folders; perhaps some sort of cutting and pasting might work. Problem is, my computer's about six years old. It only has a 70 gig capacity and 1.0 USB ports. As you can imagine, about 95% of the music on my Ipod is no longer on my computer. In short, transferring 30 gigs of music onto my computer will not only take a depressingly long time, but I don't think my computer can even take 30 gigs of music.

And so, members of the AS forum, I come to you. Is there any tips you could give me? Perhaps there's a magical cord out there that can flush one Ipod into another. (BWAHAHAHA!!!) Or perhaps copying music directly off of the Ipod is not the brightest idea. Let me know, and thanks a lot!

#481951

ditch the new ipod and get a new computer!!!

I highly doubt theirs a wire and side app capiable of sending ipod to ipod, but

there are hundreds of third party software out their that can rip music off your ipod to your computer, and as always google will lead you to them. If your computers really slow, Id recomend transfering your music off your ipod in chunks aposed to all at once to prevent crashes and headaches,

i think that thats your best bet,

#481955

ask to do it on a friends computer.

Also, i have a question, sorry for hijacking the thread but if you play your music on your computer from your iPod, will it add the song to your iPod twice? Like for example, your song is located in "Matts iPod > iPod Control > Music > F0, F1, etc." and you only listen to your music when your iPod is connected to the computer.

Confusing? Indeed.

#481960

Your music (but named in an "F04.mp3" name kind) is in ipodLetter:iPod_ControlMusic

Be sure to enable disk use. But yeah it will take a while.

#481961

yep its a good idea to use a friends computer. Disk use, show hidden files and copy the entire ipod_control folder onto their computer.

Then use itunes (with another library - hold shift when starting it i think) and add all the files, then manually update the new ipod. Because the files are given 4 letter names, but the tags remain intact, it doesn't matter whether the files were ordered correctly or not. Just make sure itunes added ALL of them, it tends to skip re-adding files with corrupt tags.

Its either that or returning the files to your current computer and getting them to autosync. Winamp can copy all the files with the correct file names, but i haven't used it to sync my ipod since the days of ml_ipod.dll so i can't really help you there.

#481962

ask to do it on a friends computer.

Also, i have a question, sorry for hijacking the thread but if you play your music on your computer from your iPod, will it add the song to your iPod twice? Like for example, your song is located in "Matts iPod > iPod Control > Music > F0, F1, etc." and you only listen to your music when your iPod is connected to the computer.

Confusing? Indeed.

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking. If you're playing music from your Ipod on Itunes, then there's no music copying to speak of. I've had mine set to manually update music since day one, so there's no "updating" at all unless I'm click-and-dragging.

Not sure if that's what you're getting at, but I hope it helped.

Thanks a lot for the help guys. Someday, perhaps I will have this settled. :)

#481965

or u could jst hook up ur new ipod to the computer the old ipod used to sync... (and walla it syncs ur whole itunes library with ur new one)

geez... dnt u ppl ever think legally?

#482027

or u could jst hook up ur new ipod to the computer the old ipod used to sync... (and walla it syncs ur whole itunes library with ur new one)

geez... dnt u ppl ever think legally?

He said all the music on that iPod is not on the PC because the HD is too small. So all the songs are on the iPod and not the computer.

I say buy a Mac and iPod Classic. Perfect Apple harmony.

#482367

He said all the music on that iPod is not on the PC because the HD is too small. So all the songs are on the iPod and not the computer.

I say buy a Mac and iPod Classic. Perfect Apple harmony.

Indeed. But then I'd have a whole pile of trouble trying to play Oblivion. :D

My friend has a nice, brand new laptop I'll probably take advantage of. Beats the stuffing out of this junk. Thanks for the help guys. ;)

{{UPDATE}}

I got the new classic, and it sure is purty. But I'm ready to throw my dang computer out the window nevertheless. Here's the rundown:

I already transferred a good 30 out of 50 F** folders from my 30g to the computer. I hook up the new 160g classic. First thing I notice is the excruciatingly long time it takes to pop up. But I hear that's normal. So, I get everything nice and set up, get it to start downloading the music. (about 3,000 songs.)

After a good period of time, it just kinda stops. Gets anywhere from 800MB-3GB before it simply reads at the top of Itunes "Syncing Ipod." The pod's screen reads "Connected-Eject before Disconnecting." I'm pretty sure it should still say it's syncing.

Anyways, at that point the memory meter at the bottom shows the amount of music that's on it, although it can't be found in any of the playlists. Upon removing it, it reads as empty, and reconnecting it causes all the aforementioned used memory to become miscellaneous memory, and eventually gives me the dreaded "corrupt databank" kind of prompt.

I returned it for a new one, but this one's doing the same thing. I'm pretty sure it's a mixture of Itune's fault and perhaps my slow computer.

Does this happen to anyone else? Has it been diagnosed? If so, what should I do? Help guys, I have a big giant sexy pod collecting dust right now; it's brutal!

{{EDIT}}

Ah, the glory of a double-post!

Just got back from work, where I spent some time contemplating my dilemma. There's a little story that goes with it.

The new pod was purchased at Best Buy, and as such, the return was there. I didn't know it, but it seems the Geek Squad handle returns. Whatever.

Anyways, it wasn't a simple cut-and-dry scenario. They actually took it into the back and did testing on it. Poor, poor Ipod. It took a while, and the guy came back, talking to his geek squadian peer, saying something along the lines of "the Ipod's not crashing, Itunes is."

Either way, they gave me a new one and sent me on my way. The way I see it, they knew about my problem, but as is the code of the Geek Squad, one cannot help another in need unless they're paying them for it. So instead of helping me fix the problem, they took the perfectly good pod, gave me a new perfectly good pod and sent me on my way.

The End

So that got me thinking, what if Itunes were to freeze up for a minute or so while the Ipod was updating? What if that in turn screwed up the transfer process?

If that's the case, then I need to find out what could be causing this. Hmmm...

Time to browse the Aqua-Soft Forums!

#484813

find out for me as well please. iTunes regularly freezes for long periods of times and freezes the ipods 'do not disconnect' screen. After about 15 seconds it unfreezes and then causes the ipod to jump from the 'ok to disconnect/charging' screen back into 'do not disconnect', even though at this point itunes has finished and says 'iPod sync is complete'

#484874

Woo! I did it! I got the first 30 folders onto the new pod without any freezing. I'm not 100% sure if that's because of luck or because I actually fixed something, but here's what I did.

First off, I shut down absolutely everything that wasn't necessary. That doesn't fix the problem of course, but I'm sure it helps, even a little bit.

I actually got this certain idea not from the forums, but-believe it or not, Itune's troubleshooting page. It stated that Itunes has a tendency to occasionally freeze up if the library has some corrupt files to them, and the best way to flush them out is by recreating you Itunes library.

Which is quite easy to do.

0. Make sure Itunes isn't running.

1. Head to the Itunes folder.

2. Cut the Itunes Music Library.xml document and stick it to your desktop.

3. Delete the Itunes Music Database file. (Called simply Itunes Library.)

4. Boot up Itunes. It will look very empty.

5. Go to File>Import and select the .xml document you pasted to your desktop.

From there Itunes will recreate your playlist, rechecking the gapless playback information and whatnot. Any songs you may have deleted or moved in the past will be cleaned out. One minor problem I've found is that your podcast subscriptions doesn't renew like the rest of the playlist, but the episodes themselves will, so it's not a big deal to just press the "subscribe" button again.

After doing that, I managed to put a good 16 gigs onto my classic without error. It took about 6 hours, seeing on how I only have 1.0 USB ports, but it worked nevertheless. If it doesn't for you, you might want to try reinstalling ITunes and Quicktime. Best of luck to you, Mr. Slewed. Let me know if it helped.

#484880

Just for a laugh earlier in the week, connected to an older laptop with USB 1.0 ports, 15MB's took almost 5 minutes...We tend to forget how spoiled we've become with USB2 and Firewire...

Glad you've got everying up and running.

#484919

Forget everything I said. I'm about ready to throw this thing out the window. It froze again with only a couple gigs left to download. It takes me around five or six hours just to get all my music from the 30 gig to my computer, and even longer to download it onto the new one.

I don't know what the hell to do from here, so I'm just going to put the thing back in the box until I'm sure this won't happen again. There's not point in trying to use an Ipod that could become corrupt any time it's hooked up to the computer.

Please guys, if there's anything that could help this situation, please let me know.

For now, it looks like I'm stuck with the 30G.

#485050

Like someone else has said. I think its about time you spent a lil bit of cash on a new computer. Even my old laptop aint that bad!

#485054

Heh. Indeed, that is perhaps one of the best pieces of advice ever bestowed upon me. However, I can't really drop a whole bunch of money on a new computer, unless I can find a real cheap used Mac somewhere or something. Y'know, just to really make sure Itunes works properly.

{{UPDATE}}

All riiight, in my search for figuring out why my Itunes and my Ipod don't get along, I have... mixed results at best.

I did finally successfully get all 100% of the music onto it. I haven't solved any problems per-se; I was just lucky enough for it to work. Strangely enough though, I got an error prompt in the last 3 megs of it... something along the lines of album art and Windows not liking it. So... I got all the music onto it, but all the album art is gone. That's a LOT of album art. Not that I'm going to cry about it, at least I got the music on.

Of course, I'm aware that if I ever did put artwork back onto it, I'd be risking Itunes freezing up again, and in turn losing all that data.

Anyway, getting back to successfully putting all the data onto the pod, I used several tactics in an attempt to maximize my chance of success.

First off, I opened up the good 'ole Microsoft Configuration Utility and shut down as many processes as possible. I disconnected my ethernet cable (since I was shutting down my antivirus software.) Seeing on how much virtual memory it takes to keep Itunes running, I figured it couldn't hurt to give it some extra room to stretch.

Now, I'm no computer expert, but this sounded strange to me. Slewed, I'm wondering if you have the same thing as me going on here, so check out your startup items in your Configuration Utility menu. (Run>msconfig)

I had two-count 'em, two "ITunes Helpers" running at the same time. To be honest, I don't know what the heck all of these are for. Ipod Helper, Itunes Helper, Apple Mobile Device Service, QTTask... all seems like a waste of memory to me.

But I suppose there's not supposed to be multiple Itunes Helpers running, right? Slewed, if you have this issue as well, then perhaps that's the problem.

Either way, I'm still very uncomfortable every time I connect the Classic. I'll stay updated on the situation.

#485424