Soooo…the other day I was transferring some songs (some Simply Red albums) to my iPod when it stopped transferring.
Cold.
Frigid Cold.
Ex-wife in January in an igloo in Sibera cold.
Kinda like a brick wall suddenly appearing in the middle of the expressway during rush-hour traffic.
“Hmm” I thought to myself, “I’ve never had a problem with this thing before”, so I pondered what to do.
I mean STOPPED. The little circle on the top of iTunes that indicates that you’re transferring a song stopped circling.
The status on the iPod itself was “Synchronizing”.
Yet both had locked up tighter than a clam with lockjaw.
The computer still functioned completely normally, with the exception (of course) of iTunes.
The handy CTRL+ALT+DEL brought up Task Manager, but try as I might I couldn’t force close the iTunes application.
I went into Explorer to try to eject the iPod. – Nothing.
I had a couple of options at this time:
1) Wait to see if it recovers on its own
2) Keep trying to force close iTunes or to eject the iPod
3) Disconnect the iPod
4) Power down the PC
I tried Option 1 and waited about an hour, but nothing changed. So much for Option 1.
After waiting I moved on to Option 2. No amount of Task Managering iTunes to close would touch it. Similarly, I think I actually heard my PC laugh at me after my 8th or 9th attempt to eject the iPod in Explorer. So much for Option 2.
That left me with Options 3 and 4.
Either option more-or-less guarantees that I’m going to be fucked, since Option 4 is accomplishing (where the iPod is concerned) the exact same thing as Option 3. Do I just disconnect the iPod, hoping that once iTunes recognizes that it’s gone and starts working again? Or do I power down the PC, hoping that iTunes wouldn’t have had any crucial files, database, or indexing routine going on, or at least keep a most recent copy in some pattern buffer somewhere?
If you own an iPod (or virtually any USB storage device) you know that you should correctly eject the device (preferably using its own application software) before disconnecting it, since there are files being used that need to be closed gracefully. In the case of an iPod there could be open music files (if you’re listening to music), iTunes could be updating the music database, or any other number of things. All of these toys need to be put back in the toy box nicely so that they can easily be found when your ear is in need of some melodic accompaniment. As a result, it is imperative that you eject the iPod before disconnecting it.
The thing is, disconnecting before ejecting isn’t always going to hose you. I probably run about a 50% Eject Before Disconnect success rate and, in the 6 years I’ve had this iPod, never had a problem. I always intend to eject first, but sometimes there may not be enough time, I may forget, or I power down my PC without thinking about it. My point is this: It’s not a crime to not eject your iPod, nor is it guaranteed to make a paperweight out of your expensive little electronic device…
…but it could…
…
Which brings me back to my story.
Since both iTunes and the iPod were, at this point, useless, I decided to simply unplug the iPod in the hopes that iTunes would come to my rescue. After some consideration I thought this to be the better solution, as powering down the PC could have caused additional, unforeseeable problems.
Taking a deep breath, I grasped the cable and removed it from the iPod…and waited.
The “OK to disconnect” screen appeared for about 30 seconds.
(tic…toc…tic…toc)
The Apple logo appears on the screen.
(tic…toc…tic…toc)
The iPod comes alive!
(tic…toc…tic…toc)
Yes, it IS alive…but, much to my dismay/disappointment/extreme pissed-offedness, it also gave me a not so pleasant little gift. The two words you don’t want to see displayed on a device that previously had almost 9,000 songs on it.
Displayed on the iPod window was simply this: NO MUSIC.
AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!!
That primal scream resonated across the valley and echoed off the mountain tops as I mourned the loss of so much great music.
(ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, as the town I live in is flat and the highest hill is a buckle in a sidewalk caused by a tree root.)
Not to mention the loss of 2 seasons of “Family Guy” episodes and 8 full-length movies.
I thought to myself “They can’t possibly be gone! I didn’t actually remove anything from the damned thing!”
My first logical, frantic step was to scroll through all the screens and settings on the device. Maybe there was one setting that needed to be reset in order for the music to appear. Maybe it just needed a few seconds to catch its breath after being man-handled. Maybe, just maybe, a re-boot would restore the musicalness to this device that has served me faithfully for 6 years.
Standard reset: NO MUSIC
Hard reset: NO MUSIC
Realization: I’m Fucked.
These files HAVE to be there, because it wouldn’t surreptitiously remove files unless it was instructed to.
To prove my point, I went into the iPod through my computer and saw that the files were, indeed, still there. All 47Gig worth, still right there, just not indexed. I would drill down into the sub-directories and double-click on a file and it would play (launching my default media client (VLC), of course) and the ID3 tags were correct. The device wasn’t able to see them, however, because the database was corrupted.
Not one to be easily beaten, I immediately head to Google (a.k.a. the repository of all that is knowable) to see if I could resuscitate the database and save my precious musics. At first I ran across a few suggestions that said you should Restore it and then copy them back to the device, but Jim wasn’t going to be taken down so easily. I am, after all, a highly-proficient person when it comes to technology and PCs. I can fix this without resorting to a Restore. Besides, that would take years and cost many lives.
At this point I need to interject that, while most of my files were imported into iTunes and then transferred to the iPod, not all of my files where handled in this way. Out of the nearly 9,000 songs I’m willing to bet that you’d only find about 8,000 in iTunes. When I’m pressed for time I tend to import directly to the iPod and pass the step where you import the songs to iTunes and then to the iPod. I do this mostly when I’m installing large number of multi-volume collections. It is only because of this incident that I realized what an incredibly stupid practice this is.
Jim is not ready to do a Restore…not yet. Instead, I kept searching for an alternate way to repair my device of music.
I saw many recommendations that said running CHKDSK/F should repair the database and make the device work again. I’ve always been leery of running CHKDSK and letting it blindly repair what it perceives to be wrong. CHKDSK is a DOS function, and it can truncate filenames that are too long. In the case of longer filenames, this truncation renders the file useless, not to mention the inherent danger (“danger”? Ok, “negative ramifications”)…not to mention the negative ramifications of letting a DOS function fix something that’s designed to work at a much higher level. NOPE…I’m not gonna let CHKDSK “fix” this thing…I just don’t trust it.
There were a couple of applications I ran across that said they could repair the database. All I need to do is install the program and attach the iPod while the application is running. Not being one to give up so easily, I tried both of them. End result: Just like iTunes, it showed the file space taken up on the device, but just as an aggregate use of space, not individual files. It still showed 47Gig as allocated to media, but still no musics.
At this point I must concede that the only way to fix this is going to be to Restore the damned device. One can only spend so much time trying to resuscitate a corpse before one has to realize that it is a fruitless endeavor. Beside, anything that isn’t in iTunes is on the hard drive already; I’ll just have to send it to the device (without bypassing the Import into iTunes step this time).
“I’m ready for this”, I told myself “It won’t be fast, but I can bring this thing back to life.”
Reluctantly, I bid the 47Gig of data goodbye as I tearfully (not really, I’m just elaborating in an attempt to get the sympathy vote) click “RESTORE” and watch as it wipes the device clean.
As I started to rebuild this little electronic wonder I would freak out at times because I could hear the hard drive in the iPod “ker-chunking” and the transfer stop. I’m not completely convinced that there’s not a problem with the device (an iPod shouldn’t “ker-chunk”), but I’ll continue to build it and deal with that problem when I get to it.
After ruminating about what I just did for a while, I convinced myself that it’s actually a good thing that I Restored the device. When you install media over a long period of time things can get unruly. I’m sure I had 6 or 17 copies of some songs, different tracks were mastered at different bit rates (depending on where I got them or if I ripped them myself), and with various codecs. In short, I can now re-build the iPod with better, more consistent files, maintain better control of duplicates, and pay attention to smaller details, like making sure I have the correct album artwork, etc. (Of course, none of that applies to the 300+ songs that were purchased at the iTunes store.) So it wasn’t an entirely bad thing that the iPod got fuckered up, because it forced me to stand back and take another look at it.
I have since begun re-ripping CDs, converting files on my hard drive to one bit rate, and organizing and uploading again. It’s also a chance to weed out some of the crap that I didn’t really need or listen to.
So, what did Jim learn through this process?
1) Make sure that you import your music into iTunes before putting it on the iPod.
2) Eject your iPod before disconnecting when possible.
3) Eat more fiber
