Argh I lost all my sons music on his ipod touch

[Pinklepurr]

I'm not sure if anyone can help but if anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it.

Today we updated my son's ipod touch 4 to ios5. We followed all the instructions, backed up and sync'd to our computer as per instructions, before doing it etc etc but after the restart all his music (all 2000odd songs) are missing and so are his photos, only the apps seemed to have worked.

Not all his songs are from itunes of course, in fact some are from cds, friends etc etc and now they are all gone. Tried restore from backup and nothing.

He is devastated as you would expect. Anyone else have this problem? Anyone know how to help (apart from giving him a shoulder to cry on)?

[baloo]

Sorry PP, I'd love to help but I'm clueless when it comes to iThings.

Is there a way to select an old backup, like not the one before the restore but a couple back ?

I know I have our stuff set to backup whenever we dock and I think it keeps a couple of copies. Dunno sorry.

[Tas]

No help, but lots of sympathy to poor guilty mum (and why I don't touch anything and just stay behind)

[Pinklepurr]

I won't even start to say how I feel about stupid ipods and the like. Supposedly it did sync everything but they are not there, not on the computer and not on the ipod so I am presuming gone and lost forever, except the ones that are on itunes as purchases...and believe me that isn't many. Mum is feeling guilty, but in all honesty, more agro at what a stupid set up it is that you have to delete everything on your device to install a new os on it. I wish I never done it, but we were told it was the best thing to do, and stupid itunes reminds you incessantly that your ipod is not up to date if you don't, no matter how many times you tell it no.

As for the backup, as far as I can see the backup you do only backs up the data in calendars etc, not your music, videos, photos etc. Strange how all the apps were there following the sync but nothing else.

[daffodil]

Is there an Apple store in Melbourne? Maybe they can help?

Good luck PP!

[Fat Bob]

A very silly question, but are any of the files in the recycle bin/waste basket?

[Pinklepurr]

No such luck FB..I wish. I think he has learned a very hard lesson.

[sluggo]

I would get in touch with Apple before giving up. Either online, on the phone or better yet go to an Apple store if you have one. Hopefully the files are stored somewhere on your computer. It should not have worked that way. How frustrating, Good luck.

[BoD]

I'm not sure if anyone can help but if anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it.

Today we updated my son's ipod touch 4 to ios5. We followed all the instructions, backed up and sync'd to our computer as per instructions, before doing it etc etc but after the restart all his music (all 2000odd songs) are missing and so are his photos, only the apps seemed to have worked.

Not all his songs are from itunes of course, in fact some are from cds, friends etc etc and now they are all gone. Tried restore from backup and nothing.

He is devastated as you would expect. Anyone else have this problem? Anyone know how to help (apart from giving him a shoulder to cry on)?

But where were all the songs before they were originally uploaded to the iPod? At some point they would have to have been in iTunes. Did they get deleted from there too?

[avatarless]

I'm afraid chocolating isn't very encouraging. sorry.

[Lili Von Shtupp]

At the very least I'd contact Apple to make a VERY LOUD COMPLAINT! Music can be replaced but photos and videos can not!

[Fat Bob]

You won't be the first one to complain. Most likely, Apple won't listen.

Big question is "what is a back up?" and I think this will now place a distrust in "backing up to iTunes" as the sole backup. Replicate the backup in iTunes on a portable hard drive or in the cloud and this will fix the problem.

Having self-taken photos and movies not backed up beyond the iTunes folders is a bit naive indeed.

[T2K]

There are thousands of complaints like this all over the net. I only have an iPhone and admittedly am not so hot with how it works. I had iTunes on my laptop and somehow in trying to sync it, all my contacts were deleted. I googled - there were so many people in the same boat.

Just two days ago I downloaded some photos from the iTune into an album. Then I went to download a video that I hadn't downloaded before. Somehow, the entire original album got deleted (but originals were still on the phone).

Bottom line - iThings WILL DELETE YOUR STUFF if certain conditions happen. And most people don't know what those conditions are.

I no longer have iTunes, obviously.

[Morrolan]

not that it wil help now, but apparently when changing the Os from 4 to 5 the option to select was that it was a new set up, not an existing one. i buggered it up on one of our phones, but got everything back from iTunes.

i don't understand why all the music should be gone from iTunes. this sounds wrong. have you checked in the folders?

[Pinklepurr]

Yeah, I checked everywhere, and Apple not a great deal of help. They just say it isn't their problem basically and that all the stuff purchased from itunes should be there, and it is, both music and apps (the apps managed to make transfer OK for some reason). Fortunately I had backed up quite a lot of his photos and music on our old backup, and I have found this today so he is only missing stuff that was on the new computer from earlier this year. We can replace new stuff easily, it was the old stuff that was important. He doesn't hate me now. Whew...still I won't ever trust iTunes again...I know better now.

M, everything I read about it told us not to do it as a new set up. Confused now.

[expat yorkshire]

My understanding of the sync is that you have music files on your computer hard drive. You tell Itunes , these are my files. It then copies the files from your hard drive to the ipod. Then each sync it will add the new files to the ipod.

The original source files must be on your computer somewhere ?

[slinky]

But where were all the songs before they were originally uploaded to the iPod? At some point they would have to have been in iTunes. Did they get deleted from there too?

I'm wondering about this too. I'm not sure how else to get songs on an iPod touch in the first place if not directly downloading from iTunes or from iTunes on your computer. If all the songs were at one time in iTunes on the computer, then the files should still be somewhere even if for some reason iTunes deleted the songs from the music list. I have a folder called 'iTunes Music' where all the original files are stored on my laptop hard drive. Or was he hooking his iPod up to friends' computers and transferring songs to it somehow? (If so, then the only way to get that stuff back is to either buy the songs or go back to the friends I would guess)

No matter, it sounds frustrating. I'm guessing you are using a PC and not a Mac and there must be some chinks in the PC to Apple transfer. Ugh.

[Pinklepurr]

Well most of the ones he lost were ripped from friends CDs (they did swaps for what they wanted) and were ripped straight to iTunes, so they didn't come across. The rest were old ones and they were on the old computer, which died back in January. Fortunately we (I) had back up of that and I hadn't got rid of the stuff from back then so I searched today and found it all, well most of it, he still lost some of his photos, I don't know how, they were on the ipod the day before because I was looking at them, and they are definitely missing. At least he had backed up his photos at some stage. Thanks for the words, it helps to have some reference and not just think it is purely me!