Jim Holden Blog

iPod Woes

November 1st, 2005

Frustrating as it is, the Apple iPod is a nice device. I’ve actually chosen an iPod Shuffle as music is secondary to video for me and my main portable unit (which also supports music) is the Hauppauge Portable MVP (Note that this is a rebranded MobiNote).

Anyway, back to my point. My wife has got a mini and after the usual charge over night the device decided to become corrupted on the train and loose all of her music etc. Since I’m the geek and I tinker with the tech I immediatly got the blame - in fact it is fair to say she went mental. Arguing on a train is hugely difficult so I waited until I got to work and then I emailed a huge set of postings where this has happened many times before to other people. I had tried to explain on the train that this wasn’t my fault but she was having none of it.

Anyway - to cut a long story short she appologised for being an idiot and when we got home that night I promptly fixes the device, and here’s how:

Don’t ever install iTunes or any Apple iPod software - it sucks and prevents access to the device if you need to save it.

Anyway, whilst no music was recognised in WinAmp (with ml_pod) I looked in the actual drive and it was all there under the hidden directory iPod_Control. If you cant see it then open explorer and select tools -> folder options and check “Show Hidden Files and Folders”.

Now, find the root directory which contains all the ‘F01′, ‘F02′ etc. Copy these across to your normal hard disk. Next, get a copy of WinAmp and grab the lm_pod plugin at the same time. Bring up winamp (for those of you who use it you may want to setup a new library here) and import all the ‘FXX’ folders you just copied to your hard disk. Winamp will read in the MP3 files and get the ID3 tags about what the music is. Now, reformat your iPod (Winamp -> Preferences -> iPod -> Reformat) and then sync your entire library back to the iPod.

Result! iPod reformatted, all old music EXACTLY as it was before and a smiling wife.

Entry Filed under: Technology