My dear and beloved iPod decided some weeks ago to lag intensively (I could wait up to 3 minutes until he decided to play the song I wanted him to)... and whenever I'd select a new song, it could take me 30 seconds before I could regulate its volume, switch it or pause it.
I knew something was wrong, and I was about to create a back-up file in some near future... but now it is too late: I ejected my iPod with iTunes, and when I tried to start some music, I realized it had auto-deleted ALL of my songs!
This really sucks because I set a lot of effort into organizing my iPod, finding album covers, fixing typos and caps, etc.

My iPod is and has always been used as a Hard Drive (you know, that options that lets you plug your iPod into any CPU without losing your music).
Now, when I plug it into iTunes, iTunes doesn't respond and if I try to access the iPod's folder (J:\), the explorer crashes.
Something kind of lets me think that the songs are still in there, waiting for me to get them back: from the iPod's "Settings -> Information" menu, I see that 26.6 Gb are still used, though now they aren't separated as Videos/Others/Music, as it used to be, but only Others.

How can I retrieve my music? Any program out there?

P.S. It's a Classic iPod 80 Gb

MediaMonkey/CopyTrans for end-user friendly track ripping. But from the sounds of it I think it's some kind of hardware damage that's causing your iPod to die. Scratched hard disk due to mechanical stress seems likely, and it necessarily means data is not recoverable using conventional means.

(Shouldn't you have the music on your hard drive anyways?)

The man knows what to do, the same thing happened to me a few years back...
It could've also gotten DDoS'd by 4chan

get a new hard drive ($120), unless you can format it.

Try opening the drive in linux.

MediaMonkey? It looks like iTunes, but with a different name.
Anyways, I've just downloaded CopyTrans... let's see what this gives me!

EDIT: Not sure if it's a freeware... everything is launching properly, but I see a (Free) tag on the side of only one of the 6-ish programs offered by the installation.
Anyways, I ran CopyTrans, and when I connect my iPod, it just bugs... "Does not respond".

This means that explorer can't access the hard drive. That means nothing you do in windows will work.

If it won't work in linux, then you are SOL. Reformat the hard drive.

1) Closing everything related to the iPod, unplugging the iPod, and plugging it back before opening anything kind of solved some issues. (Why? XD)
2) I don't have Linux.
3) What does mean "SOL" ?
4) You are talking about reformatting the hard drive of my iPod? Would that imply the loss of data?

EDIT: I am currently running "iCloner", to create a save of my current iPod's state... it's been 5 minutes since it is running, and the estimated time won't stop increasing. It's now at 40 hours!
Only 4k files... it isn't that much, afaik!

1) I think the hard drive is bad. Less crap running tends to help these things.
2) Then burn a copy of ubuntu, backtrack, or mint.
3) So out of luck.
4) Yes. The idea is you copy all the stuff off the hard drive in linux, reformat the hard drive, then copy everything back. This would possibly fix any corruption/bad sectors. Chances are though, it's bad and you'll need a new hard drive.

The more you try to use a hard drive while it's corrupted/damaged, the more chance of permanent data loss and never being able to get that data off.

While reading this I went "Shit" because I tried so many times to access to the folder...
And then I told myself "Okay, one last time"... And guess what?
-> Total access to all files!
http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/8296/ownedipodrecovery.jpg

EDIT: By the time I finished writing this post, the copy of the folders automatically stopped... fml!
Anyways, I'll just keep trying to copy! >:O

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 12 2010, 2:17 am by payne.

Successfully copied anything that was inside the "Music" folder. I tried to reset my iPod completely, but it just doesn't want... it acts as if it had (it asks for language), but it still has everything that was in there before.
What I've done to do this "reset": hold "middle + menu", when I saw the apple, hold "previous + center", scroll down to "Reset", press "center".

What am I doing wrong? D:

EDIT: Okay... so how do I format the HD of my iPod?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 12 2010, 4:23 am by payne.

format /f:fat32 j:

Looks risky. I just want to make sure you've written it properly and that it's universal.
My iPod is on J:\.

Yes, you will format J:, which is your iPod.

It's not risky when you know where stuff is. Just never do format /f:fat32 c: or some crap like that.

Not quite sure where I was supposed to type "format /f:fat32 j:", but I did it from "Windows+R" window.
It doesn't look like it did -anything-, though. :S

EDIT: Oh wait, oh wait, OH WAIT!
Now my iPod is showing in iTunes!!
I'm running a Restoration at the moment. Let's see where this gets me.

EDIT: The restoration was complete. But the iPod still crashes anything that's related to it in Windows.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 13 2010, 2:54 am by payne.

I decided to go grab the old laptop of my father: it has such an old iTunes it wouldn't recognize the iPod, which is exactly what I wanted!
I could indeed access to the folders of the iPod without any goddamn problem. I deleted everything inside of "iPod_Control" cached folder.
Now, I'm downloading the newest iTunes on it, and I'll try to see if it works. If it does, I'll use an USB key to transport my back-up from my current computer to this laptop.
I'll keep you guys informed in edits of this post.

EDIT: It looks like my iPod just isn't recognized at all by any iTunes anymore...
It's funny how iTunes and Folder works on the laptop when the iPod is connected, while nothing works on my computer when it is connected. >_>

EDIT:
HOW TO SAVE 120$ AGAINST 7 HOURS OF WORK ON TRYING TO FIX AN IPOD!!
1) Connect to an other computer
2) Delete everything inside "iPod_Control" (cache folder)
3) Connect to your main computer
4) Run the Windows-Bug-Finder (it should pop-up whenever you connect your iPod)
5) Accept to dismantle
6) Have fun letting Windows do all the work for you
7) Eject properly
8) Reconnect
9) ORGASM!!!

Somehow, the step 4 would never work until now... which is quite epic!

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Oct 13 2010, 5:04 am by payne.

your were supposed to run it in cmd. Glad to see you got it fixed. Who knows how long it will last.

A huge thank you to you!
By the way, my iPod works even better than how it used to work weeks ago. I'm really glad it crashed, in the end! Now, I have my iTunes library organized, my iPod doesn't lag anymore, and I know how to fix a buggy iPod!

too bad you can't run rockbox on it.

What's "rockbox" ?

http://www.rockbox.org/
open source jukebox which allows you to put in custom themes, play most any format, works by creating a dynamic playlist, so you can just drag and drop rather than use some media player to "sync". It also doesn't rename your files or stick them in a hidden folder. It won't do video yet, but on the 5g, you can just use the default firmware for that.

stuck it on my dad's sansa clip, and he was amazed at how much faster it was. I don't know how much faster it is on my ipod, but it's certainly nice to have a black theme rather than the blinding white one.