Dark Ipod

This past weekend, my fiance and I decided to take a much-needed, well deserved getaway to a nice little cabin in the town of Nashville, IN. Nashville is about 200 miles from where we live; a drive of approximately 4 hours, bladder breaks included.

Any time I find myself contemplating a roadtrip of more than, say, 5 minutes, my iPod comes along for the ride. The morning we were to depart, I took some time to load up iPod with some songs my lovely girlfriend had been requesting. That’s when I realized something was amiss with my beloved white and silver music machine. The software I use to manage music on iPod wouldn’t recognize it when I attached it to my computer. I reinstalled the software, and disconnected/reconnected iPod a half-dozen times, all to no avail. iPod, it seemed, was dead. The odd part was that my computer was still recognizing iPod as a device. Through Windows Explorer, I was able to see the files and folders on the iPod. I determined that all of my music was in fact, still present on the device; iPod had somehow just forgotten that it was carrying 16.1GB of my musical treasures. In the About screen, it showed the correct space usage, but listed that it was holding 0 songs. How bizarre…

So, we left, dead iPod in tow, on the off chance that by some miracle of fate iPod would resume normal function. That wasn’t to be. We were forced to listen to (GASP!) CD’s and radio for the entire trip. Despite the iPod problem, we had a perfectly relaxing weekend in the Autumn Capital of the World.

When we returned home, I spent about an hour and a half researching my iPod problem on the internet, without much result. Every reference I found that was similar to my problem concluded by saying that I’d just have to format the iPod and start fresh. WHAT?!?!? That seemed like an awful lot of work. Sure, all the music is still on my computer, but what a pain in the hind quarters to have to put it all back on the iPod. So, I started poking around iPod’s innards through Windows Explorer.

In the iPod_Control folder, I found a folder called iTunes. Within that folder are a variety of files, but two in particular interested me: the iTunesDB file (no file extension) and the iTunesDB.old file. In examining the files, I noticed that the iTunesDB file was very small…only 480 bytes, while the iTunesDB.old file was 2.50MB. It seemed logical to me that a database holding information on 3200 songs would more likely be 2.50MB than 480 bytes, so I decided to try an experiment. If you find yourself in similar trouble, and take the same steps I did, I cannot be held responsible for any problems that result. You’ve been warned

Before you begin, you must set Windows Explorer to View Hidden Files and Folders, and to show file extensions. Then navigate to (YOUR IPOD DRIVE LETTER):\iPod_Control\iTunes, and perform the following steps:

1) First, I renamed iTunesDB to iTunesDB.jt

2) Then I renamed iTunesDB.old to iTunesDB (no file extension)

3) Gracefully disconnected iPod from the computer.

4) Turned iPod on.

5) Screamed with joy when iPod once again listed the 3200 songs it contained.

6) Plugged in headphones to verify function. Sounded great

Thus ended my trouble with my iPod. It now remembered that it was carrying a priceless collection of music, and I went gleefully back to rocking out. I’m not sure what caused the database to flake out…perhaps one of you intrepid readers can fill me in. I’ll now be backing up iPod on a weekly basis…no more scares for me.

Your mileage may vary. If you have any trouble, drop me a line and let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to help you.