Itunes back-up

[aarond1553552714]

I am beginning to suspect with a rapidly rising level of extreme annoyance that Itunes will not let me sync back the contents of Ipad to it after HDD failure and fresh install of Win 7.

 

Did I back up? No - I took the risk not to do so, thinking that it was highly unlikely that both PC and Ipad would die / lose data simultaneously. The Ipad is a form of flash drive, right?

 

I assumed that it would simply be a matter of plugging the Ipad back in and syncing the content back into the fresh install of Itunes.

 

Apparently not, the program is telling me that to sync will replace all of my Ipad content with the Itunes content. i.e. replace all my painstakingly ripped 400 odd CDs in 256 kbs AAC & cover art a big fat stinking wad of nothing.

 

Please tell me I am wrong, it seems that there are a lot of 3rd party programmes that want to charge me $US30 or so to do this...

 

I can 'transfer purchased content' off the Ipad, which is good, but not the ripped content apparently. I had to ''authorise"" the computer again, which takes me to my limit of 5 computers. Is there anyway to 'deauthorise' the old PC, given that it passed away without warning?

 

 

Grrrrrr:mad:

[Ernie1553552694]

You could call Apple Support but they might want more than 30 bucks.

[Guest]

There are two kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data and those who have yet to lose data. Backup, backup, backup.

[Beeman]

- again is there anything at all about itunes that does not suck? at least this will give you a chance to re-rip at a decent lossless bit rate - my commiserations Aaron

[Electra]

Winamp, amongst others, will put stuff onto, and take stuff off, a classic. May well work with iphone/ipad also.

[nixon76]

For some time now iAnythings have backed up their contents to the computer based iTunes each time you sync them. So if you toast your iAnything you can restore the backup to the replacement.

 

However if you don't backup your computer based iTunes and the HDD dies then you're toast. Pretty standard stuff.

 

Expecting your iAnything to do the backup in reverse doesn't really make sense unless your computer based iTunes collection is smaller in size than the capacity of you iAnything. This is unlikely - in our circles at least. So the ability to restore from the iAnything to the computer is not going to take away the bitterness you'll taste from losing the rest (and majority) of your data.

 

Just take this as a lesson learnt. Backup your stuff.

[jcooze]

Try File Management rather than syncing. Copy your music directly from the iPad to the PC and see if that works.

 

I'm presuming that you can see the Ipad as a device in Windows 7?

[Guest]

 

beeman;137462 wrote:

- again is there anything at all about itunes that does not suck?

 

I have no problems with iTunes and use it by choice. I haven't found it to suck at all.

[ilikecrumpets]

 

Michael Jones;137482 wrote:

I have no problems with iTunes and use it by choice. I haven't found it to suck at all.

 

+1

[Electra]

Itunes is written for people who just want it to go, without wanting to do anything "out of the ordinary" in my opinion. Also, in my opinion, it sucks in a big way. But each to their own, and I am sure that not everyone can get a grasp on the rather more PC savvy requirements to sync their i*** using alternate software.

[aarond1553552714]

Thanks for all the replies, some things to try tonight.

 

I've got everything on the Mac in apple lossless, so no huge loss of data. I just found that the 256 Kbps AAC to be an ideal compression for the limited space on the iPad.

 

There is the option to down convert all the lossless to 128 AAC, which I think I'll just do from the Mac onto the iPad.

 

I still think it is strange that the sync process will delete all the data on the mobile device, but then I guess the apple sourced media is transferrable.

 

As far as iTunes in general goes, I find it just works so well with the Mac and Amarra. I had endless issues with Foobar not communicating with remote app and those days are gone.

[Guest]

Back when the iTunes store was being established, part of the agreement - at the insistence of the record companies - included provisions making it difficult to take music back off an iPod. This was based on the quite-likely scenario of iPods being used to transport music from one computer to another.

 

You're living with the consequences of that agreement.

[Declannz]

 

too_tall;137484 wrote:

Itunes is written for people who just want it to go, without wanting to do anything "out of the ordinary" in my opinion. Also, in my opinion, it sucks in a big way. But each to their own, and I am sure that not everyone can get a grasp on the rather more PC savvy requirements to sync their i*** using alternate software.

 

 

Indeed. It is for people that don't want to know how to navigate and open files (even though using itunes and wandering around a file system are pretty much the same thing).

 

the problem is that people expect it to just keep on working forever. When a little something goes wrong they're humped because they don't get how things actually work.

 

It's basically a shortcut for something that is really easy anyway, but it's got some big databases to maintain and a user base that doesn't know how to fix things.

 

I've been keeping every bit of digital music I've aquired since about 1996. It's been moved around a lot, but it's all there, all 300ish gigs of it. Never had a problem with loss of anything, ever. If itunes were good, why do I get called by itunes users all the time asking me to fix their thing because their itunes has stopped working?

[nixon76]

I wonder how many people with iTunes issues/bad experiences are using Windows? I would suggest a higher percentage than Mac owners.

 

Is this intentional bad coding to get Windows owners onto Macs? Maybe. Maybe it's just bad coding in general. But I suspect it's Apple trying to bend Windows into working like it wants to (to have the same experience regardless of OS) but is failing.

 

But it's a big shrug from me really. I'm of the school that if you buy Apple products you're buying into Apple's way. If you don't like it, you can hack about if you want, or just not buy it. There are plenty of choices now - Android etc etc. Very simple.

[Dunnersfella1553552754]

If it were me, I'd pay the $30 US and get the music you want off the iPad.

I've downloaded free software in the past to help out a mate with his iPod... and his 'stuck' music library (it was stuck on his Nano after his computer blew up). It was easy to do, and proof that there are people out there who save their music to the lowest possible quality in order to jam as much music on their MP3 players as possible...

 

As an aside, if you have the content on another Mac... what's the issue?

Is it mainly a time consideration with the library requiring re-converting?

[aarond1553552714]

 

Dunnersfella;137511 wrote:

 

As an aside, if you have the content on another Mac... what's the issue?

 

Is it mainly a time consideration with the library requiring re-converting?

 

The issue is just that I want to use the higher quality 256 kbs AAC format for the Ipad, and the only option to down convert is to 128 kbs AAC.

 

I could use a 3rd party product to bulk convert all the raw data from apple lossless to 256 kbs AAC, but in the past this hasn't been satisfactory with regards to the folder structure and cover art issues.

 

I guess this is a learning exercise, it does make sense about the agreement Apple made regarding making it difficult to get the music off the device.

[Dunnersfella1553552754]

If you think the cover art is an issue...

Just wait until you send it to a 46" or bigger TV via DLNA... it always looks terrible.

Of course, why I'd want to listen to my music via TV speakers is well... pointless.

Personally, I keep a folder with well named cover art in the highest res. format possible. This makes music library re-builds a lot easier.

[Guest]

Found this on another forum for playing FLAC files on a Mac:

 

 

 

If you are serious about the Mac then for FLAC:

 

 

 

iTunes (install the Fluke app and you will be able to play FLAC in iTunes)

 

 

 

Cog (a nice fast music player with native FLAC support, not as "spiffy" as iTunes but lighter and cleaner)

 

 

 

Play (akin to Cog but with some iTunes features built in (like tag editing))

 

 

 

Songbird (cross-platform JAVA-based iTunes clone of sorts, I find it bloated so I avoid on all platforms)

 

[Spearmint]

 

aarond;137435 wrote:

 

I had to ''authorise"" the computer again, which takes me to my limit of 5 computers. Is there anyway to 'deauthorise' the old PC, given that it passed away without warning?

 

 

 

 

 

Grrrrrr:mad:

 

Now that you have reached the 5 limit, you have the option to deauthorise all the computers and start again. I needed to do this at one stage, and so I authorised my iPhone on other computers to get up to the 5 limit so I could deauthorise them all.

 

I bought an Apple AirPort Extreme the other week, then bundled a 1.5TB WD USB HDD from OfficeWorks for $129.00 and now have Time Machine happily running on the MAC. The drive is also accessible via the PC's as well.

 

So I now have four backups of my music files, including two NAS units, and a separate USB HDD as well as the unit attached to the AirPort.

[Spearmint]

 

Michael Jones;137645 wrote:

Found this on another forum for playing FLAC files on a Mac:

 

I started using 'Fluke' over the weekend to convert my FLAC files to Apple Lossless, for use with the iPod in the car, as well as the iPod attached to the Sonos Wireless Dock.

[Guest]

 

Spearmint;137666 wrote:

So I now have four backups of my music files...

 

I have the main hard drive the serves up music, plus two offline backups.

[Spearmint]

 

Michael Jones;137671 wrote:

I have the main hard drive the serves up music, plus two offline backups.

 

A good idea, I feel ripping my library once including editing of artist names, and track names, along with cover art is not something I wish to do again in a hurry.

 

I finally found out how to add missing cover art to iTunes

[Guest]

 

Spearmint;137673 wrote:

I finally found out how to add missing cover art to iTunes

 

I was disappointed with the built-in cover-art retrieval through iTunes, plus annoyed that the cover art was only attached to the first track of an album.

 

So I now find high quality cover art and paste it into the album's information panel. And yes, I have been described as anal before - why do you ask?

[Spearmint]

It always frustrated me with iTunes and cover art, but using dBpoweramp and Tag&Rename to rip and edit my FLAC files, it was something I never bothered to figure out how to do.

 

I also use the album's information panel for cover art and any other tweaks for artist name and album name. It was interesting ripping some of the FLAC files which I'd already done adjustments to, and iTune recognised the album and renamed some of the info. So I would end up with two artist like xxx & xxx then another with xxx and xxx, or there would be an additional space which created the same issue.

[kaka]

I never let iTunes take control of my files - the files were always stored outside iTunes and backed up by normal means.

 

I never purchased anything from them (I don't have anything at less then CD resolution).