Digging around in my garage last week I unearthed my old iPod. I bought it around 2005/2006 and lost it a couple of years later. It's missing over a decade. It's a 5th generation I believe, 160gb.

I have spent a week listening to my old music, and the trip down memory lane has been cool, but I would like to add my current flavors to what's already on it. This is where I need advice.

I have a traumatic incident in my past involving iPods. The iPod I had before this one (early 2000's), I had full of music, and I got a new computer and when I plugged the iPod into the new computer, it "sync'd" with the new computer that had no music on it, therefore the iPod now had no music on it. I was horrified. That music did not exist anywhere except on my iPod, and now it was all gone. I don't remember the exact details; exactly what I clicked, what agreements I agreed to, etc. All I know is I was left with a lasting phobia of plugging an iPod into a computer.

Also I know more than a handful of disenchanted post-iphone users who are now android fans due to Apple pushing iPhone updates to older phones which bog them down and make them crash. I don't know if Apple is doing the same thing to iPods.

Should I be afraid to plug my iPod into my computer? Is there any real danger of all my old songs being erased? If, so, is there any workaround? Should I be afraid of iTunes pushing a crippling update to my iPod? If so, is just safe enough if I just unplug the internet while the iPod is plugged in?

 

Digging around in my garage last week I unearthed my old iPod. I bought it around 2005/2006 and lost it a couple of years later. It's missing over a decade. It's a 5th generation I believe, 160gb.

I have spent a week listening to my old music, and the trip down memory lane has been cool, but I would like to add my current flavors to what's already on it. This is where I need advice.

I have a traumatic incident in my past involving iPods. The iPod I had before this one (early 2000's), I had full of music, and I got a new computer and when I plugged the iPod into the new computer, it "sync'd" with the new computer that had no music on it, therefore the iPod now had no music on it. I was horrified. That music did not exist anywhere except on my iPod, and now it was all gone. I don't remember the exact details; exactly what I clicked, what agreements I agreed to, etc. All I know is I was left with a lasting phobia of plugging an iPod into a computer.

Also I know more than a handful of disenchanted post-iphone users who are now android fans due to Apple pushing iPhone updates to older phones which bog them down and make them crash. I don't know if Apple is doing the same thing to iPods.

Should I be afraid to plug my iPod into my computer? Is there any real danger of all my old songs being erased? If, so, is there any workaround? Should I be afraid of iTunes pushing a crippling update to my iPod? If so, is just safe enough if I just unplug the internet while the iPod is plugged in?

I heard Apple discontinued support for a lot of these old devices (e.g. iPhone3 and earlier and certain ipods (especially the ones like yours with a spinning hard disk drive).

I think you should use your wonderful smart phone for current music and keep your iPod for an "oldies station".

If you want to push it, I suggest looking at recent posts on forums.apple.com instead of AAC. There are definitely some loyal Apple fans that discussed this same topic inside and out. Make sure they are recent posts because support changes over time and advice that worked years ago may not work today.

 

If your version of iTunes will support it, you should first do a complete backup of your iPod. This will allow a full restore if something else goes wrong.

Your past trauma wouldn’t happen normally and you had to make a bad choice along the way. It happens and the most aggravating thing is that we have only ourselves to blame.

Purchased music is readily restored. Other music should have been backed up wherever you first downloaded it. I mean, it had to be put onto the iPod from somewhere.

You might look into utilities that give you access to the file structure directly from your computer. I use iExplore frequently but there are others. I’d also visit everymac to see if your iPod is listed. It will give lots of details about compatible software versions and such.

 

Purchased music is readily restored.

It is only readily restored if the iTunes account it was purchased on is still accessible (or the linked email address is known and accessible).

Also, backing up an iPod by connecting to your PC's iTunes application can cause INSTANT sadness if the iTunes application automatically logs into a DIFFERENT iTunes account than the last account the iPod was set up for (and starts synching to the wrong account).

People with complicated families or disorganized lives have to be careful about taking advice from people that have only had one iTunes account enter their house. Apple tried to make things simple for the average person (family) but people's lives are not so simple and few families are exactly average. Apple has gotten better with cross account (family) sharing but, unfortunately, that was way after the 160Gb iPod.

 

Thank you for this informative Thread. I have always been skeptical of digital storage, and that really went south when I got an adapter and plugged in ten old IDE hard drives to see what was on them. Seven of them did not register as being a memory device!

I have several hundred vinyl disks and a direct drive turn table, but I don't like what I have created. Playing music from 40 to 50 years ago makes my mind travel back in time, and it feels wrong. I wonder how other people feel about that.

Brandy by Looking Glass and I'm driving north on the 5 freeway after work in 1973. Layla by Eric Clapton and I'm at a concert in 1991. Devil with a Blue Dress and I'm back in High School as a late blooming nerd without a date. Karma Chameleon and I'm building a custom van somewhere around 1984. All of this feels wrong.

What say you? Am I hijacking your Thread?

 

Purchased music is readily restored. Other music should have been backed up wherever you first downloaded it. I mean, it had to be put onto the iPod from somewhere.

I have never purchased music through iTunes. I only ever used it as a mechanism to transfer my CDs to my ipod.
The first time I lost my music, I had backed up my whole case of CDs onto my laptop before I ever bought the ipod. Then my CDs case got stolen. Then I bought an iPod and put the music from the laptop onto it. Then my laptop died. So the files on the iPod were the only access I had to the music. IIRC I hit "sync," expecting iTunes to transfer my music from the iPod and onto the new computer. It didn't do that.

Also, backing up an iPod by connecting to your PC's iTunes application can cause INSTANT sadness if the iTunes application automatically logs into a DIFFERENT iTunes account than the last account the iPod was set up for (and starts synching to the wrong account).

I don't have an iTunes account yet. I had one 10 years ago but I have no idea what the login is/was. So if I create a new account and then connect my iPod, expect instant sadness? Maybe this is what happened the first time around?

 

I have several hundred vinyl disks and a direct drive turn table, but I don't like what I have created. Playing music from 40 to 50 years ago makes my mind travel back in time, and it feels wrong. I wonder how other people feel about that.

Brandy by Looking Glass and I'm driving north on the 5 freeway after work in 1973. Layla by Eric Clapton and I'm at a concert in 1991. Devil with a Blue Dress and I'm back in High School as a late blooming nerd without a date. Karma Chameleon and I'm building a custom van somewhere around 1984. All of this feels wrong.

What say you? Am I hijacking your Thread?

Not hijacking, and I understand. Listening to this old music is weird. Most of it is pretty obscure; songs that have never once graced the airwaves. So I have literally not heard them in 10 years. I'm not the same person I was back then, and not all the memories that this music conjures up, are good or even relateable. Back then I was an untamed single guy engaged in activities that I wouldn't like my mother to find out about. Now I'm domesticated, married, father of 3, and a better person.

Most of the songs are good to hear again, but some of them not. I thought I would be more happy listening to these, but here I am asking about how to my more recent music on it.

 

You can can mount it as a regular hard drive on linux (maybe Windows too, I don know) and then back-up what you want. If you don have a linux machine you can still do so from a linux Live CD though those are painfull to use on slow computers with little RAM.