# Harddrive crashed, and Apple makes me reload all my music?!? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 16, 2011, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075 "2011-11-16T00:26:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![brk913](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/838e76/32.png) [@brk913](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brk913)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/21 "2011-11-16T15:34:52Z")
Your going to have to do the new synch with your new iTunes Library. In the future you need to make your iTunes directory part of your backup routine. The problem is you reinstalled iTunes and created a totally new library which has never seen your iPhone before. If you had a valid backup you just install iTunes, run it once, shut it down and then replace the iTunes folder in “My Music” with your backup and then it would work like there was no change at all… ---
**Author:** ![brk913](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/838e76/32.png) [@brk913](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brk913)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/22 "2011-11-16T15:36:45Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > That has never happened to any of my Macs. Take a trip to the Apple store and watch as the Geniuses help one Mac person after the next with their broken hardware, I literally waited 45 minutes to get screen protectors because of all the messed up Apple products people were in line to get fixed… ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/23 "2011-11-16T16:41:40Z")
> [@brk913](#): > > Your going to have to do the new synch with your new iTunes Library. In the future you need to make your iTunes directory part of your backup routine. The problem is you reinstalled iTunes and created a totally new library which has never seen your iPhone before. If you had a valid backup you just install iTunes, run it once, shut it down and then replace the iTunes folder in “My Music” with your backup and then it would work like there was no change at all… See, the thing is I _didn’t_ reinstall iTunes! I have two hard drives, my C drive is ‘System Disk’ and contains my OS (Vista) and all my program folders, and the D drive is ‘Data Disk’ and contains, well, all my data (documents, music, videos etc.) I backup my System Disk (my OS) locally each week and I back up my Data Disk online thru Mozy. So I went to Best Buy and bought a new hard disk, installed it as the D: drive, named it ‘Data Disk’ and repopulated it thru a restore online from Mozy (took about a day). I didn’t have to reinstall any programs and I figured iTunes would just work with the restored data. Nope. Now, just while typing this, I’ve discovered another huge problem. After manually dragging all my music onto my iPhone last night and waiting (all night) for my 3000+ songs to copy, I find that my cover art is completely fucked up! Just on my iPhone, its fine in iTunes, but on my iPhone its all mixed up! And a quick Google search so far suggests that there’s nothing I can do (AGAIN!!!) but erase it all and try again. And yes, I didn’t use sync and yes, I’m sure that’s probably why. But like someone above said, sync for music is fucking stupid. You should just have two columns, your PC’s music on the left and your phones on the right. And you should just be able to drag & drop between them. You know why Apple doesn’t do this? Not because sync is easier, but because of money. So that you can’t buy something on iTunes and give it to your friends. Peace, Love, It Just Works my fucking ass. Apple are the most greedy bunch of hypocrites in the world. Fuck you Apple. FUCK YOU APPLE. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/24 "2011-11-16T16:52:04Z")
Something I forgot to add: iTunes for Windows is the biggest piece of shit software I have ever seen and I’ve used computers since DOS. Without exaggerating iTunes for Windows locks up solid probably 1 out of 4 times it runs. Maybe even 1 out of 3. I don’t know, maybe its just my system, but there’s nothing special about it. And although I don’t think Apple deliberately made it this way (i.e. they didn’t _put_ bugs into it), I do think they deliberately won’t un-make it this way (i.e. they _left_ bugs in it). IOW they got the software 75% debugged and stopped. They don’t give a flying fuck about their Windows users, their attitude is, “Screw them, let them buy a Mac”. No offense, but I bet the Mac users here are thinking that… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Disheavel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Disheavel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disheavel)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/25 "2011-11-16T18:17:25Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > They don’t give a flying fuck about their Windows users, their attitude is, “Screw them, let them buy a Mac”. No offense, but I bet the Mac users here are thinking that… 😃 You should see how much trouble I had to sync my Zune to my Mac! Now that was real trouble. I have to use a Linux hack of the Zune interface to do it. But I don’t think mac people think anything of Windows users. I think we just think that perhaps we could be of help if we could see exactly what you wanted to do and why. I do agree that syncing is slow (but you were patient with your reinstallation of your Mozy backup so why not the other hard drive/iPhone). For the record, Apple had a phenomenally fast method for transferring data and I could load/sync a first generation iPod 10 years ago with 5Gb in well under 5 minutes. That technology was called Firewire but because Microsoft wanted to keep everything backwards compatible, Apple was forced to drop Firewire and support USB in order to court PC owners. So I would encourage you to go to an Apple Store or another iPhone user and explain what you are trying to do as I think that using iTunes’s features may be easier than trying to fight it. Additionally, the people over at [discussions.apple.com](https://discussions.apple.com/community/itunes/itunes_for_windows) are very helpful with questions and usually pretty quick if you can’t find your answer by searching there. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/26 "2011-11-16T20:27:10Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > Your buddy with the Droid was mistaken in his jealousy. I use a Droid X2™. For various nefarious hardware reasons, I had 3 phones- one at a time- in my hand in the space of 9 days in October. > > At least on Verizon, the DroidX2® restores everything. Everything, in every area, except for two key bits: It cannot remember widgets I have created, which is fine. Allows me to re-examine them and make new ones and shed unused ones. It also does not retain text messages. Must admit- I have never seen a cellular phone that imported all old text messages when doing a re-synch. > > Does the iPhone store all texts on The iCloud or are all text messages lost when re-synching an iPhone? He didn’t have Verizon and he lost his entire phone book when his phone crashed. I have no clue where my text messages are backed up, but after the restore everything was like there had never been a problem. Texts, photos, calendar entries everything ---
**Author:** ![Dahnlor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dahnlor/32/533_2.png) [@Dahnlor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahnlor)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/27 "2011-11-16T20:32:38Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > I can’t even transfer songs between computers. > > Give me something with “drag n drop” any day of the work over the pus that is iTunes Oh you can do this with an iPod, but not by using it as intended by the manufacturer. You can’t copy any songs from your iPod library using iTunes, but if you go straight to the hard drive and find the music folder (buried among hidden system folders), all of the MP3s will be there. Of course all of the filenames will be like “Az4Xn.mp3” and grouped into similarly-cryptic folders in random order, but you can copy the whole mess to your computer and import it to iTunes. Then you can find what you want in the library and drag & drop the files from the library to get the files you want together. Piece of cake. 😉 On a side note, I always manage my iPod library manually, mostly because the iPod has 16 GB and I have about 100 GB in MP3s, and I want to pick and choose what goes there. Heck, I don’t even know what synchronizing is supposed to do, but whatever it does, I’m sure it’s not what I want it to do. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/28 "2011-11-16T21:43:04Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > This is such a useless response and should be considered threadshitting, especially in GQ. Agreed, some people like wearing ignorance as if it were a medal. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/29 "2011-11-16T22:52:20Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > At least on Verizon, the DroidX2® restores everything. Everything, in every area, except for two key bits: It cannot remember widgets I have created, which is fine. Allows me to re-examine them and make new ones and shed unused ones. It also does not retain text messages. Must admit- I have never seen a cellular phone that imported all old text messages when doing a re-synch. There’s a fair few apps that’ll do this for you on the Market. They back up your text messages to your Gmail account. I use SMS Backup, which is free and works as advertised. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/30 "2011-11-16T23:23:22Z")
> [@Dahnlor](#): > > On a side note, I always manage my iPod library manually, mostly because the iPod has 16 GB and I have about 100 GB in MP3s, and I want to pick and choose what goes there. Heck, I don’t even know what synchronizing is supposed to do, but whatever it does, I’m sure it’s not what I want it to do. I have the same issue, but iTunes lets you do this. The best way is to configure it to only sync selected playlists. Manage your playlists, and iTunes puts the right songs on your iDevice to match. ---
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/31 "2011-11-17T00:06:30Z")
> [@Dahnlor](#): > > On a side note, I always manage my iPod library manually, mostly because the iPod has 16 GB and I have about 100 GB in MP3s, and I want to pick and choose what goes there. Heck, I don’t even know what synchronizing is supposed to do, but whatever it does, I’m sure it’s not what I want it to do. I suspect that you’re wrong there. I think the real problem here is not that Apple makes crappy software, or that Apple is greedy, or that Apple wants to control the way you do things. The real problem is that some people have a mental model of how they want things to work that doesn’t quite match the model that the software is using. They probably got that model from using other software that’s just different. A slight change to your mental model is all that’s required. In your case, I really don’t think that you need to use the manually manage feature. Do this: Create a playlist (not a smart playlist, just a dumb one). That playlist can now be manually managed using drag and drop. While looking at your full music list, drag whatever songs you want to the playlist. Click on the playlist, and you can tell it to be sorted in whatever way you want (by song title, by genre, year, album, whatever). At any time, you can delete songs from the playlist and they’ll remain in your main music list. Take your iPhone out of manually manage mode, click on the music tab, and tell it to sync just that playlist. Viola. You have all the advantages of manually managing what’s on your iPhone, and also all the advantages of syncing with your iTunes. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/32 "2011-11-17T00:27:24Z")
This is a side effect of good old RIAA copy protection requirements. Originally, Apple signed the record labels by saying it was for Mac/iPod only; then did the switcheroo and made iTunes for PC too. iTunes was the music manager; it loaded songs onto your iPod (and now iWhatever). To prevent music theft, you cannot just plug a strange iPod into your iTunes and either load your songs into it or copy songs off the iPod onto your iTunes/PC disk. If you could then everyone would be communally sharing songs. In order to sign the record labels Apple had to promise to disallow that behaviour. So basically iTunes is your master list. When you attatch an iPhoad device, it will sync the library from itself to that device as requested. If the iPhoad has any foreign music on it (i.e. I didn’t put that there) it will erase that first. Simplest control of copyright… (Not that I like that). Your PC crashed, you created a new PC/iTunes install. AFAItK it has never seen an iPhoad - so when you plug in your iPhone, it’s a new device. You want to load from iTunes - OK, get rid of any old music. Yeah, iTunes should be smart and say “Hey, I have that song” and no need to reload on the iPhone - but the way it works now is simple and basic (KISS principle) and does the job. Blame the record labels. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/33 "2011-11-17T06:15:19Z")
> [@Roadfood](#): > > In your case, I really don’t think that you need to use the manually manage feature. Do this: Create a playlist (not a smart playlist, just a dumb one). That playlist can now be manually managed using drag and drop. While looking at your full music list, drag whatever songs you want to the playlist. Click on the playlist, and you can tell it to be sorted in whatever way you want (by song title, by genre, year, album, whatever). At any time, you can delete songs from the playlist and they’ll remain in your main music list. Take your iPhone out of manually manage mode, click on the music tab, and tell it to sync just that playlist. Viola. You have all the advantages of manually managing what’s on your iPhone, and also all the advantages of syncing with your iTunes. Although I think your post was directed at someone else, thanks, this sounds like a good method for me to try. As down on Apple as I’ve been here I still have to point out that I’ve had the iPhone 4 for about 6 or 7 months now and for 99% of that time it has worked wonderfully. Its an excellent smartphone, the selection of apps is huge (including free ones), and it has worked great as my truck’s main stereo source. That’s actually why I went with it instead of a Droid, because I wanted a cellphone that I could buy a non-universal-fit car mount for. Because the iPhones are pretty much the only cellphones that are a ‘physical’ standard (i.e. the physical shape of the phones has changed little) they’re almost the only phone with cradles designed to fit them perfectly. It’s just when I have to mess with it like this, after my PC’s mp3 drive crashed, or wanting to use homemade ringtones, or wanting to store files on it etc., things that are basic & utilitarian & simple on Windows hardware but are outright \*impossible \*on things Apple, that I get very frustrated. Someone mentioned how Apple used to use a Firewire port for the iPod but dropped it in favor of the more ubiquitous (but slower) USB. While I really don’t think that’s Microsoft’s fault, it does kinda suck. Would make loading gigabytes of tunes so much easier. Course Apple could have also put a fucking SD slot on the iPhone! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/34 "2011-11-17T14:19:06Z")
> [@Pitchmeister](#): > > Also, what is your problem with iTunes syncing? Most problems can be solved very easily when you know which box to check or uncheck. Smart playlists can also go a long way. > [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > I wholeheartedly agree. I don’t manually manage _nuthin_’. That’s what I bought a computer **for**. Smart playlists are brilliant. I don’t want to figure out which of my 20,000 songs go on different devices, all with different capacities. To be fair to the OP, the #1 cause of questions around here about iTunes is people who DON’T check “manually manage music”. It’s probably the single-most important box to check off. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2011, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/35 "2011-11-24T07:44:15Z")
Just wanted to mention that I tried **Roadfood** ’s method of syncing a playlist and it seems to work great! Kind of the best of both worlds, drag & drop into the playlist, then autosync the playlist. I still don’t understand or like Apple’s anti-file-centric view of things. Just today in trying to restore my few photos that I had on my iPhone, its the same nonsense: You have to sync with a PC photo folder using iTunes. Once the synced files are transferred to the iPhone _ **you can’t do anything to them!** _ You can’t move them, you can’t rename them, you can’t even \*\*delete \*\*them! Not directly on the phone, only thru iTunes. That’s asinine! But the most fucked aspect of Apple’s way of doing things is the way that if you use autosync, and then turn it off, it erases everything! And there’s no way around that. It doesn’t just do this with the music, but with photos, ringtones, podcasts, apps, everything! Auto-sync should just be a _process_. A process that a user can _use_ (and the \*only \*thing on a smartphone that even needs an autosync function is an appointment calendar). It should \*\*not \*\*be an all-encompassing, controlling, fucking state-of-being that the phone either is, or is not, \*imbued \*with! Apple, you’re shit is still soooooo gay! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Niply\_Elder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@The\_Niply\_Elder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Niply_Elder)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2011, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/36 "2011-11-24T08:59:56Z")
This is still GQ? ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/37 "2011-11-25T03:01:08Z")
Probably not. Although one other question I can think of is **Do other users of iTunes for Windows have the same problems with it as I do?** (i.e. frequent lock-ups, non-recognition of the iPhone hardware being plugged in)? Or could there be something with my system that’s conflicting with it? Zone Alarm, AVG, Outlook 2003, TiVo Server? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Niply\_Elder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@The\_Niply\_Elder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Niply_Elder)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/38 "2011-11-25T03:13:33Z")
My experience with iTunes on windows is that it is extremely slow. Although it may be related to my music being on a NAS drive that I connect to wirelessly. However just the other day when I plugged in my iPod to add some music to it, windows started automatically installing drivers for it :rolleyes: Only after windows was done with that, then iTunes could synch up. ---
**Author:** ![Brandus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@Brandus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brandus)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/39 "2011-11-25T15:48:56Z")
#firstworldproblems ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2011, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075/40 "2011-11-25T15:59:58Z")
> [@Dahnlor](#): > > Oh you can do this with an iPod, but not by using it as intended by the manufacturer. You can’t copy any songs from your iPod library using iTunes, but if you go straight to the hard drive and find the music folder (buried among hidden system folders), all of the MP3s will be there. > > Of course all of the filenames will be like “Az4Xn.mp3” and grouped into similarly-cryptic folders in random order, but you can copy the whole mess to your computer and import it to iTunes. Then you can find what you want in the library and drag & drop the files from the library to get the files you want together. > > Piece of cake. 😉 On first read that went over my head and frankly I’d be pretty ticked off too if I had to play games to deal with files that I paid for and backed up for just this kind of emergency. I stayed with MPG and WMA because I don’t want to argue with a computer. They go wherever I copy and move them to. As for the op’s initial post, I see it as a 2 part problem. Car music can be solved quite nicely by going with a stereo that has a USB port. I use [THIS](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=Elago+Mobile+Nano+II+USB+2.0+microSDHC&_sacat=See-All-Categories)with a 16gb chip in my car. And since my music AND music players are mp3/wma I can load it up for free into microsoft’s version of the cloud. It’s protected for free. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harddrive-crashed-and-apple-makes-me-reload-all-my-music/603075.md?page=3)