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rrpalma

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 21, 2008
45
0
Hello,

My daughter has an ipod touch that she's been using for the past few years. She was syncing it with an old laptop, which she just gave away after I bought her a new one.

So she just installed itunes on her new laptop, and connected her ipod. She thought that all her music, phone book and appointments will sync from the ipod to the new laptop. However, whe she starts itunes, she gets a message that if she syncs, the ipod will be overwritten with the itunes library on the new laptop, which currently is empty.

Is there a way she can sync with her new laptop without losing all her data on the ipod?

Thanks for reading!
 

Night Spring

macrumors G5
Jul 17, 2008
14,598
7,768
Did she keep a backup of her iTunes library from her old laptop? If not, you need to look for third-party programs that lets her copy the music/videos from the iPod to a computer. Contacts, I think there is an option to merge or replace on first sync, and you obviously want to select merge. Calendar, I'm not sure -- depends on whether you have a compatible calendar program on your computer that iTunes syncs to.

In general, you need to treat the iPod as temporary storage, and always need to keep everything backed up on the computer. Media on the iPod is not meant to be used as the main copy of your media.

Also, is the new computer a Mac or PC?
 

androiphone

macrumors 65816
Dec 13, 2009
1,000
1
before she gave the old computer away she should have coppied everything (all her docs, pictures and music and all the apps) on to some form of storage (most likely an external hard disc drive) then when she gets her new computer she can easily just copy all the files to the relevant folders, install itunes and import the music into itunes, when you connect the ipod it will say erase but all the music is already on the computer so it would just sync again all the same music.

not only does a backup prevent you from loosing all your music but it prevents you from loosing EVERYTHING if your computer breaks or gets stolen.

but as the person before me said there are programs to get the music off an ipod and also if she had any apps on there she will need to trasfer all purchases by right clicking on the ipod when it shows up in itunes.
 

Momiji

macrumors newbie
Sep 8, 2010
10
0
Washington DC, USA
If her friend still has your daughter's ipod and has not synced with her/his own data, it is possible to recover data from the ipod.

You don't need to purchase any software. You just unhide hidden files. Then, copy all those files on the old ipod back to your PC.

http://ipodtips-tricks.blogspot.com/2008/01/download-transfer-music-ipodto-computer.html

You can also recover address/calendar info.

Music and video file names on the ipod are renamed when the ipod was synced. So they look strange. But the content should be the same. You need to open each file and rename it once you transfer data back to your computer from the ipod.

If your daughter's friend has already synced the ipod and loaded new data, all the previous data is gone. I don't know any method to recover in that case.
 

Night Spring

macrumors G5
Jul 17, 2008
14,598
7,768
If her friend still has your daughter's ipod and has not synced with her/his own data, it is possible to recover data from the ipod.

You don't need to purchase any software. You just unhide hidden files. Then, copy all those files on the old ipod back to your PC.

Only works on iPods that have disk mode -- that is, they show up as hard drives in My Computer. iPod touch doesn't have disk mode, so this doesn't work.
 

Momiji

macrumors newbie
Sep 8, 2010
10
0
Washington DC, USA
Only works on iPods that have disk mode -- that is, they show up as hard drives in My Computer. iPod touch doesn't have disk mode, so this doesn't work.

Oh, thanks for correcting. Somehow I thought the thread starter was asking about an ipod. Duh. It's posted under iPod Touch subcategory. My bad.:p
 
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