I backed up my iPod and can't see the music files

So I had to restore my iPod for who knows what reason. Before I did, I backed it up to my external drive using the program Carbon Copy Cloner. Now, when I look at that drive on my Macbook, it - predictably - indicates that the 25 GB that should be backed-up music is in use, but I can't see the files, much like if I had opened a finder window via the iPod icon on my desktop.

I can't see it via any method of "open," "import" or whatever through iTunes, but I may just be trying the wrong thing? Anyway, hopefully someone knows a way to access these files. I'd like to keep the music, but even just to delete it without having to reformat the external drive would be nice.

Another weird thing happened: The image that used to appear on my desktop when I plugged in my drive was the standard hard drive image. Now it's an iPod image. Not sure if that's significant at all.

I'm pretty sure I fixed this myself actually. In case anyone has this problem in the future, my solution was as follows:

- Download the program <a href="http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html">TinkerTool</a> (read about it <a href="http://www.mcelhearn.com/article.php?story=20050126152346911">here</a>)

- Open the program, and select "show hidden folders" in finder.

- Access your or whatever drive via finder (as opposed to iTunes)

- The folder "_ipod.controls" should now be visible. In this folder, there is a folder named "musi"; simply copy its contents to the new iPod's folder of the same name.

Note that this is only for my unique problem. If you were trying to copy from iPod to iTunes, the Web site I linked to above offers instructions on doing just that.

EDIT: So I guess I can't link until I have a certain number of posts? You get the idea...

brand said:

Don't use <a href> </a> instead use ["URLwithoutquotes"="html://whatevertheurlis"]Title of the link[/"URLwithoutquotes"]

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot. As it so happens, I get a chance to try this right now:

So I didn't fix this problem after all, though I think I'm close. I'm going to list step by step what I've done, and hopefully someone here has an idea:

- Step 1: A couple days ago, iTunes said it couldn't read my iPod, and I needed to restore it. So I downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner to back up the iPod before restoring it. I backed it up to an external hard drive.

- Step 2: The problem with that approach is, on the external drive, I can't see the music files, just like if I accessed the iPod through finder. To solve this problem, I download TinkerTool, which enables the user to see hidden folders that Apple makes invisible to prevent users from, say, sharing music from iPod to iPod. There is an invisible folder on the iPod (and my external drive, since I backed it up) called "iPod_controls" and in this there is a folder called "Music." In the music folder, there are 50 folders named F00 through F49, and in these folders are .mp3 and .m4a files with seemingly random, four-letter names - AAFY.mp3, XYZI.m4a, etc.

- Step 3: Now I can see the music files, but don't know what they are thanks to the naming conventions. I tried copying the files directly from the external drive to the iPod in the corresponding folder, but I get an error saying I can't write over the music folder because I don't have sufficient access privileges. At this point, my iPod will freeze and I get an error message saying it was improperly ejected from the computer.

- Step 4: I copy all my iTunes music (which is all different from my iPod music) to the hard drive to make space on my Macbook for the music from my iPod. I drag the original iPod files from the external drive into my iTunes. At first glance it appears to work, as much of the music is songs and artists with the names I was expecting. There are two problems: Many, though not all, of the songs are messed up - for example, the song "Mastermind" by Deltron 3030 is normally about four minutes long, but now it's 11 minutes long and scrambled; also, I get about two dozen songs with titles matching the iPod files ("AAXT," etc.).

So that's where I'm at now: About 60 GB of music I can access, and about 30 GB I can't. Anybody have any idea how I can get to these iPod files?