Problem with iPod music files

[sonofawidow]

Greetings. The name's Matt, and I'm new to the forums. Granted, I did register just so I could post the following thread. But I digress. Onto the issue at hand...

My problem with my 80GB iPod Classic is very similar to one previously brought up not too long ago: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=752237

I had my iPod hooked into my MacBook Pro, when suddenly this message popped up: iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPod "NICHOLS". Go to the Summary tab in iPod preferences and click Restore to restore this iPod to factory settings.

At that point in time I was completely taken aback, and decided to quit iTunes and eject the iPod using the Eject button found under the Devices index (straight from the MBP icon on my desktop). Once it was unplugged, everything on my Classic was gone! In its About section, it still displays that 33.8 GB of space is used (with 40.5 free), but it's all categorized in orange as Other. I hooked it up again, was treated with same error message in iTunes, checked the hidden files on the iPod itself (under the folder iPod_Control), and discovered that the music is all still intact, albeit with cryptic file names (i.e. W6F7, et cetera). And I also know that "restoring to factory settings" = altogether deleting audio files forever, never to be seen again.

Before I go on any further, I should mention a few things. First, my iPod was originally synched with my old PC. I thought that would spell trouble once I moved to the MBP, but everything worked great, except that I was unable to upgrade the iPod software (still on 1.1.2, I believe). It is not synched with my current Mac; is this at all relevant?

And secondly, all my music files are safely located on my MBP. I am just extremely picky about play counts, ratings, etc. I know I could simply drag everything back onto the iPod; it would just be nice to keep each track's original metadata.

SO (this is what I have been leading up to during this entire post)... is there any possible way I could recover those files already on the iPod? I understand this is hardly a "life-or-death" situation, and that it may come off as trivial to some of you readers (or at least those who bothered to read all of this).

Nevertheless, feedback and suggestions would be immensely appreciated. You would help alleviate an already-sh_tty week. Thanks in advance!

-Matt

P.S. I apologize for the excessive text editing. Just trying to get my point across.

[donuttakedonuts]

You could test a free version of senuti or ipodrip, see if that might work..?