iPod no songs, but space almost full?

[job]

so my old 3rd(?) gen iPod has been giving me some problems. lately, when i turn it on, it's like it got turned on for the first time, asking me to select a language. it doesnt show any playlists, songs, or anything else that i have on there.

here's the kicker. i know i have about 3k songs on there and when i get info about the ipod, it shows it as only having about 1.5GB free, so the ipod definitely knows that it's full, the software just isn't seeing the songs. i reboot, toggle disk mode, then reboot again and the ipod is able to see all the songs again...only until it locks up again (usually after about 30 minutes) and then it's like i have a brand new ipod again, asking me to choose my language.

oh, and i dont really want to restore it, because the computer with all my music is currently in storage at school until august.

any suggestions?

 

[Counterfit]

Get a utility to rip the songs off the iPod, then restore it.
And why the heck did you let someone put your computer into storage for 3-4 months?

 

[job]

hah, i actually go to school in ohio, but my home is in texas. i can't exactly ship an emac every break, so i leave my emac at my grandparents (also in ohio) and just take my barebones ibook.

ripping the songs presents another problem. i actually tried that several times a few weeks ago, the only problem is that any program i used would only see about 90 songs on the ipod and i would get the spinning wheel of death when the program tried to get the songs to the hard drive of my ibook. it seems anything that tries to access the ipod's hard drive is having problems.

 

[slooksterPSV]

You have updated the firmware? updates? etc? If so, I say grab your music off of it any way you can - there are hacks out there - and restore it yeah.

 

[monke]

Try using Senuti, it's worked for me before when I've done the same thing.

 

[job]

I've tried about three different programs, including Senuti, and none of them are able to download any of the songs. I get the spinning beach ball of death and then usually an error message saying that there was a problem accessing the ipod's HDD.

Could it be a physical problem with the drive itself?

 

[job]

Hmmm...ok, Senuti is working now and copying some of the songs, but it's missing about 1000. Any thoughts?

 

[monke]

Hmmm...ok, Senuti is working now and copying some of the songs, but it's missing about 1000. Any thoughts?

Someone I knew had nearly the exact same problem, but only the title's showed up for the songs but there wasn't a file to match the titles. Luckily he wasn't away from his main computer, unlike you.

 

[Counterfit]

Go visit your grandparents.