iPod When you have more music than space

[Philosofy]

My old 60 gig iPod sync'd up fine with my iTunes: I had enough songs unchecked that there was enough space. But that one fried, and I got a replacement that I am having trouble with. I've unchecked a ton more songs, but it still says I don't have enough space, do I want iTunes to pick which songs go over. Well, last time I did that, it didn't take any of my playlists. So I want to control what goes over.

But the problem with iTunes is you can't separate out the unchecked songs. I have no idea how many gigs are checked songs, how many are unchecked, and how much more I have to uncheck in order for all the songs to fit on my iPod. How do you experts handle such a dilemma?

My iTunes folder has 58 gigs of songs, the iPod has room for 55 gigs.

 

[Philosofy]

OK, a friend on anothe forum suggested I do a smart playlist of checked songs. It turns out I have 50 gigs of checked songs, 55 gigs on my iPod, but it still tells me there is not enough room. What's up with that?

 

[WildCowboy]

You can set up a Smart Playlist to include a bogus criteria like "Date Added" is after 1950 to make sure that all songs are selected. Then make sure that the option to include only checked songs in the Smart Playlist.

Edit: Sorry...I was off doing other things before submitting my post and didn't see that you'd figured out how to see your checked songs. That's all I've got...I'm a Shuffle user so I don't deal with iPods that can hold my whole collection.

 

[Philosofy]

I did that (actually used songs added after 1930.) It still says there isn't enough space on my iPod, even though there is only 50 gigs of checked songs, and 55 gigs free on the iPod.

 

[WildCowboy]

Are you then updating your iPod from that Smart Playlist containing only checked songs?

 

[trainguy77]

Where are you getting the 55 gig free number? Are you gettings this from inside itunes? Or from finder?

 

[Philosofy]

Where are you getting the 55 gig free number? Are you gettings this from inside itunes? Or from finder?

The iPod was empty, and when I'm in iTunes it says there are 55.something gigs free. I ended up taking all my playlists and updating only them to the iPod, and it seems to be working (of course, the checked songs playlist is one of them, so all the songs are in the process of transferring.)

I can't figure out why it wouldn't just import the songs: my old iPod worked just fine.

 

[BurtonCCC]

I'd say convert all your music to AAC, but if you're not into that or think there will be "quality loss," then just convert your least listened-to albums to AAC until you can fit all your music. Simple.

Daniel.

 

[mrichmon]

How do you experts handle such a dilemma?

My iTunes folder has 58 gigs of songs, the iPod has room for 55 gigs.

iTunes has a preferences option to either manually manage the contents of the iPod or to set a playlist as the contents of your iPod.

My music library is well over 100GB so I created a playlist named "iPod" and set the iTunes preferences to sync this playlist onto my iPod. Now I just add or remove tracks from this playlist to control the contents of my iPod.

The details can be found here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93656

 

[uberfoto]

I think I have had that problem before. I made sure the iPod was completely empty by making an empty playlist it syncs with. Afterwards I think I had to eject the iPod and reboot it. After we played around with it for a few and deleted a bunch of songs (FAR under the max disc space), the playlist finally transferred over and we were able to add the rest of the songs.

 

[chopsuey158]

This is really obvious, but I thought I might suggest it anyway. Are you sure that it isn't trying to sinc videos and pictures as well? That could be where the extra space is coming from...

 

[Philosofy]

I'm not transferring any videos or pictures.

OK, it tried to copy the 50 gigs of songs over, but now says it can't copy them all (but most of them made it.) The iPod now has 55 gigs filled, but the checked songs are only 49.78 gigs. And when I try to eject the iPod, it says it can't, that it can't because it contains files in use by another application. This is getting frustrating: I never had a problem with my old iPod. Could there be something wrong with the refurb I got?

 

[mrichmon]

OK, it tried to copy the 50 gigs of songs over, but now says it can't copy them all (but most of them made it.) The iPod now has 55 gigs filled, but the checked songs are only 49.78 gigs. And when I try to eject the iPod, it says it can't, that it can't because it contains files in use by another application. This is getting frustrating: I never had a problem with my old iPod. Could there be something wrong with the refurb I got?

I would assume that you are simply running into problems because you are running out of space on the iPod. The iPod builds up index files and various other files so that the iPod can provide quick access to the music files. If you have some MP3 files with embedded cover art then these index files can easily end up being a few gigiabytes.

I'd try transfering only about 46GB into the iPod in one mass transfer, then top it up with a few tracks at a time if you really want the iPod completely full. Generally, you are better off not filling hard drives (and iPods) completely so that you don't run into this sort of problem when you continue to add and remove music from the iPod.

 

[uberfoto]

Are you using a PC or Mac?

 

[Philosofy]

Are you using a PC or Mac?

PC. I'm just stumped why 40 something gigs on a hard drive shows up as 55 gigs on the iPod. And this is an iTunes that was filling my old iPod perfectly.

 

[uberfoto]

When using my iPod on a PC, sometimes I would have to eject it through My Computer. iTunes wouldn't do it because something was tied to it somehow (I guess it's a Windows thing...)

Who knows what else is going in there. I guess it is possible part of the iPod disc is corrupt or claiming to be full already. Did you try erasing everything from the iPod before dumping the songs on it?