I never thought I'd live up to my name, but here I am.

:cheesy:

This is the first Mac i purchased because I was tired of Windows Blue Screens of Death. This is another story. I purchased an iPod 60 G about a year ago from a guy on Ebay. The iPod was to be pre-loaded with a thousand songs, a few movies etc. and I paid extra for this. I do make a back up of the pod as it arrives. Fast foward a few months.

I've synched my pod with my laptop. Everything is fine. I even purchase a bunch of TV series, music etc. and after a while I get a message from my laptop saying, your memory is running out.

No problem I think. I purchase an external hard drive, move all my pics aswell as iTunes music folder onto the external drive. I had no idea it was going to cause such major problems.

Now my problem is this - I have some music on the external drive that isn't on my pod. I have stuff on my pod that isn't on my mac. I have new stuff I purchased sitting on my mac and cannot update my pod because it "resets" everything because it reads my ipod/itunes set up as new and removes all my music.

In summation, I have 3 useless mechanisms for my music. How do I bring it all together without losing everything, especially the new TV series that I purchased? I am so frustrated!

I would appreciate any suggestions, really!!!!

:rolleyes:

wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

First of all, the most important thing to do is back up the data on your iPod. Although Apple tries to prevent it, it is possible to transfer music from your iPod to your computer for legitimate reasons. I suggest the open-source program iLinkPod to do this job.

Follow the instructions on the website, and you should be fine.

Once the files are transferred to your hard drive, you should immediately add them to iTunes (usually the easiest way to do this is by starting iTunes and pressing Apple-'O'). Finally, ensure that all the files you actually want on your iPod are added to iTunes, and not simply sitting on the hard disk.

Once you're sure of this, you can simply proceed by resyncing your iPod, and you should have all your media on your hard drive mirrored on your iPod.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the advice. I'm running into further probs that I do not know how to solve. Example - CD's aren't large enough to contain the episodes of the TV shows I've purchased so how do I back it up?

iTunes is keeping the record labels happy with all their protection and copyright of songs issues but for the consumer, iPod and iTunes are a complicated pain in the ass that take a lot of the fun out it!

If your Mac is equipped with a SuperDrive (DVD burner), you could always back up your data to a DVD instead of a regular CD. Also, try backing up to multiple CDs. Several TV shows can surely fit on a single CD, so keep filling up CDs until your entire collection is backed up.

I'll get my butt to the store and purchase some DVDs. The CDs just aren't big enough. I will be working on your recommendations and REALLY appreciate you taking the time to help out. You're a doll!

I leave for an overseas trip on Monday so don't have much time so if I disappear in the midst of your kind help, please forgive me.

ps You're the best!