I am a GIANT jerk. Updated my iPhone and lost every single song somehow (all 600).

[moopdog]

I GUESS I must have agreed to this during the ridiculously long updating process that lasted about 2 hours. I SUPPOSE at one point I must have clicked okay when it asked "so....do you want to just go ahead and delete every song and every app you've ever purchased?". But I don't remember doing it and I don't know why it happened!

I am so distraught because the songs were not on my current, brand new computer, but the computer that DIED a sudden death about 3 weeks ago. Hence, I have really really really lost all of my music. I am only posting here because I am hoping my ignorant self can be saved somehow but some guru here....is there a way to retrieve the music? I'm thinking - not

 

[Marionnette]

I GUESS I must have agreed to this during the ridiculously long updating process that lasted about 2 hours. I SUPPOSE at one point I must have clicked okay when it asked "so....do you want to just go ahead and delete every song and every app you've ever purchased?". But I don't remember doing it and I don't know why it happened!

I am so distraught because the songs were not on my current, brand new computer, but the computer that DIED a sudden death about 3 weeks ago. Hence, I have really really really lost all of my music. I am only posting here because I am hoping my ignorant self can be saved somehow but some guru here....is there a way to retrieve the music? I'm thinking - not

If you purchased the songs and apps thru itunes, then you should be able to recover them the same way. All you need to do is open itunes on your new computer and use the same account as the one that was on the old computer. Do a google search for "recover itunes purchases" and you'll find lots of advice.

If the music was from another source such as CDs, you can take the DOA computer to a technician and have the data from the hard drive recovered. It is possible to pull the hard drive yourself and set it up as a slave drive on your existing computer. But to be honest, the process is more involved than most people want to get into.

 

[katman2540]

Do you still have the old computer? You may be able to pull the hard drive from it and recover stuff off the hard drive. A lot of times when computers or drives stop working its the boot up sector of the hard drive. If you connect it to another computer as a second drive you can boot up off the normal one and then access the old drive to transfer your data. Then you could recover all of youmusic from the old computer as well as pictures and other things. If you want any help in trying this let me know. Disney addict by night computer tech by day.

 

[artesian]

if you have the right version of software phone you can enable icloud. did this for my daughter and all her songs are a touch away now

 

[DawnM]

How does this make you a jerk?

A jerk is someone who does something malicious to someone else and doesn't care that they did it.

This was a simple (and fixable) mistake that you made.

I did the same thing on my ipod touch and am still trying to figure out how to download all my stuff without having to click on each ind. app to reload it.

I am on vacation at the moment, so I don't want to mess with it, but when I get home this is a priority.

Dawn

 

[Starseeker1221]

I have never needed to try this, but I have heard that if you contact iTunes and explain the problem, they will sometimes give you a one time "oops" fix and re-activate all the songs and apps you've previously purchased for download. It might be worth a try?

Good luck!

 

[tasha99]

I have never needed to try this, but I have heard that if you contact iTunes and explain the problem, they will sometimes give you a one time "oops" fix and re-activate all the songs and apps you've previously purchased for download. It might be worth a try?

Good luck!

Only one time? My amazon acct has everything I ever purchased digitally available for free redownloading.

 

[Plumeria9]

Did you try calling Apple Care and asking if anything can be done? Yikes! Good luck.

 

[torinsmom]

If there are on an old hard drive you still have, you can hook that drive up to your current computer and it will read like an external hard drive. The adapter looks like this...

http://www.amazon.com/USB-2-0-SATA-Converter-Cable/dp/B0018MCGVU

I have used mine many times when hard drives failed. It is really simple.

If you don't have the hard drive anymore, I don't know what you can do, unless they were downloaded to Itunes.

 

[Starseeker1221]

Only one time? My amazon acct has everything I ever purchased digitally available for free redownloading.

I think the iTunes songs/apps are only ever allowed a single download that can be transferred/played from multiple devices, and so its always a bit more limited than those things bought through amazon. I do love the ability to download things multiple times from amazon, though!

 

[diznee25]

I have never needed to try this, but I have heard that if you contact iTunes and explain the problem, they will sometimes give you a one time "oops" fix and re-activate all the songs and apps you've previously purchased for download. It might be worth a try?

Good luck!

Yes, we have done this before....the Apple techs were very quick about restoring everything I purchased on Itunes.

I can also say they have done this more than once for me, so I don't think they have a "one time" rule.

diznee25

 

[matt and beth]

Did you update to the new iOS 5.0 when this happened? I had a similar problem this week with my iPad and the new update. It lost all the songs that were not already on my computer's iTunes account. Very frustrating and also having problems with the 3G portion of iPad not fully loading websites. My wife is not allowed to update her iPad until they get some fixes to the problems.

 

[emma'smom]

But iCloud places all of my purchased music on my iPhone, iTouch, iPad, and Macbook... at once. They are all linked to ONE account though....maybe that's the difference. If this is the case, the OP should have any re-installing issue...

I think the iTunes songs/apps are only ever allowed a single download that can be transferred/played from multiple devices, and so its always a bit more limited than those things bought through amazon. I do love the ability to download things multiple times from amazon, though!

 

[Jey12]

Do you still have the old computer? You may be able to pull the hard drive from it and recover stuff off the hard drive. A lot of times when computers or drives stop working its the boot up sector of the hard drive. If you connect it to another computer as a second drive you can boot up off the normal one and then access the old drive to transfer your data. Then you could recover all of youmusic from the old computer as well as pictures and other things. If you want any help in trying this let me know. Disney addict by night computer tech by day.

I know I'm not the OP but I had this exact same thing happen to me! I was ok with losing the songs, it didn't make me happy but compared to losing my pictures the songs weren't that important. I was a huge moron and kept my daughter's entire life from age 2-5 in files on the comp. I just saved the SD cards and figured that was a good back up. Yeah well a month before my comp died I had the SD cards with me at a friends house, stopped by the store on my way home, forgot to lock the car and someone stole them with some cd's! Ok no big deal, I'll just back up the pics on the comp on Cd. I never got around to it, one lightening storm later, a power surge and then a dead comp and I'm sitting there in tears. Bestbuy wants a mint just to look at the old comp and I'm afraid to ask how much they'd charge to pull the pics off of my old hard drive. If there's a way to pull those pics off of my old comp by just connecting it to my new one I would love you forever! Not in a creepy way, but more in an eternally grateful one.

The only good part of this whole mess was I had just finally gotten around to burning a friend a complete set of cd's for all of our vacation pictures on a Disney cruise last year. I have all of my new pics on an external hard drive now and they are backed up at an online site as well. No chances this time, but I'd love to have my old pics back!

 

[Leshaface]

The same thing happened to me when I updated my iPhone and lost all my pictures.

BUT, there is a free download called iExplorer. Download that, plug your phone in, and it shows you all the files you had downloaded onto your phone. I went through all the files, and ended up finding ALL my photos that I thought I had lost, in a completely different area on my phone. It was a lifesaver!

 

[torinsmom]

I know I'm not the OP but I had this exact same thing happen to me! I was ok with losing the songs, it didn't make me happy but compared to losing my pictures the songs weren't that important. I was a huge moron and kept my daughter's entire life from age 2-5 in files on the comp. I just saved the SD cards and figured that was a good back up. Yeah well a month before my comp died I had the SD cards with me at a friends house, stopped by the store on my way home, forgot to lock the car and someone stole them with some cd's! Ok no big deal, I'll just back up the pics on the comp on Cd. I never got around to it, one lightening storm later, a power surge and then a dead comp and I'm sitting there in tears. Bestbuy wants a mint just to look at the old comp and I'm afraid to ask how much they'd charge to pull the pics off of my old hard drive. If there's a way to pull those pics off of my old comp by just connecting it to my new one I would love you forever! Not in a creepy way, but more in an eternally grateful one.

The only good part of this whole mess was I had just finally gotten around to burning a friend a complete set of cd's for all of our vacation pictures on a Disney cruise last year. I have all of my new pics on an external hard drive now and they are backed up at an online site as well. No chances this time, but I'd love to have my old pics back!

Look at post #9. If you buy that adapter(less than $7), you should be able to attach your old hard drive to your new computer and see what's still on there. You could also find a small computer business and pay them to get the data off. It would take me maybe an hour at most to transfer the data to a new computer, and that would mostly be the time it takes to copy the files. I paid someone to do this for me the first time. I want to say it was $75 to get all my pictures and files off and transferred to CDs.

 

[PiperPizzaz]

It probably backed it up if you were just hitting yes. Check out this thread maybe it will help you out. One time I lost pictures and was able to find them hidden on my computer.

 

[RitaE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starseeker1221 View Post
I think the iTunes songs/apps are only ever allowed a single download that can be transferred/played from multiple devices, and so its always a bit more limited than those things bought through amazon. I do love the ability to download things multiple times from amazon, though!

A couple of people have mention it, but I'm really afraid this information is getting lost in this thread

But the new iCLOUD service makes all past purchases from iTunes re-downloadable for everybody - not just the OP. My husband has been recovering music he purchased a long, long time ago and has lost through various computer crashes. So if the items you have lost were purchased through iTunes, you can redownload them. This is a major change from the past and many people don't realize that it has changed. There's no need now to go through all the tricks of trying to recover from an old hard drive or getting the software which allows you to explore you iThing. Just go redownload.

open iTunes
Choose Store
Purchased
Down in the right hand corner you will see "Download Previous Purchases"
Choose that and go get your songs and stuff

The same is true for Amazon music. It goes into your Amazon cloud drive and you can re-download it.

That doesn't help for photos or any other personal items you had stored on your iPhone, but as for your iTunes music - no biggie.

 

[hipchickie]

I have never personally used this, but a friend highly recommends it http://www.recovermyipod.com/

Not sure if it would work in your case, but figured I would pas sit along

 

[Diegosmom]

Quote:



A couple of people have mention it, but I'm really afraid this information is getting lost in this thread

But the new iCLOUD service makes all past purchases from iTunes re-downloadable for everybody - not just the OP. My husband has been recovering music he purchased a long, long time ago and has lost through various computer crashes. So if the items you have lost were purchased through iTunes, you can redownload them. This is a major change from the past and many people don't realize that it has changed. There's no need now to go through all the tricks of trying to recover from an old hard drive or getting the software which allows you to explore you iThing. Just go redownload.

open iTunes
Choose Store
Purchased
Down in the right hand corner you will see "Download Previous Purchases"
Choose that and go get your songs and stuff

The same is true for Amazon music. It goes into your Amazon cloud drive and you can re-download it.

That doesn't help for photos or any other personal items you had stored on your iPhone, but as for your iTunes music - no biggie.

Thank you...hubby has been thru a few ipods (lost/stollen etc) and we have had like 3 computers and I am thinking about getting him an itouch but was thinking he would have to pay for everything again but I guess not...this is awesome thanks!!!!