MM overwrote my music collection...

[Cami]

I'm devastated. I knew using an alpha had its risks, but I never thought it woud be this painful.

I synched the changes made on my iPod back to my PC. Horrendous mistake. MM overwrote thousands of tracks with other tracks' info and content. This means, if I had to songs, one song "A" and one song "B", I ended up with two songs "B". Song "A" lost forever.
I'm still evaluating the damages.
I can't generate a log because there's no way I'll be repeating the procedure again .

[moloch]

That really is bad news. I choose to not even try to synchronize from the iPod to the HDD, as the iPod doesn't allow the deletion of tracks, and no considerable change will ever be made there. What made you try this? Do you know something I don't? Is it possible to delete tracks from the iPod?

[Cami]

I did it just to update the ratings from the songs. I always give a 1 star rating to songs that I need to edit, let's say, the artist is mispelled or something.

It isn't possible, as to where I know, to delete tracks on the Ipod.

And yes, it is really bad news....

[rusty]

Cami,

I hope you're having some luck recovering your data. We've not yet been able to replicate the situation that you seem to describe, but take this report very seriously.

I'm trying to better understand what happened:

Are you saying that you have a collection of X tracks on your PC, and that your iPod has a subset of Y of those tracks?

And then you synched the tracks on your iPod and this resulted in changes to tracks on your PC that were not among the Y tracks on your iPod (i.e. MM tried to synch the rating information that you'd modified on the iPod back to the PC, but instead of synching this data to the correct tracks, MM synched the data to the wrong tracks, so now you have all of your tracks, but a bunch of them have incorrect metadata)?

Many thanks.

-Rusty

[Cami]

Cami,

I hope you're having some luck recovering your data. We've not yet been able to replicate the situation that you seem to describe, but take this report very seriously.

I'm trying to better understand what happened:

Are you saying that you have a collection of X tracks on your PC, and that your iPod has a subset of Y of those tracks?

Yes, that is correct.

And then you synched the tracks on your iPod and this resulted in changes to tracks on your PC that were not among the Y tracks on your iPod.

No, the files that suffered changes were among the Y tracks on my iPod. MM didn't touch the X minus Y tracks that only existed on the PC.

(i.e. MM tried to synch the rating information that you'd modified on the iPod back to the PC, but instead of synching this data to the correct tracks, MM synched the data to the wrong tracks, so now you have all of your tracks, but a bunch of them have incorrect metadata)?

Unfortunately, that is not the case. MM tried to synch the rating information that I'd modified on the iPod back to the PC, but instead of synching this data to the correct tracks, MM synched the data to the wrong tracks, not just the metadata, but the song itself.

Example:

I had the track "Duel of the Fates" from Star Wars EP 1 and the track "Help!" from the Beatles. When I synched from the iPod back to the PC, the 2 tracks had swapped. The one contained in the file C:\My Music\SW\Duel of the Fates.mp3 was in fact "Help!" from the Beatles (and correctly tagged in the metadata to be it); and the song contained in C:\My Music\The Beatles\Help.mp3, was no one other but "Duel of the Fates" from SW!

This swapping also ocurred on the iPod itself, so doing a re-synch didn't solve the problem.

The second, more serious issue, is that some song weren't just swapped; one of them was overwritten by the other, so I ended up with two equal songs but with different filenames.

Using the aforementioned example, it would be like both Duel of the Fates.mp3 and Help!.mp3 contained only Help! from the Beatles.

I'm slowly getting back my tracks,
thank you for your concern.

- Cami

[mjs93]

That is just awful, I'm so sorry! I hope you are able to rebuild your collection again without TOO much difficulty.

[jiri]

Cami,

do you mean that you had 'Auto-Synchronize tracks from the device to the PC' option enabled, probably without confirmations?

Could you please also add some details regarding other configuration you used, mainly 'Synchronize tracks to:' mask and settings from 'Device configuration' sheet.

Thanks,
Jiri

[Cami]

Jiri,

I had 'Auto-Synchronize tracks from the device to the PC' with confirmations. I chose "Yes to all" in the message dialog, assuming the songs synchronized would be the right ones. Then I left the room, and when I came back... oh, the massacre.

Other configurations:
Synchronize tracks to: <Artist:10>-<Title:15>

Compatibility Settings:
Force iTunes-style folders Checked
Trim path Checked

On Rebuild Device Database
Update Database Based on Newly Added Tracks

Allow Device Filesystem Browsing Unchecked

That's all.

Cami

[Guest]

I'm a little lost, doesn't it automatically sync ratings back from the iPod to MM without checking 'Auto-Synchronize tracks from the device to the PC' ? (Haven't downloaded it with iPod support yet)

[Guest]

Sorry, wanted to clarify the post I just wrote above. What I meant to say is that isn't the new version of MM supposed to sync ratings back just like iTunes does? I don't understand how such a disaster happened if all you were doing was syncing back certain info, like ratings, like this version is supposed to allow you to do?

[jiri]

To clarify some things: Yes, MM automatically synchronizes updated ratings and playcount from iPod to PC when you synchronize, the bi-directional synchronization isn't needed for this. This option is only useful for some specific cases, e.g. when you modify the tracks on another computer.

As for the Cami's problem, I'm not sure how could this happen, anyway I'll review some options how to make this part as safe as possible so that noone could encounter anything like this again.

Jiri

[Cami]

Well, thank you Jiri, and thanks for your concern, msj93
I've recovered most of my tracks by now... Good thing I kept back-ups of the better ones!

[Guest]

err, i've just had a problem with this too. the thing is i don't even want to use this feature, i just installed the latest release, then saw a new icon in the tree menu and clicked it. apparently this was an mp3 player and it displayed a load of songs i had never heard of, so i presumed my sister's mp3 player was plugged in or something

i looked round the back of the pc, and nothing was there, so firstly i'm not sure how it thought this mp3 player was here. secondly, it started to move all my tracks onto this phantom mp3 player. not copy, move. so i've lost a load. the ones it did move seem to be random too, some A's, some B's, some P's etc.

so firstly is there any way to get these back? and secondly is this meant to happen? as i say i have no interest in the mp3 player side of things and only clicked on the unlabelled icon, nothing else. there wasn't even an mp3 player plugged in!

[tim]

sorry that last post was me. so i've just restarted and now all the tracks have reappeared again. so i'm relieved but i have no idea what the mp3 player was that appeared, unless it was my webcam's photo storage thing?

oh well, i won't be clicking that icon again!