Doing The Prep Work

This may sound obvious, but before you begin, you will want to round up all of your iPods and their cords. iPods tend to accrue as we upgrade, so unless you traded in or gave them away, now is a really good time to find them. They may have hidden gems that you were not listening to (or watching) recently, that you do want to keep in your collection in general. While you are at it, dig up any old CDs you have with media you want to add to your collection or external storage (such as flash drives) with parts of your media library on them. This will lead to maximum restoration of your files.

[feedomit][/feedomit]

Importing From Your iPod

Now, you can plug in your first iPod. When you do so, iTunes will open automatically and you should get a pop up window with your syncing options. Choose “Transfer Purchases”

If you are adding to a new system, or you needed a complete reinstall of the OS, you will have to re-authorize the computer. Choose “Authorize” and enter your username and password for iTunes. Remember, if you copy your songs back from a friend with similar music tastes, you will need to use their login to authorize and not your own.

The automatic transfer should happen now.

Eject this iPod when the transfer is complete and repeat with any other iPods you happen to own.

Note to iTouch users: In some cases, when a library was wiped but the software is intact, you may have to follow a bit of a different procedure. Once you plug in and open iTunes you will see tabs labeled with titles like “Music”, “Movies” and “TV Shows”. Check the box next to the word sync in each media category, then click on the button labeled “Sync” in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. This will sync your library to the system.

Importing From A Flash Drive

Plug in your drive. When it appears on your desktop, double click it to open the drive. Double click on the songs that you want. When iTunes opens to play them, a box will appear asking if you want to “Add to Library”. Click on “Ok” and your songs will import.

Importing from Your CD’s

I know, if you have an iPod, you probably don’t have a large CD collection, but get out what you do have and get ready to import. This will take the longest, and work only for your music, but it will get back things you cannot retrieve any other way. Insert your CD into the slot. If iTunes is not still open, it will open again and take you to the disks information. Click on the words “Import Disk” and the songs will be copied to your library.

There you have it, as good of a restoration as you are going to get from external media sources. If you had a real favorite that you just cannot restore, you should ask apple to let you re-download it. Just be ready to prove (with your digital receipt) that you own it, and know that asking is a bit of a shot in the dark. Sometimes it is a yes and sometimes it is a no, depending on how much you want to re-download and your proof.

Next time, back up your files please.

Related Posts:

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• A Comprehensive Guide to iTunes U [iOS]
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• Keep Your Music Library Synced Across Multiple Computers With iTunes Match

In the past, the dirty but effective way to access the iPhone from your Linux system is via SSH. This requires you to jailbreak your phone and it voids the warranty. With iFuse, you can now mount your iPhone/iPod Touch under Linux with just a USB cable. You can also view/edit/cut/copy/paste the file just like any USB disk drive.

Installation

Open up your terminal, type the following to open up your APT sources file

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Insert the following lines to the end of the file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonabeck/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonabeck/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

The above is assuming that you are using Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty). For any other version, simply replace the jaunty by the respective version name (hardy, intrepid, karmic etc)

Save and close the file.

Back in the terminal:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com F0876AC9
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ifuse

Once the installation is done, connect your iPhone to your computer via the USB cable.

Open up your Nautilus. You should see the iPhone/iPod entry at the side pane. This show that it is already mounted in your system.

Click on the entry to view the filesystem.

Things that you can do

1. View/copy/download photos.

You can now manage the photos that you have taken with your iPhone without iTunes.

2. Create folders, upload/download files

You can now use your iPhone as a USB drive and use it for file storage. To allow confusion/conflict with the other system files, it is best to create a custom folder (and name it My Folder) and store all your files there.

3. Managing address book/calendar (upcoming)

Work is underway to sync the contact data with Conduit.

What you cannot do now

Manage your music database

Apple uses a cryptographic signing algorithm to encrypt all the music files. While you can access the music folder, there is no way that you can transfer your music over and get it to work in your iPhone.

Note:
1. iFuse is not Ubuntu-specific app. It works for most Linux distro as well.

2. Mac users can also use iPhoneDisk to achieve similar functionality.

Related Posts:

• How To Sync iPod Touch With Win XP Virtual Machine In Ubuntu Intrepid
• How to Integrate Skype With Ubuntu Unity
• How to Install Java Runtime In Ubuntu 12.04
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In my system I store backups and archived data to the external drive, mostly items that I don’t plan to access frequently.  That being said, there is no reason why it couldn’t be a little quicker when I am using it.  Windows Vista has a little known tweak that will speed up your external USB hard drives and I’m going to show you how to do it.

The trick to improving the external drive’s performance is in something called Write Caching.  The PC Guide defines write caching as:

Caching reads from the hard disk and caching writes to the hard disk are similar in some ways, but very different in others. They are the same in their overall objective: to decouple the fast PC from the slow mechanics of the hard disk. The key difference is that a write involves a change to the hard disk, while a read does not.

When write caching is enabled, when the system sends a write to the hard disk, the logic circuit records the write in its much faster cache, and then immediately sends back an acknowledgement to the operating system saying, in essence, “all done!” The rest of the system can then proceed on its merry way without having to sit around waiting for the actuator to position and the disk to spin, and so on. This is called write-back caching, because the data is stored in the cache and only “written back” to the platters later on.

Due to the fact that caching tells the operating system that it is done even though it isn’t, there is always the potential for data loss if power is cut.  The screenshots below show the warning that explains the you must use the Safely Remove Hardware feature to disconnect the drive.  Failing to do so could cause data loss.  It is also recommended to have your computer connected to an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to assist with unexpected power outages.

Now that the education piece is out of the way, here is how to speed up your external USB drives in Windows Vista.

Start by opening the Control Panel, then open Device Manager.  Expand Disk Drives and locate your portable drive.

In my example, I’m using a Western Digital 300 GB external drive.  Double-click the external drive that you want to adjust to access the properties window.

Once open, click on the Policies tab and select the Optimize for performance radio button.  Click Ok to save your changes.  You should see a prompt like the one below advising you to reboot.

The settings won’t actually take effect until you reboot your computer.  Once the reboot is complete you’re done!  Wasn’t that easy?

Related Posts:

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