Why you should never unplug you iPod until it is unmounted and how to fix it if you do.

Ok, stupid moment. I unplugged my iPod as Amarok was writing the iTunesDB file. crap. So now, my music is there, I just don’t know where it is. I am posting the solution that I have found for Linux and Amarok.

Amarok complains that it can not find an iTunesDB file (it is actually there, just corrupted) and wont mount it.

Solution:

1) Unmount, remount.
Amarok is nice enough to make a backup before any changes. Try and replace the current iTunesDB file with the backup.

1a) if you are getting a read-only error message, unmount and run:

sudo dosfsck -a /dev/ and remount.

2) Open up Amarok, look for a “Stale and Orphaned” option. This will take some time. Once it is done, Amarok will display a list of files.

3) Once that is done, right click and “add to database”.

And there you have it, a completely recovered iPod in under 5 minutes.

And now, to let Google get this information to the masses.

2 Responses to “Why you should never unplug you iPod until it is unmounted and how to fix it if you do.”


  1. 1 Susie

    Thanks, I did the same thing and this solution worked. =) And yes, I found this by google, haha.

  2. 2 Kenny

    Yip, we’ve all done it.

    PC users in general just aren’t used to this “undocking” malarky that they face when using an iPod/iTunes/PC type set up.

    I’ve got a mac and even I forget to undock stuff sometimes!

    Good advice, thanks for your post.

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