External HDD w/ all my music crashed

[Princess]

My external hard drive crashed (Cavalry brand in case you are curious) the other night. ALL 80GB of my music was on it. My laptop only has a 60GB HDD. Anyhow, go figure, the backup device failed and despite all my efforts (except paying some forensic guys $300-$500) I have not been able to recover anything.

So, the good news is that I have 99% of my music on my Zune. The problem is that when I try and reverse sync it to my new external HDD, nothing happens. In the zune settings I have specified a "My Music" folder on my new external HDD. Then, in the zune software I go to Device then Music and I highlight everything that is on my Zune and drag it down to the little computer in the bottom left. So far, the only thing that has happened is that it has backed up 1 Michael Jackson song I didn't even know I had. Nothing else. It says Sync Status 100%.

Now, what I think may be the problem, although I'm not sure, is that I haven't cleared out my collection in the zune software which I believe would still reference the old songs on my old dead external HDD. But, I'm hesitating to clear all that out as I'm somewhat apprehensive of nuking my only backup of all my music which is on my Zune. Also along those lines, I spent a good 15 hours organizing the music so that I wouldn't have 200+ mini genres that are essentially useless as well as a bunch of songs that were just named incorrectly. So, ideally what I would like to do is to be able to maintain all of my genres and renamed files, if at all possible, and be able to reverse sync my music back to my new drive, but I have no idea if that is even possible or how to do it.

And to make matters worse, I'm leaving the country at 4am PST on Wednesday so of course I don't have time to go back through and redo all of my work.

I really do appreciate any help, even if it isn't the answer I'm hoping for. :cry1: Thanks.

[Jason Dunn]

My external hard drive crashed (Cavalry brand in case you are curious) the other night. ALL 80GB of my music was on it.

Ouch. Hard drive crashes suck! You mentioned that you had some sort of backup solution, but it didn't work, so let me suggest a service that I use called Mozy (http://www.mozy.com/?ref=3f9a896b&kbid=30184&m=4&i=75) [Affiliate]. It works out to less than $5/month, which is basically the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee, and works really well. Best of all, it works all on its own. The initial upload will take a while though with 80 GB of music...

Now, what I think may be the problem, although I'm not sure, is that I haven't cleared out my collection in the zune software which I believe would still reference the old songs on my old dead external HDD.

Yes, I think that's exactly the problem. Here's what you should do:

1) Connect your Zune
2) Go into SETTINGS > DEVICE
3) Under the first section, Sync Options, you'll see a button called FORGET THIS DEVICE. Click on that. This will remove the sync relationship between your Zune and your laptop.
4) Disconnect your Zune
5) Shut down and re-start the Zune software. Delete all the music in the Zune software library, telling the Zune software to remove the tracks
6) Connect your Zune. If you deleted the partnership, it will connect as a guest
7) Drag and drop the music from your Zune back into your collection

Please let me know if this works. :)

[Princess]

So it sounds like I'm out of luck then for keeping all of my new song genres and renamed songs then?

[Jason Dunn]

So it sounds like I'm out of luck then for keeping all of my new song genres and renamed songs then?

The metadata of the songs on your Zune should be an exact match for the songs that you lost on your external drive - when you restore your music, it should be EXACTLY as it was before.

[Princess]

So, if my Zune isn't quite up to date with my now extinct collection in the Zune software, there is no way to, for lack of a better term, merge the updated info over onto the redownloaded songs? I'm guessing that I'm out of luck, but I have sort of taken precautions.

What I've done right now is actually just use someone else's computer to copy everything onto my hard drive. It's working on it right now and looks good so far.

Once it is done, I'll probably just bring my laptop in and use my old collection in the zune software on that to fix and update things manually by just looking back and forth between the two computers and make sure to update the Zune. At that point I'll clear out the extinct collection on my laptop. Unless there is a better way that I'm not thinking of.

[Jason Dunn]

So, if my Zune isn't quite up to date with my now extinct collection in the Zune software, there is no way to, for lack of a better term, merge the updated info over onto the redownloaded songs? I'm guessing that I'm out of luck, but I have sort of taken precautions.

But you said that your Zune software didn't actually have any songs in it - that they were all broken. That mean that there's no metadata there, only pointers to songs that had metadata. If you did a bunch of work on the metadata, but never synced your Zune and the external hard drive crashed, then yeah, it's all gone.

Once it is done, I'll probably just bring my laptop in and use my old collection in the zune software on that to fix and update things manually by just looking back and forth between the two computers and make sure to update the Zune. At that point I'll clear out the extinct collection on my laptop. Unless there is a better way that I'm not thinking of.

I'm afriad you've lost me - I was under the impression that your external hard drive, which contained your entire music collection, crashed and it was all gone. If that's not the case, then I've misunderstood this entire discussion. :o

[Princess]

You've understood correctly I've just been a bit obtuse. In the outside hopes that there actually was some data in the extinct collection in the zune software I was hoping that I could move that over. But, as you indicate all of the info that I updated was stored in the metadata in the .mp3's on the dead drive, and I hadn't synched it up like I needed to. So, basically I've got a bunch of info in the software that is useless. :( But, since I still have it all sorted in the software I can at least use that as a guide to get me back to where I was.

For instance, I can see in the extinct collection what something was classified under and I can just go and put it right back under there in the real collection on the other computer. But, I can only do that because I have access to a 2nd computer.

I was just being overly optimistic. :)