iTunes Protected ACC audio file
 

I have a we problem in that the songs that I have purchased from itunes are protected and thus won't play on my G4 ipod.

Is the only option to burn these songs to a CD and then rip them back into itunes? or is there an easier way. Please say there is.

Cheers

Darren

Edit, I forgot to mention that I am using a Mac

strip the protection I'd have thought. hymn-project will sort you out.

restore the ipod they should play fine on your iPod unless you have you music on 5 devices already?

Can you play these protected songs in iTunes? I know that when you attempt to play a protected song it will ask you to login to your iTunes account so it can authorize the files. If the file plays in iTunes without asking then it should also play on the iPod.

Matt does have a point about the five machine limit, but if that were the case then iTunes will alert you to this fact when you try and play the file and it asks for authorization. If you have used up the 5 device limit then there is an option to reset the device list, I think you get to do this maybe once or twice every year, for obvious reasons.

As for stripping the protection from the files, well Hymn might do it, though I'd had variable success with it, and I don't think it works for iTunes 7. One app I did use was NoteBurner. It's works by having a virtual CD drive, so you simply use iTunes burn option to burn to this virtual drive, it's a lot quicker than writing to an actual CD. Of course this method does rely on you being able to play the authorized content in the first place.
I've used noteburner to convert my m4p files into m4a simply so they'll play on my XMBC'd xbox.

Right, I can play the songs in iTunes and my ipod was playing these songs before yesterday, but not now. I have started a thread in Apple support and I got this reply...



Last night, my ipod was being a tad awkward. I re started the ipod (hold down menu and centre button) and then the ipod displayed an image of a folder with a exclamation mark next to it and a web address apple.com/support/ipod

It finally, started up this morning then I restored the ipod through iTunes.

Now the itunes is stuck syncing ipod at a certain song. All my songs are ACC audio files.

Is my ipod gone faulty??

Have a read of this and pop the iPod into diagnostic mode, plug it into a power source (if it's on via USB that should be fine), run the hard disk check and see what it reports back.

I've had the hard drive go on my iPod and it did behave in a similar fashion to yours, got a warning when I turned it on, then when syncing music to it, it would fail at various points. It was then time for a complete restore, and try another sync, which failed at a different point. I ran the drive diagnostic test and it reported the drive wasn't happy, so I purchased a 60GB drive for it and that addressed the issue.

What you may want to do is rip, for example, four CD's to iTunes, then try copying just those tracks to the ipod and see if it also fails. Depends on how long it takes to fail though, as it could get the tracks onto the good part of the disk, and the next thing you add hits the bad part.

Thats what I thought it might be the HD in side the ipod. I have deleted the song and album that it was stuck on and it is still stuck. Its on 1783 of 2956 songs.

I'll have a read through of that site you posted.

I did the tests and the HDD one came back passed.

Ok, here's a thought. If the iPod is being seen on the desktop as a disk then find your Music folder and manually copy the folder onto the iPod. This is simply to see if the whole folder will copy over. If it fails to copy the whole thing then it tells us one of two things, either the music files are messed up, or it's the iPod hard drive. To see if it's the former, then try copying a lot of other data onto the iPod, does not really matter what it is, as long as it's comprised of many files and folders, maybe an app installer (for example, if you have Office, pop in the Office CD, select everything at the root of the CD, copy it to a folder on the desktop, then copy that folder onto the iPod).
If this copy fails we can rule out it being the music files and I'd say it's the drive. If it does succeed then it would point to some of the music files being corrupt.

Thanks Markus. I'll have a go at that.

For some reason iTunes wanted to restore the ipod again saying it was corrupted. So I restored it, the 'no entry sign appeared with Do Not Disconnect underneath. Then the folder with the exclamation mark with apple.com/support/ipod Then the ipod logo appeared then itunes displayed a message saying itunes cannot read the ipod as it is corrupted and asked me to restore it again.

Just seen you're on a Mac (I should have asked before). So, iTunes is moaning (what a shock :D). Remove the iPod, then reattach it to the machine, making sure iTunes is not running. Fire up DiskUtility (in /Applications/Utilities folder) and, hopefully, the iPod will appear on the desktop, and more importantly, it'll appear as a disk in Disk Utility. At this point get DU to repair disk and see what errors are thrown up. It could just be it needs a little repair.

Another thing to try is to remove all USB/Firewire devices (except keyboard and mouse) and plug in the iPod on it's own, could be there is some device clash happening and causing the problems, doubtful, but worth a shot.

No it does show on the desktop at all, but it does show up in DU, but I can't/it won't let me do anything to the ipod :( I gather I want to use 'first aid'?

Ok, when you say it displays in DU but won't let you do anything, what exactly do you have selected in DU? If I recall it'll show the ipod and then indented underneath it will be the actual disk partition, which you'd need to select before you can do anything with it.

You are correct, you'd want to be on the First Aid tab, and then you can verify/repair the disk.

You might also want to try the erase option to format the iPod. If that throws an error then it's another sign the problem is with the disk.

As for replacing the disk, if you've ever replaced the battery then you're 90% there, it simply involves opening the case, pulling out the old disk and popping in a new one, firing up iTunes and using the Restore option.

Where to get a disk? eBay springs to mind, but also have a look for online places that specalise in ipod repair (I've used iPodDepot, mainly as they are canadian and local to me, so shipping and delivery times were low and quick respectivley) as they could well have used drives - hence why I have a 60GB disk in my 40GB 4th Gen iPod

This is all I get Markus

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...-/Picture2.png

as you can see in the DU I can do anything :wonder:

Ok, thanks for the shot, that is different from what I see:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y26...Picture2-2.png

Try this:
Select the "18.6 GB Apple Computer Inc" item, then select the Erase tab. Select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" as the format, leave the name at whatever it wants, ensure "Install Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers" is unchecked, if the option is available. Then click the Erase button.

See if that gives any errors. If so, it's the drive that is dying. If it works, unmount and then eject the iPod using DU's options for doing that, unplug it, then fire up iTunes, plug the iPod back in, see if iTunes picks it up. If it does it should see it as a new iPod. Now, make sure you do NOT let it automatically sync the iPod, when you get into iTunes you should hopefully see it displayed. At that point manually copy some tracks over to it. Try maybe 50 at a time, see if it copies them over ok. If it fails after a while, again, it's probably the disk.

Markus, you have been a wonderful help to me trying to get my iPod to work.

As soon as I connected the ipod I got this message:

Disc Insertion

The Disc you inserted was not readable by this computer

with the options
Initialze... Ignore Eject

I clicked on Ignore and I followed your instructions. It found no errors. unmounted the ipod and fired up itunes, the connected the ipod and it came up as a new ipod, so I named it then I selected 41 songs and copied them over. It did the first 3 songs just like that (cue Tommy Cooper voice) then it got to 4 and it is still stuck on 4 trying to update files on my ipod.

So does this mean my disc is fubar'ed ??

Anything else I could try just to confirm this?

I have just gone back into DU and done a repair disc and it came back with is report:

Verify and Repair disk “Darren's iPod”
Invalid Volume Header
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Invalid node structure
Invalid B-tree node size
Invalid node structure
Invalid B-tree node size
Volume check failed.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error

I'd say the drive is on it's last legs. Pretty sure when I had this problem, DU would sometimes report the disk was ok, and other times give the message you are seeing.

The next step is wether you want to go and get a new iPod, or just replace the drive in your current one. The actual replacement is pretty easy, so it's really just the cost of sourcing a new drive.

Thanks Markus.

I would like to keep this ipod for use in the car, so where did you suggest at getting a new disc for it and obviously how do I fit it?

Cheers
-Darren

I have found this how to:

Josh Highlands Blog » Blog Archive » replacing the hardrive of an ipod

just need to find a disc.

That how-to is pretty good. Also worth looking at are the installation videos here. I know they are for battery replacement, but it shows how to open the case and move stuff about, so it's worth a look.

As for where to get the disk, hmm, not too sure, as I ordered mine from iPodDepot, who are based in Canada. Have a google for somewhere in the UK that repairs iPods, as they may well have an iPod with a broken screen, but fully working hard drive.

Thanks for the video. I have found a site that does repairs in the UK

UK iPod Repairs

Sorry to bring this thread back to the top. I have ordered a new harddrive (at last), but now I need a tool to get the iPod apart. where can I get some from?

Don't worry now, I found some on ebay in the UK :)