iTunes cannot read the contents of the iphone

imranarif22 · 09-30-2010, 04:49 AM

HELP! My iTunes isn't recognizing my iphone so I cant back up. It pops up with a message saying itunes cannot read the contents of my iphone. It's telling me to restore via itunes but I dont want to lose my messages and other settings I have. (I havn't backed up for a while so I'll still lose alot if I restore from backup after restore)

I'm running on iphone 4 on 4.0.1 jailbroken via jailbreakme.

I have already tried deleting the itunesDB file and media folder via SSH but no success.

PLEASE CAN SOME ONE HELP!

basicreece · 09-30-2010, 05:00 AM

Yep just got same error today out of no where, anyone help us out?

imranarif22 · 09-30-2010, 12:51 PM

iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPhone

If you connect your iPhone to iTunes and get the message "iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPhone," you can easily fix this by removing or renaming the /var/mobile/Media directory:
$ ssh root@iphone
Password:
$ mv /var/mobile/Media /var/mobile/Media.aside

OR
$ rm -r /var/mobile/Media
After this you should be able to sync from iTunes again. Note that it will create the /var/mobile/Media hierarchy from scratch, and you will lose any music, videos, and photos currently on the phone.

From gtkpod - FAQ

My last backup was on the 9/9/10 so I lost about 3 weeks of data but I guess I didn't have to do a full restore.

multipazz · 09-30-2010, 01:13 PM

you could try one of the iphone browsers..

Phoneview / pod to mac / touch copy .. there are plenty of them in the software section...

basicreece · 10-01-2010, 03:08 AM

i used iFile went to /var/mobile/media/itunes_control/itunes

Then i deleted "itunesDB" & the 2 other files above this (cant remeber what they were)

Plugged into itunes, worked fine, just had to re-sync to get music etc back

tiltsux · 10-01-2010, 06:25 AM

1) Close iTunes
2) SSH into /private/var/mobile/Media/ and rename the iTunes_Control folder
3) Start iTunes and it should prompt you to configure a new device or restore from backup > chose configure new.... and it will rebuild the iTunesDB
4) You can now either re-sync your music from your machine, or if you don't have a backup, you can use the iTunes_Control that you renamed in step 2 to recover the data.

clokwise · 10-20-2010, 02:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tiltsux

1) Close iTunes
2) SSH into /private/var/mobile/Media/ and rename the iTunes_Control folder
3) Start iTunes and it should prompt you to configure a new device or restore from backup > chose configure new.... and it will rebuild the iTunesDB
4) You can now either re-sync your music from your machine, or if you don't have a backup, you can use the iTunes_Control that you renamed in step 2 to recover the data.

I got this error message after using the free "Copy_Trans" program to copy a few music files to my iphone 3gs OS4.1 itunes 10 Windows.

I followed steps above but after restore i had lost all music and had to resync from my HD using itunes.

tiltsux · 10-20-2010, 04:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by clokwise

I got this error message after using the free "Copy_Trans" program to copy a few music files to my iphone 3gs OS4.1 itunes 10 Windows.

I followed steps above but after restore i had lost all music and had to resync from my HD using itunes.

I said in my post that you will need to re-sync from your machine or the old backup..

Quote:

4) You can now either re-sync your music from your machine, or if you don't have a backup, you can use the iTunes_Control that you renamed in step 2 to recover the data.