Comments on: iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPhone

By: Nick La Riviere

Nick La Riviere — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:13:08 +0000

I’ve had a frustrating morning dealing with this problem (was going to go for a bike ride, but instead spent the whole morning fixing this piece of crap), and now that I think I’ve made it work properly AND restore my music again without having to restore and unjailbreak my phone, I thought I’d summarize the steps to fix this problem for the next poor sucker who the phone craps out on.

This assumes that your phone is already jailbroken (I wonder if anyone who has a non-jailbroken phone ever experiences this problem?).

1) On a Mac using Cyberduck or a PC using WinSCP, view the files on your iPhone (google SSH Cyberduck iPhone if you need help with this step)

2) Navigate to /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/
and delete the file iTunesDB

At this point, iTunes will no longer give you the error message BUT, your music, ringtones, podcasts will still be taking up space on your iPhone but your iPhone won’t try to read them and iTunes won’t see them. The solution is the next step.

3) In Cyberduck (or WinSCP) navigate to /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music and delete all of the folders in the Music directory

4) Go back one level to /private/var/mobile/Media and go to the Ringtones directory and delete them too.

5) Close iTunes and open it again, allow your iPhone to sync again. It should copy all your music, podcasts, and videos back to your phone, though depending on how much you have, it could take a while.

6) If you have Ringtones in your iTunes and they’re not going back on your phone after all of this, plug your phone in and select the iPhone in Devices in iTunes and click the Ringtones tab. Deselect ’sync ringtones’ and it will display a message warning you that all ringtones will be removed from you phone. Accept that and click ‘apply’. After the phone has finished syncing, select ‘Sync Ringtones’ again and click apply. Allow it to sync. That successfully put the ringtones back on my phone.

I did this on March 6th 2010 on a Jailbroken 3G 16 gig running the 3.1.2 OS and it worked fine. Good luck with your own phones, I hope this works for you and I summarized the instructions clearly enough.

By: milan jain

milan jain — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:03:34 +0000

dear sir,

With reference to this post i without looking to the other post i deleted MEDIA folder completly after doing that the itunes issue was resolved but i have another problem the Camera Icon, Ipod icon, Sms Icon are hidden when i use an application to unhide it so that the same is seen on the springboard but it could not be seen when i try to put in a folder created by categories i can see only sms icon and i can use it but not the other two can someone help me

By: KAZ

KAZ — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:06:07 +0000

I also had this problem of itunes not being able to read the contents of my iphone 3gs 16gb. at first bosaka’s fix didnt work! I discovered because I am using iTunes 9+ you also have to delete iTunesCDB file aswell as iTunesDB file. Both of these are found in: /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/. I also deleted files in: /private/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/Music.
Hope this helps!

By: Irfan

Irfan — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:07:02 +0000

i did as bosaka had recommended. it did work for me but the only glitch is that previously i had 3.70 Gb free with the same stuff, but now it has shrunken to 1.55 gb.
itunes shows Other as 3.29 Gb whereas i hadnt added anything after the problem started.
is there a sort of backup for the deleted itunes database. how can i recover the lost space

By: BlackICE

BlackICE — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:31:52 +0000

Nice! it really does work.

thanks a lot………..

By: Long Beach Kid

Long Beach Kid — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:49:30 +0000

thanx alot bosaka!!! dammmm u saved my life….

i used diskaid to delete itunesDB and music… its free on download.com

By: paul

paul — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:23:46 +0000

thank you.. and i mean it!

By: yeaa

yeaa — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:21:47 +0000

bosaka’s way is perfect, but if for someone it wont help just delete itunes_control and itunes will read your iphone and just restore from your backup which is done everytime you connect your iphone

By: me

me — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:58:09 +0000

this kicks ass! thank you, it worked! I had to do a quick tutorial on ssh ( http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/03/accessing-files-on-your-iphone-a-guide-to-sshsftp-for-windows-users-jailbreak/ ) but it worked!

By: Zibest

Zibest — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:20:34 +0000

To Pris:
You can delete iTunes CDB too if you’re using iTunes 9+ on your computer.

To all: Every solution works fine but:
1) Bouyaka’s trick will make your device readable again but will delete ALL your media.
2) Not only “the best”’s solution will make your device readable but also all your media will be recovered.

And additional trick is the following (on OS 3+, itunes 9+).
There is a folder named “backup” in your media folder.
/User/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes/iTunes Library.itlp/DBTemp/Backup
Browse thru it and you’ll find the last back up of your iTunesDB or iTunesCDB file. Just copy it from there to /User/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes

Hmmm you also know that /User means private/var/mobile/