Copy or Transfer Music and Songs from iPod to PC and Computer without iTunes

To protect the copyrights of the songs, musics and videos stored on iPod and reduce piracy, Apple has make it difficult to copy or transfer the songs, musics, audio, videos and files that stored on iPod to personal computer (PC) or laptop notebook computer, by scrambling the file names of the songs on the iPod and telling the operating system that the files should be invisible to normal users, without any encryption involved in this iPod anti-copying mechanism.

iTunes allows only one-way synchronization of musics from computer to iPod, so if for whatever reasons such as need to reload your library on local hard disk due to desktop hard disk failure or buying new computer, you can easily copy back the video, music and song library from iPod on a Windows PC by following steps:

  1. Insert your iPod to a Windows PC USB or FireWire port. (PC should runs Windows XP or other Windows operating system).
  2. If your Windows PC still doesn’t have iTunes installed, skip this step. If iTunes is already installed and prompt a message on whether if you’d like to associate this iPod with this computer and deleting its content, click No. Or else you will lose your only copy of library on iTunes. Beside, ensure that ‘Enable Disk Use’ is selected.
  3. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer, the iPod should be automatically detected as a portable hard drive.
  4. Click on the iPod icon or the iPod portable hard drive letter to open the contents of the drive.
  5. If you don’t see a folder called “iPod Control”, it’s hidden and invisible. To unhidden it so that it’s visible, go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View, and then check (enable) the option “Show hidden files and folders.”
  6. Open the “iPod Control” folder, and then the Music folder.
  7. The Music folder contains the iPod’s music and videos, divided into folders. Copy the library to local computer hard drive’s My Music folder.
  8. The files copied have unintelligible four-letter file names. To reveal the names of the songs and other data tags, add the files to the Windows Media Player or iTunes libraries or switch to “Tiles” view in Windows Explorer.
  9. Rename the file if necessary.

Beside above manual ways to copy and transfer song library from iPod to computer, or import into iTunes, there are several third party program or more commonly called iPod Manager that has the iPod copying function such as SharePod (freeware) or PodPlus (shareware).

Similarly, in Macintosh running MacOS X or MacOS 9, it’s harder to show hidden files and folders. So these third party utilities with iPod copying will be useful to transfer files and music from iPod to PC’s hard disk and iTunes library.

For MacOS X, try Broken Helix and Rob’s iPod Exporter. For MacOS 9, try escapePod and iProber. Other iPod Manager or iPod song transfer utility for Mac include Senuti, iPodRid, iPod.iTunes and PodWorks. For Linux, try GUIPod. PodUtil will be able to works on both Windows and Mac platform.

The transferred music will be playable without any restrictions if the songs are ripped from CDs. If the songs or videos are bought from the iTunes music store, they will play in iTunes after you have “authorize” the computer. To authorize, try playing a purchased file. It will prompt you for your iTunes username and password. Up to five computers can be authorized at any one time.


This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 1:35 am and is filed under Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

337 Responses to “Copy or Transfer Music and Songs from iPod to PC and Computer without iTunes”

Pages: [14] 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 … 1 » Show All

  1. g.wms
    November 22nd, 2009 10:45
    337

    thanks for you help!

  2. Chris
    November 16th, 2009 11:02
    336

    all the steps worked for me till i try clicking on ipod controls then it tells me to choose a program to open it, what program do i use to open it??

  3. Dara
    November 13th, 2009 13:43
    335

    just click on show hidden folders then it will say sumtin bout sub folders nd put yes then the IPOD CONTROL folder will apear then right cick on it and go to properties then it says HIDDEN at the bottom and theres a check UNCHECK itthen click OK the just make a copy on to the MUSIC section on your computer then go go itunes and yeah read the directions the guy wrote nd take it from there HOPE I HELPED

  4. Dara
    November 13th, 2009 13:37
    334

    If you cant find TOOLS go to were it says ORGANIZE ant then PROPERTIES and then you can take it from there

  5. Jeremy
    November 8th, 2009 05:25
    333

    you failed at telling us where ‘tools’ was. fail.

  6. annoyed
    November 4th, 2009 12:07
    332

    This does not work. I have ipod connected, and folder options are set to ’show hidden files and folders’ but the folders (calendars, contacts, ipod_control, photos) do not exist on my ipod. yes I have a lot of music on my ipod and it works just fine, but the folders you are talking about are not there.

  7. Josh
    November 1st, 2009 09:16
    331

    I’m running windows 7 and just did this. It worked and the files were transferred, but I can’t get the real file names (songs/artists) to show up even after switching to tiles view. I’m also having trouble transferring the folder to itunes. Anybody else having these problems?

  8. caroline
    October 31st, 2009 03:27
    330

    yes, this does work for windows vista
    it’s harder to find the tools box with vista
    i can’t remeber how i managed to unhide the folders
    have done all that but can’t seem to actualy put the songs onto itunes?!
    any help?!

  9. Quinton
    October 26th, 2009 13:55
    329

    you forgot a step or Im just lost. If I cant see the music, where do I go fo the step:Tools -> Folder Options -> View,

  10. Bert
    October 20th, 2009 23:17
    328

    just 1 question does this also work for vista processors?

  11. Jerrika
    October 15th, 2009 09:40
    327

    Thank you so much! Our computer had to have it’s hard drive restarted to the basic form so I lost everything, but this was amazing! Now I don’t have to spend hours uploading all of my cds again! Thanks again

  12. Manisha
    October 13th, 2009 01:56
    326

    this is perfect! your instructions are simple, clear & easy to follow even for a layman. I’m euphoric !

Pages: [14] 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 … 1 » Show All

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