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:
- Insert your iPod to a Windows PC USB or FireWire port. (PC should runs Windows XP or other Windows operating system).
- 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.
- Open My Computer or Windows Explorer, the iPod should be automatically detected as a portable hard drive.
- Click on the iPod icon or the iPod portable hard drive letter to open the contents of the drive.
- 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.”
- Open the “iPod Control” folder, and then the Music folder.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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Entries (RSS)
April 13th, 2009 01:52
wow, you just saved me!! lol thank you so much
April 12th, 2009 22:33
A million Thanks.
April 4th, 2009 19:07
cheers for this mate, been looking for a way to do this since my hard drive crashed n burned, worked a treat!!
just one note, if any one can’t find the folder options in vista, then click ‘organise’ on the top left then ‘folder & search options’
cheers!
March 29th, 2009 09:36
hey! that really helped me!
but another question… do you know how to upload photos from a ipod to your computer? If you do, can you please tell me?
thanks
March 26th, 2009 11:34
THIZZ REALLY HELPED ME ALOT!!! THANKS!!!
March 26th, 2009 11:33
OMGGG IM HORNY!!!
March 26th, 2009 11:32
WACKKKK!!!1
March 25th, 2009 01:12
wow, this was brilliant. simple, clear, to the point and truthful. iTunes help was practically good for nothing, but I knew I could trust the good ‘ole internet to solve my problem, and this article truly saved the day!
a big thanks also to warren wright, whose little commentary saved me from a frustrating time trying to import hidden files onto Itunes library… now they’re all there and it couldn’t have been easier!
thanks again!
March 23rd, 2009 17:40
Hi
i am tray to connect my ipod nano(4th generation)
in windopw xp but its ask me for restore it
i dont know what i have to do for this …
if i restore then i will ost all my data…
so please help me to treanfer song in my ipod from my harddisk
Thanks
Trushal
March 22nd, 2009 11:46
MEN ! u should be given an award
March 21st, 2009 00:08
thanks so much!you’ve been a lot of help!
March 17th, 2009 02:46
Oh my god . THANK YOU
It worked perfectly .
March 15th, 2009 23:46
thak you. you expLained very i thought i wouLd be stuck downLoading one of those transfer from ipod to itune things .
March 15th, 2009 02:51
Thank you so much…This was really easy and you explain it so great. Did want to have to delete all my songs.
Tks again…
March 14th, 2009 03:12
Thank you so much, oddly enough the Apple person on the phone told me to google copying songs to the computer and I would’ve had to download software to do it. This is amazing!!!!!
March 7th, 2009 15:17
i have windows vista and in my computer folder it just says Apple Ipod.. I NEED HELP PLEASE ASAP
March 4th, 2009 16:09
You’re A G!
March 4th, 2009 03:11
thank u so much!!! computer crashed and really didnt want to lose all the music from my ipod!!!
March 1st, 2009 06:00
i have windows vista but there is no tools option in my computer.Is there any way around it?
March 1st, 2009 00:10
thank you for posting this! it really works and you’ve helped me a LOT!
February 23rd, 2009 20:08
I picked CopyTrans among those quoted in this article and…WOW I don’t regret it at all.
Before using the program, I was worried about transferring my iPod’s content to iTunes but I must admit CopyTrans really saved my bacon steamlessly.
Thanks!
February 18th, 2009 11:06
Thank u soooo much, u totally saved me
February 18th, 2009 07:20
You Are a Genius.!
February 17th, 2009 05:29
hi. I just tried what you said and it worked perfectly. I’ve been trying to transfer music from my ipod to my computer (since I formatted it and lost all my music) and thanks to you now I have
thank you so so so much
February 12th, 2009 03:32
WOW … thank you so much for this info. This even works when you want to merge music from multiple ipods. Awesome tip.. Thanks again.