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)
August 16th, 2009 07:17
I did everything up here and it worked pretty good, ive got all the songs (tons) into the “my music” folder the only problem is my Itunes will not put these songs into my itunes library for some stupid reason… i have tried everything. Anyone have an ideas?
August 15th, 2009 10:44
I was extremely frustrated at not being able to import songs they were not originally purcahsed from iTunes store off my iPod. All the instructions I found said I had to go back to my original computer and change some setting and re-sync. Well that’s great, except the reason I need to resync with a new computer is my old one died. I finally found MediaWidget and it imported everything off my iPod into iTunes. Brilliant. Why doesn’t Apple have this functionality in iTunes already. So annoying. (PS I have a iPod Nano current version 2009 and am using Windows Vista)
August 15th, 2009 07:28
Hey man, many thanks for you straight from Brazil. Helped me a lot recovering my Ipod library with such easy . Just let me know whenever you post Ipod tricks/stuff.
August 14th, 2009 18:15
I havn’t tried it yet, but if it works… XD
August 14th, 2009 06:45
OMG thanks, that is amazing, i couldnt believe it, transfered all my music now
:D:D cheers
August 14th, 2009 03:15
Muchas gracias por tu articulo, fue de mucha ayuda, para recuperar mi musica.
August 13th, 2009 06:42
Thank you so much for putting this up! It is very easy to follow unlike other sites (:
August 12th, 2009 09:14
OMG U ARE AWESOME!!!! I Love you!!!
August 10th, 2009 22:38
thank you VERY VERY much this is amazing.!
August 8th, 2009 18:52
THANK YOU SO MUCH
this has meant an additional 5000+ songs have been added to my itunes
you are amazing
August 7th, 2009 02:29
I have a 1st gen Nano – my comp says that I have to format it? any way to get around this since is says it will delete all files on the nano?
August 6th, 2009 04:23
were abouts is tools exactly i cant find it can someone explain where i have to go ?
August 4th, 2009 18:08
OMG THIS WORKED!!!!! I WAS DREADING HAVING TO CONTINUE TO LISTEN TO THE MUSIC THAT I CURRENTLY HAVE. NOT THAT IT’S BAD, BUT I WANTED TO BE ABLE TO ADD MORE AND THIS SERIOUSLY WORKED!!!!!!! OMG, I OWE YOU SO MUCH. THANK YOU SO MUCH.
July 31st, 2009 11:28
awsome thanks so much i’ve been seraching everywhere.
July 27th, 2009 04:03
Thank You thank you thank you!!! life saver!!
July 23rd, 2009 16:29
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July 23rd, 2009 15:00
Thank you SO much! My computer crashed and I lost all of my music, so this is a lifesaver!
July 22nd, 2009 03:24
this works with vista too…… thank you.
July 20th, 2009 12:27
u are a life saver thanks times a billion
July 16th, 2009 01:32
awesome very very thank you
July 12th, 2009 04:20
As a Computer Security Specialist, I would like to tell you that You’re an Intelligent Computer SP! Respect! Not everybody knows about your solution though!
Take care,
– Isabelle
July 10th, 2009 11:25
You are number 1!! thank you thank you
July 10th, 2009 05:29
I’m selling my ipod and the person who is buying it doesn’t like my type of music, so I wanted to save those songs on my ipod onto my itunes and so far this is working! Thank you!
July 9th, 2009 06:56
Thankyou very much.
This was very helpful!
Most other people say that you require software to do this but you have proven that you dont!
Thankyou!
July 5th, 2009 09:52
i was using a mac pc to craete the music on my ipod and now i want to transfer the music from the ipod to my windows pc.how can i do that ?