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)
September 30th, 2009 02:50
Awesome!!! thanks….
September 28th, 2009 18:27
You have saved my musical LIFE! My xternal h’drive died on me. This was soooooooooo easy!!! For those having probs…..just click on ‘my computer’ then choose your Ipod then ‘organise’ then ‘folder and search options’ then ‘view’ look down to where it says “Hidden files and Folders” and make sure you have “Show hidden files and folders” ticked.
Then click OK and go back to your Ipod window and it should have “Ipod control”.
September 28th, 2009 06:07
This way might take a while, if you have itunes you kinda need it, i dont know but go to computer/my computer and click on your ipod icon thing. Go to your search box and search a,b,c,etc. every letter of the alphabet and each letter there should be something with an itunes music icon and it has 4 letter names and if you double click on those it plays the song and tells you the name on the song player. =DDDDD
September 25th, 2009 09:53
Excuse me…..i cannot find tools after i click the ipod icon…can somebody please help me out??
September 24th, 2009 07:20
i did all the steps ( i have vista and a first generation ipod touch ), but the ‘ipod control’ folder still does not show up
September 22nd, 2009 13:51
worked awsome thanks
September 22nd, 2009 10:48
hi dude thks for the post, it had helped me a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!
September 18th, 2009 16:24
OH MY GOD YOU ARE A LIFESAVER!!!!
September 11th, 2009 18:03
Trick doesn’t work on my PC.
I use CopyTrans Manager instead.
September 11th, 2009 00:42
Great help thanks, really easy to follow walk through. Just one thing i would like to add for users who aren’t sure: There isn’t a tools option on vista pc’s so just look under organize and folder and search options.
Thanks guys!!!!!!!!!
September 9th, 2009 10:55
Thanx, Worked Perfectly!
Thankyou!
So Smart!
I am so glad that I Now have all my Ipod Music!
September 5th, 2009 12:10
SOLUTIONS TO SOME PROBLEMS ON VISTA
thanks, i couldn’t get it to work at first, but i found if you leave the option up when you first plug in your ipod, and itunes asks if you want to transfer music lib, just keep that window up, don’t answer it yet, and then bring up my computer and the ipod is there,
and i was also having trouble finding TOOLs, so i typed “folder options” into the start search when you click the four colored Windows logo in bottom left, it brings up that menu at the top of this box, the rest is pretty much taken care of
September 3rd, 2009 19:54
ALternatively, if you cannot find the ‘tools’ option, it’s easy to search for the folder ‘ipod control’ and select the option to show hidden files and folders and it should come up.
This is brilliant, thankyou so much!
September 3rd, 2009 11:55
Thank you very very much! it worked perfectly!
September 1st, 2009 08:07
For those of you who can’t find the “tools” button:
Go to start -> control panel -> Classic view -> Folder options. Then you can go to show hidden files. Hope this helps the vista users!
September 1st, 2009 01:41
Diolch yn fawr! (Thanks!)
August 31st, 2009 02:16
THANK YOUU!!!!!!!!!!!! you surely are the best! <3
August 30th, 2009 08:53
THANK YOU SOO MUCH!
and guys, if it doesnt show up after you enable the “show hidden files” thingie, just unplug it and replug it. if itunes pops up tho, it automatically closes my computer.
so to fix that, open itunes and have your ipod in, then under your ipod “summary” it has like four check boxes, and one is automatically open itunes when ipod is connected. just uncheck that and click apply or whatever the button is.
again thank you soooo much
August 27th, 2009 14:30
dude i transfered everything but now i cant play any of the songs cuz it says it cant locate the files for them what do i do??
August 24th, 2009 05:08
thnks alot dude really helped move my music back to my pc
August 23rd, 2009 00:13
Oh no!
When I connect my ipod it dosent recognise it as a hard drive and dosent come up! What should I do!?
August 20th, 2009 11:27
when i plug any ipod in, itunes opens up automatically.
how do i make that not happen ?
help.. please
August 19th, 2009 04:06
Thank you soooooooooo much, my computer crashed and i had over 500 songs and videos and now their all back, my life is saved.
August 17th, 2009 21:39
I am sad.. ): I got as far as the “go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View, and then check (enable) the option “Show hidden files and folders.” it just wouldn’t show up..saddd
August 16th, 2009 11:23
dude!!!!!!!! where is tools at????