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)
July 23rd, 2007 05:42
Dude omg thank you sooooo much! I spent hours trying to figure out how to do this and finally got it right after reading this! Thanks again!
July 20th, 2007 09:24
I HAVE VISTA!!!!!!
here’s what you do.
1.) after you plug in your iPod you click on my computer, look for your iPod in “devices with removable storage”.
2.) after u open that u click ‘organize’ in the top left hand corner’ for a drop down menu. then click on folder and search options.
3.)select the tab ‘view’ and in the advanced setting selections. select ’show hidden files and folders.’ click ok.
4.) then follow the same directions as above =)
p.s. if your just wanting to upload music from your iPod to your iTunes, just go through a long process of opening the folders, then ’selecting all’ of the files in the folder and dragging it into itunes music.
July 7th, 2007 04:08
how does the transfer work if you have vista?
July 6th, 2007 04:23
question: my “my computers” doesn’t show that my ipod is connected even when it is so i can’t open the file. how do i change this so i can load my music back on? let me know if u know how!
Thanks!
June 29th, 2007 10:47
Dude, thank you so much, my old computer got all 800 of my songs deleted and then I see this site and have them all back. Simple to do, and I can keep listening to my tunes THANKS MAN!
June 26th, 2007 22:38
Thank you sooo much. This is probably the best ipod advice i’ve had so far.
June 21st, 2007 10:33
My comp crashed which had already happened before and i had to download all my music again and i didnt want to go through that again so i found this and it was really simple and easy best part was i didnt have to download any other programs.
June 13th, 2007 08:51
hey dude, thank u very much for the info
May 21st, 2007 06:24
I am also looking for directions using Vista.
Thanks,
May 16th, 2007 12:13
Thanks for your help. My questions is when i followed the steps not all my music transferred over. Did i do somethng wrong? I am missing about half my music.
May 16th, 2007 03:58
can you tell me how to do this using Vista?? thanks!
May 4th, 2007 12:56
I got everything to copy except what I purchased off of ITunes….Really sucks too, that was over 500 songs and videos! I have Vista now (which sucks too). Anyway to get my purchased files to copy as well? They are in my Itunes folder but it says it isn’t authorized to copy, even though the computer is authorized…please help!
April 23rd, 2007 05:31
thank you
April 13th, 2007 06:16
this stuff works yoooo
April 12th, 2007 10:23
just got a new dell pc with vista…just wondering if this process will work with this new os
April 12th, 2007 08:25
Thanks so mcuh for the tips. We got a new PC in January, and I’ve been looking to transfer my music since then…this was really helpful, quick and easy! thanks!!
April 4th, 2007 08:46
I want to get my 2+yrs old iPod 4GB playlist off of my brother’s Dell PC laptop, and on to my new 4GB Nano and an eMac. Please advise…
March 30th, 2007 12:42
my hard drive crashed and most of my music was from my exes cds!
THANK YOU for sharing this info!
March 28th, 2007 08:21
wow. just wow. mad props to you. i was skeptical and this is seriously the simplest thing…. My hard drive crashed and my new comp has vista- which completely aufgafucks the hidden files plan to recover music… congratulations on being a mastermind. Thanks!!
March 28th, 2007 00:37
You are so my new best friend. Not only did this work like a charm, but the instructions were easy to follow, but they actually worked the way it said it would. THANK YOU!
March 21st, 2007 08:32
Seriously, I love you, whoever you are. My PC crashed today and apple basically told me I was SOL.
March 18th, 2007 02:35
ohh yeah. this was helpful because most of the stuff i have isn’t from a CD. mostly from different computers!
March 18th, 2007 02:33
wow i have been wanting to learn how to do this. i have tried so many different ways and could never figure how to do it! i didn’t even think it was possible! hahaha.
now i can pretty much do whatever i want with my music!
thanks bud!
March 17th, 2007 22:55
thanks, this truly helped me out….as said before, this saved me lots of time from re-ripping my cd’s, etc…the directions were nice and easy to follow, great work!
March 17th, 2007 13:31
omg i love this b/c i bought a new ipod a 80 gig and didnt feel like copying all 3000 songs so i conected both ipods and just transferd the folders from my old to new and now i dont have to go threw countless hours copying cds good job dude