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.
Related Articles
- Stream Music and Songs from PC to Remote Computer, iPhone or iPod Touch with Simplify Media
- Enable Copy and Transfer of Data with Zune to Use as Portable Hard Disk
- CopyTrans Review and Download to Copy or Restore From iPod/iPhone to PC
- Apple Announces iTunes Now No.2 Music Retailer In US
- Download Songs from Nokia Music Store
- Apple Announces iTunes Music Sales Top 5 Billion
- Increase and Speed Up Slow FireWire 1394 Copy and Transfer in Windows XP SP2
- Download Free iTunes 9 With Innovative Features (iTunes LP, Home Sharing And Genius Mixes)
- Slow File and Folder Copy, Move, Transfer or Delete Operation Speed Problem in Vista Fix
- Export, Copy and Transfer Hotmail Contacts to Gmail, Outlook or Another Account
Entries (RSS)
January 14th, 2008 00:11
Thanks for the tips…I already feel somehow Itunes is not as straight forward for new users …
January 13th, 2008 12:29
amazing- thanks for your help!
January 12th, 2008 03:39
Also I didn’t have iTune on any of the laptops I used.
HTH
January 12th, 2008 03:35
I copied my music from my ipod to my pc, copied them to the “my music folder” of course they have the F00 etc names but I cannot get them to add to my media player library. I select all the files and right click to add to media player list but only two songs copied over and the other files will not copy or play.
What did I do wrong? I have tried this on XP and Vista
January 11th, 2008 12:17
where is enable disk use?
my computer doesnt detect the ipod when i flug it in?
January 6th, 2008 12:06
[...] It is possible but not easy and would depend on how good you are with computers. Copy or Transfer Music and Songs from iPod to PC and Computer without iTunes
January 6th, 2008 01:58
Wow! Thanks so much!
January 1st, 2008 22:06
thanks
December 29th, 2007 09:13
anyone know a good way to convert from mp4 to mp3
December 9th, 2007 02:41
AMAZING. was all over the internet looking for a way. downloaded like a crapload of software AND tried manually. this was the only simple and working way. THANK YOU SO MUCH. XX
December 2nd, 2007 00:18
thnx alot bro..it helped alot
December 1st, 2007 12:21
im not gay or anything like that but i have to say i love u! XD u saved my life bro… thanks!
November 6th, 2007 11:21
ok. i did this and i have all my songs on my computer now but when i tried to sync it, it said it cant find any of my songs. so now i have no music on my ipod and 700 useless songs on my itunes. what can i do to get them back?
October 31st, 2007 06:54
while trying to copy my music to my PC it cannot copy hardly any of my songs. It keeps saying parameter is incorrect. any help please?!
October 29th, 2007 10:05
Thank you SOOOOOO much!
My computer crashed, and I lost everything, but I had 700+ songs on my ipod that I was able to save…
Thanks!!!
October 23rd, 2007 11:51
I’m using Vista. I understand your directions. However, I can not open up my ipod as a portable hard drive? It tells me “Application not found.”
I have checked the box “manually manage music and videos” in itunes, and the box “enable disk use” is also checked, but it is in shadow.
Any suggestions?
October 5th, 2007 10:30
Thank you so much, this really helped me save a lot of music.
September 22nd, 2007 04:56
When I try copy & paste it to my computer, after a few minutes of transferring I get a message saying that the parameter is incorrect. Then after that I get the same message every time I try to transfer any of the individual files (ie F05, F06, etc.). Any idea how to solve this?
September 20th, 2007 10:42
thanx i got a butt-load of good music off my girlfriends ipod with these steps
September 15th, 2007 11:32
this worked for me excellent
thank u very much
September 8th, 2007 01:17
thank you for the help. I called apple and they would not help me.
September 6th, 2007 09:17
thanx man i’ve been searching for this for a long time…thanx a lot
September 3rd, 2007 01:33
thnkx:D this helps alot!
September 3rd, 2007 00:02
THANK U VERY VERY MUCH
July 27th, 2007 07:53
Me & My friends have been karaoking with audicity and we have saved it to my computer.
I been looking around the intereet browser searching on how to get my audicity file into my itunes libaery. But you see im getting fed up with all the searching and Im hoping i can get some help on this
Highligter – Getting Files On My Desktop into Itunes Libary System.
Please reply
thank youuu