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)
March 12th, 2008 18:08
Thank you!
March 9th, 2008 12:24
thaks a ton a big help thanks thanks thanks
March 1st, 2008 19:49
I managed to back all my music to my PC as above but now when I tried to play music on my I-pod it says no music. Yet when I check on the computer the IPod shows 8GB of “other” which is the amount of music I backed up. Has something changed the format of the music on my IPod or why can mu IPod not see the music that remains there?
Any help much appreciated.
Thanks
Paul.
February 28th, 2008 06:58
Thank you thank you thank you….I have been searching soooo long and your method was so easy I really really really grateful! XXXX
February 27th, 2008 21:50
it works with iPod clasic, the thing is like u said the album titles have all got 4 letter names, and u have to go throught ht e whole list renaming them.
good thing in tile mode the details are still thre, it makes it a wee bit easier to rename, god that would take saoo long if u have 80gb of music like me
February 27th, 2008 13:40
for windows vista users, to get to hidden folders for the ipod:
organize > layout > menu bar (must be checked)
from there you can opt for all hidden folders to be shown from the tools option!
February 27th, 2008 00:13
To get to the hidden “ipod control” folder you have to press ALT. It will show the task bar that is also hidden and then you can proceed by choosing TOOLS>FOLDER OPTIONS>VIEW.
February 24th, 2008 20:42
Does this work for iPod Classic?
February 24th, 2008 10:56
Thank you so much for the help, I was here swearing off Vista for the 100th time today and then I saw Rahul’s reply, thanks : ) Linux here I come…
February 23rd, 2008 01:57
hey, that really helped! thanks a lot, i thought it was impossible to transfer the songs because i tried so many things which took ages! this has been very helpful
take care.
February 22nd, 2008 13:58
I have windows vista (which I am learning to hate) and I cannot follow the directions in this article.
How do I get to the ” Tools -> Folder Options -> View,”
Nothing happens when I right click in the toolbar area of the windows and the folders are all configured differently than the XP windows.
Can anyone help??
February 17th, 2008 07:35
AWESOME!
saved all my music
this rocks
February 15th, 2008 06:27
How do I get to tools>folder options>view
February 12th, 2008 15:02
Sara,
What OS do you have?
I was a little puzzled because its blatant on XP and everything else (tools) but on vista i couldn’t find it immediately. If you have vista, you click the arrow next to organize on the top left and go to folder and search options. click that and hit the view tab, and down in all that stuff youll find the show hidden files box.
February 10th, 2008 06:38
THANKS SO MUCH ! this is great ! i tried downloading some software to copy my songs from my ipod to my computer and it did nothing. this, i feel, is the greatest and easiest way to transfer music back to your computer, and even if there is the 4-letter cryptic file names, it automatically read the song so i didn’t have to rename each and every one. THANKS AGAIN ! (:
February 9th, 2008 07:21
Thank you soooo much I was losing my temper with it and about to give up and now its all sorted
cheers!!
February 8th, 2008 14:14
amazing man!!this is too goood!!i thought i wuld have to download some software or sumthing to do this task which i actually thought to be tedious! thanks so much dude!!!
February 3rd, 2008 04:54
You rule. Thanks so much. I remember doing this a while ago, but with this new computer I didn’t even think about hidden files…I thought they just updated security. Thanks again. you’re a life saver.
February 1st, 2008 08:21
I managed to get the files off my ipod onto my new vista computer. I then downloaded itunes, but when i clicked to add the folder it did not work, nothing was addedd. Importing works but i have to do the tracks one at a time…is there a quicker way?? my library has over 3000 songs :s thanks for you help!
January 31st, 2008 04:19
I got up to stage 5 but I cant find ‘tools’ anywhere? Help! What do i have to do?
January 29th, 2008 10:30
[...] think it’s true that if you can’t transfer the music via the iPod. – Copy or Transfer Music and Songs from iPod to PC and Computer without iTunes
January 22nd, 2008 00:23
tnk guy,i’ve thinked i have to buy back all my 11.890 songsXD
January 19th, 2008 08:27
Quality! saved me a lot of time n money ty v much !
January 19th, 2008 07:02
Thanks for the article. Solved my problem.
January 14th, 2008 19:09
I figured out how to get it to work on Windows Media Player. All of the files in my iPod were .m4a files I had to convert them to mp3 files. I downloaded a free file converter to do it.
Now i’m in the process of adding my music to my new Archos 604 wifi. woo hoo.