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)
December 26th, 2008 09:10
hey…its me again. i just wanted to be the 200th response.
December 26th, 2008 08:59
Thankyou s0o0o0o much! youre a natural genius!
December 26th, 2008 03:43
I have windows vista and a itouch and when i try to uncover hidden files itt wont alow
any help ???
December 22nd, 2008 18:29
Wow….
it is AWESOME!!! I thought ipod is oneway – i mean you can only load the songs to it – never can do the reverse ( from ipod to PC)…
it is simply great!! now i feel my 9GB songs are safe!!!
thanks again…. keep up this good job!!!
December 19th, 2008 18:52
Yes, Debbie, you can transfer what you’ve got on your Nano to your iPod Touch. Just Use this app to transfer all your Nano music to itunes and then sync the second ipod
December 18th, 2008 21:09
I am forever in your debt
December 14th, 2008 02:14
I’m slightly iPod challenged — but learning ! Is it possible to transfer from my Nano to an iPod Touch ?
December 9th, 2008 23:14
I did that and it worked well, but when I goto play my music on another player like Windows, there would onlybe a 4letter code for each song, like JKCH or something like that. Now I have thousands of songs with that code. Is there any software to decode these songs?
December 4th, 2008 21:48
Great!!! Thanks! It a good list you give!
I use CopyTrans and this app Rocks! It even copied my playlists, videos and artworks!!! you could include it!
Five stars man!!!
November 30th, 2008 08:29
AHHH I LOVE THIS ARTICLE!!!
it works;;;it takes a while if u have like 1500 songs to backup but oh man its worth it. the four letters scared me. but once i uploaded it on itunes the names came back. BOOKMARKING THIS!! thnks so much
November 28th, 2008 13:15
I used something called ipod to pc to help me, it also works well and simpe to use.
For Mac users, you’d better use a iPod to PC transfer for Mac
November 26th, 2008 18:00
Thank you for this, works perfectly and its easy to use! Awesome!
November 24th, 2008 23:52
Not works on my computer!! I can not find the iPod control folder. I downloaded ipod to computer sender to get my music back. I’m using the free version, but it works fine.
November 24th, 2008 14:14
you are my hero! for real.
November 15th, 2008 20:27
great! it works! =)
November 10th, 2008 09:26
My computer couldnt detect the ipod removable disk icon, no matter how many time I unplugged the uSB cable and connect it to the computer again. There’s just no J: or G: nor anything of that sort. What do I do?
btw, i’m using ipod touch.
November 6th, 2008 06:23
Thanks .
you’re my life .
(: !
November 3rd, 2008 07:09
Damn, you are the best, you rock, awesome, and everything nice!!!!
Thanks you!!!!!
November 3rd, 2008 02:25
to make the hidden file visible it says to go to tools-folder options-view…. Where is this? Where is tools?
November 1st, 2008 19:34
yo bro i tried these steps but when i uploaded the songs again in my ipod they get stucked in between when i am playing it…. spo tell me something about that?
November 1st, 2008 16:38
AMAZING, IT REALLY WORKS, IF I KNEW THIS BEFORE I WOULD OF SAVE A LOT OF TIME DOWNLOADING SONGS I HAD IN MY IPOD. THANK YOU. YOU ARE THE BEST.
October 31st, 2008 13:23
Awesome!!!
I would never have figured that out on my own, worked great!
THANKYOU!
xx
October 29th, 2008 02:53
hey thanks for the advise it work like a charm
October 25th, 2008 07:53
I have an Ipod with a bunch of music. I am not sure what happened but my MacPro laptop’s itunes some how was empty one day??? as if I had never used it or loaded anything on it, my iPhoto did the same thing. My question is, How can I take all the songs from the iPod and reload them? I can reload all purchased songs from iTunes but I also have some music from CDs that I loaded. Is there a way to retrieve music from iPod and put it back on my laptop or on my new iMac?
Thanks
Greg
October 24th, 2008 06:07
Thanks so much… you ROCK… it worked perfectly!
Much appreciation