February 2nd, 2008
From iPod to iTunes
So you have a new computer and you want to copy all of your songs over from your iPod. Seems simple enough. You hook up your iPod, open iTunes, and grab the songs and drop them into your iTunes music collection. Except it won’t drop. It gives you the red circle with the slash when you bring your music over to iTunes. Maybe import will work? Nope. You can’t import from your iPod either. So how do you get your music to your new computer? There is software that you can download from the internet and some of it even costs money but you don’t need any of it. It’s actually easy, although unsupported by Apple.
Your iPod is just like a hardrive and when you open up “My Computer” your iPod is right there. It will be listed under “Removable Disk”. When you click on it, it will open and display a few folders but none of them will be your music. That’s because your music folders are hidden. But that’s not a problem. Go to the Tools menu item and select Folder Options… and a box will open with several tabs. Select the View tab. In the Advanced Settings section there will be an option for Hidden Files and Folders. Select the Show hidden files and folders radio buttton and then hit OK.
A new folder will now be displayed named iPod_Control. Open this folder and several new folders will be displayed including one named Music. Copy this folder to your \My Music\iTunes folder under your My Documents folder on your C: drive. This could take awhile depending on how much you have on your iPod. It took about 15 minutes to get all my music downloaded to my PC.
Right click on the folder you just created and select Properties. At the bottom of the window that opens, make sure that the Hidden and Read-Only checkboxes are unchecked, hit OK, and when it asks if it should apply this to all subfolders and files, hit OK. Almost done… Now open iTunes and from the menu select Menu>Add Folder to Library. Navigate to the folder you just downloaded and hit OK and iTunes will start loading your music. A couple of minutes later and you are done. Your computer now has a copy of every song that was on your iPod.
If you use these instructions, let me know how it goes by leaving a comment.
Elbog wrote,
Dude.
I wish you’da published this a month ago. Vicky got a new iMac, and learned what you learned. Then she spent the last month recopying her CD’s back to the new iTunes. I’m wondering, at the moment, if you can get to the hard drive in the iPod via the method you describe on a Mac, you did this in Windows, huh? Crud, it’d be easier even if you moved the files onto a Windows machine and shared the drive with the Mac, and imported it that way. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. . .
I’ll certainly keep this info handy, though, in any event.
Thanks!
Link | February 3rd, 2008 at 11:10 am
Lawnguylander wrote,
There’s another method I think is easier. Connect your ipod then click on it in itunes. Check the box that says “enable disk use”. Then you’ll be able to see all your music folders when you click on your ipod in the “my computer” window and you can start copying and pasting to your computer’s hard drive. You’ll also be able to use your ipod as a portable hard drive for any other kind of files so no need to get a flash drive.
And I’m sorry about your dog. That sucks.
Link | February 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am