Music from Ipod to PC?

5T3PH3N

Hi, i had to restart my PC to shipping condition and i backed the music/pics and stuff all up on a HDD but now the files won't open at all when i restored them so i want to get the music from my Ipod to my PC. Is there any way i can do this?

Thanks in advance, Stephen.

segasega

Lucky for you there is. You'll need to search around for a program to do it as iTunes wont. Think there is one called iDump.

Sam Vimes

this worked for me a few weeks ago:
Method 1: Windows - Free, Down & Dirty

Unusually enough, this is one place Windows users have an advantage over Mac users. If you have a Windows formatted iPod, Windows actually treats it as a removable drive, and you can go in and copy the files off if you know where to look.

Here’s how:

1. Connect your iPod — Warning! if iTunes loads when you plug in your iPod, and is set to automatically sync your entire library (erasing your iPod), you MUST stop it — hit the little “X” in the upper right hand corner of the window.
2. Open your iPod — It should show up on “My Computer” as a “Mobile Device”; right click and choose “Explore”. Alternatively, go to the Control Panel, Portable Media Devices, and double-click your iPod.
3. Unhide the files — By default, Windows hides hidden files and folders (thus the name). Go to Options (in the Tools menu), and on the View tab, check “Show Hidden Files and Folders”.
4. Find the Music — The music is stored (in current iPods) in the directory “\iPod_Control\Music”. This may have a lot of odd looking stuff in it — it doesn’t matter; select everything and drag and drop them to a folder on your hard drive.
5. Configure iTunes — Go into iTunes Preferences, and under the Advanced tab, check “Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to the library” (settings move around a bit between versions of iTunes, but these settings will be there somewhere).
6. Add Your Files — In iTunes, select File, Add Folder to Library, and select the folder where you copied the files from your iPod. Alternatively, just drag and drop this folder onto iTunes

Once you’ve done that, iTunes should sort out the files from the iPod folder structure, put the artist and album information back from the ID3 tags in the music files, and reorganize the whole thing in the iTunes library folder.

The one caveat with this is that what you won’t get back is any “metadata” that isn’t stored in the files themselves, such as ratings, play counts, last played and modified information, etc.

It’s also very difficult to select individual files or groups of files doing this, as it’s not terribly obvious which file is which just looking at them in the way the iPod stores them.

Last but not least, I’ve never seen (nor read about) this trick being tried with any of the “new” iTunes data types, such as pictures, video, games, etc., so I don’t know how well it would work to retrieve that information, nor whether this will retrieve purchases from iTunes Music Store intact.