General

[Talfuchre]

I may have lost my hard drive and I want to get my songs BACK off my I-Pod.

I have been reading about some manual methods and some automated methods (using freeware).

Who has 1st hand experience with this process - what did you use and how did it work.

I have a PC and will be running Windows XP.

Thanks,

TF

[Fluff]

Winamp will do the trick. Failing that Ipod agent or something similiar

[jimmybass300]

Simple answer. yamipod.com. Works great and its free.

You can do it manually, and I'll explain how, but if you ever wanted to move individual songs rather than the entire contents of your iPod, it would be useless.

1. Plug in iPod

2. Go into you control panel and click on folder options

3. I think there is a view tab you may have to click, but I may be wrong. (Can't remember and I'm running a Mac right now so I can't check) There should be a option box that says show hidden folders. Click it so it will show them.

4. Now, right click on start and hit explore.

5. Go into your ipod and there is a hidden file that say music. Go into the music file and there should be a bunch of files that say FXX where the X's represent numbers.

6. Copy all those folders to wherever you want to store them on your computer.

7. Open iTunes and import them like you normally would.

8. Listen

[Be4life182]

Let me know if these dont work for you, I did it for my girlfriend a while ago and know a pretty easy way to do it.

[Talfuchre]

JimmyBass explained the way I have been reading about. I will see if my hard drive is toast and then give that a try.

Why Apple does not realize that we simply want a 2 way MP3 player i have no idea? I hate that paternalistic crap. Every last one of my songs are legal and if not for a hard drive failure would not even be worrying about this.

TF

[netsurferdude2]

I use IpodCopy and Ipod2PC both are great ipod ripping programs

[Jaan]

Sometimes if you contact Apple and tell them the situation, they'll let you re-download the songs you paid for. Sorry, this is second hand knowledge (my friend did this), not first hand. My bad

[DarkStar]

The benifit of those programs is that they will preserve the file names of the mp3 files. If you rip it directly they will all have wierd random names.

I used this to save the music off my dad's ipod: iPodRip

-MR

[Wycke]

Originally Posted by Talfuchre

Why Apple does not realize that we simply want a 2 way MP3 player i have no idea? I hate that paternalistic crap. Every last one of my songs are legal and if not for a hard drive failure would not even be worrying about this.

TF

It's a liability thing. If they made it that easy to copy files from the iPod to a computer, those damn copyright folks would shut 'em down like THAT (author snaps fingers).

And, if you have a lot of songs purchased from the iTunes store, you should be able to re-download them again once you establish the connection to your account, though you might need to "de-authorize" your old computer before you can d/l 'em.

[Kindred]

Check out anapod explorer from Red Chair software.
I use it instead of iTunes.
It allows you to copy any music or videos from the iPod to a computer.
Costs about $30 and is worth every penny.

Anapod, Notmad Explorer™ Music made easy. MP3 Software. iPod Software, iPod Backup, iTunes Alternative, iPod Transfer, iPod Management, iPod Explorer, iPod Manager, iTunes Replacement. Software for Creative MP3 Players, Creative Nomad Software, Creat