Article
Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide
By Jesse David Hollington
Contributing Editor
Published: Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Category: iPod 201 Tutorials
Transferring Purchased Content—What iTunes can do for you
With iTunes 7, you can now transfer purchased tracks (ie, those purchased from the iTunes Store) from your iPod back to your computer. This includes both traditional DRM-protected iTunes Store tracks as well as the newer “iTunes Plus” DRM-free tracks. Note that iTunes 7.3 or later is required to transfer iTunes Plus tracks.
Unfortunately, this is presently an all-or-nothing deal—there’s no way to transfer back specific purchased tracks on an individual basis. Rather, this option will transfer back ALL purchased tracks that the current iTunes library is authorized to play (and that do not already exist in the iTunes library).
To use this feature, the computer you are transferring the purchased tracks to must first be authorized with the same iTunes Store account that was used to purchase this content in the first place. If you are setting up a new iTunes library, you can ensure that it has been properly authorized by selecting Authorize Computer from the Store menu in iTunes, and then entering your iTunes Store account user name and password.
Once the computer has been authorized, the “Transfer Purchases” option can be used to copy any purchased tracks that are on your iPod but not in the current iTunes library back to your computer. This option can either be found on the iTunes File menu, or by right-clicking on your iPod in the iTunes source list and choosing it from the context menu:
If you are connecting your iPod to a new iTunes library, the automatic sync warning shown earlier will actually show “Transfer Purchases” as an additional option:
In this case, clicking the “Transfer Purchases” button will transfer any purchased content from your iPod instead of performing an automatic synchronization. Once the purchased music has been copied back to your iTunes library, the iPod will remain connected, but no automatic sync will run.
Further, if you find yourself in a situation where you’ve accidentally removed some purchased tracks from your iTunes library, you don’t need to worry about overriding the automatic sync process—iTunes will detect that there are purchased tracks on the iPod that are not present in your iTunes library, and notify you of this, asking you what you want to do about it:
Selecting “Transfer” will naturally transfer those purchased tracks that are missing back into your iTunes library. On the other hand, if you’ve deleted these purchased tracks intentionally, the “Don’t Transfer” option should be selected to erase these tracks from your iPod as well.
Note that metadata such as ratings and play counts for these purchased tracks will also be transferred from your iPod to your iTunes library as part of this process.
Ultimately this feature can be useful for recovering a few purchased tracks at a time, and may even be useful for disaster recovery for users with relatively small iTunes libraries containing only a handful of ripped CDs and some purchased tracks. Since any CDs you own can be re-ripped into your iTunes library, and purchased tracks can be transferred back from your iPod, this feature offers a reasonable compromise for people with small libraries that only consist of these two types of content.
Further, this feature can also provide a very useful way to transfer purchased iTunes tracks between more than one authorized computer. Simply connect your iPod to the second computer and select the “Transfer Purchases” option to reverse-sync your purchased music from your iPod. For those users who keep all of their purchased music on their iPod, this can provide an effective way of keeping all purchased music in sync between two or more iTunes libraries.
Purchases made on the device...
If you’re using an iPhone, iPod touch or Apple TV, you can actually purchase content directly on these devices themselves, either through the iTunes WiFi Store (iPhone and iPod touch), or through the various store menus on the Apple TV 2.0 interface (note that Apple TV v1.x did not allow for purchasing content directly from the device).
The good news is that you don’t need to worry about transferring this content back manually by using “Transfer Purchases.” When you sync one of these devices with your iTunes library, it will automatically detect any content you’ve purchased on the device and transfer it back for you automatically. As an added bonus, device-specific “Purchased” playlists are created to help you keep track of this:
These work in much the same way as the default “Purchased” playlist. If you don’t want them kept around, you can delete them yourself and they will automatically be re-created the next time any music is purchased on another device and transferred back to iTunes.
The Brute-Force Approach—Copying your Media Back Manually
As described previously, with the traditional iPod models your media content itself is actually just copied to your iPod as an external hard disk, and stored in a hidden directory on the iPod itself. This means that for the more experienced and/or adventurous users, you can actually copy your tracks back manually from your iPod to your computer simply by accessing it as an external hard disk.
Note that if you’re not the sort of person who is comfortable working within the innards of your file system, then feel free to skip this section and move on to the Third-Party Software section below.
The downside to this approach is that this will not allow you to retrieve iTunes-specific information like playlists, ratings, play counts, skip counts, last played dates and last skipped dates, but you will be able to get back the media files themselves, complete with the important identifying tag information contained within them.
Another consideration is that these files are not well-organized, so it’s not going to be a practical approach for somebody looking to retrieve a specific set of tracks, such as an entire album. The name and file-system structure on the iPod itself is intended to only be used by the iPod and iTunes, and is therefore not organized in any way that would be meaningful to a human.
The bottom line is that this approach is best used in a disaster-recovery scenario, where you want to retrieve ALL of the content from your iPod, and are not particularly concerned about playlists, ratings, play counts, and last played dates.
Further, since most of the third-party applications that we will be discussing later on require access to the iPod’s internal database, this method may be the only way to get your content back off your iPod in the event that the iPod’s internal database has become erased or corrupted. In many cases, an iPod that suddenly shows NO music content on the iPod screen itself, but still shows storage space being taken up when connected to your computer probably still has all of the media files intact on it, and is only missing its index to actually locate those files.
To access the media files on the iPod directly, you must first ensure that the iPod is connected in “Disk Mode.” This is done by either preventing iTunes from opening, or preventing an automatic sync from completing, as described above. It is actually the iPod’s natural state to present itself to your computer as a removable hard disk, and is in fact only iTunes that prevents this from normally working by automatically ejecting the iPod following an automatic sync.
If you find the iPod is not staying connected, simply choose the “Enable Disk Use” option in iTunes to ensure that iTunes does not try and automatically eject the iPod for you. This option can be found by selecting the iPod in the iTunes source list, and looking on the Summary tab:
The iPod should show up in Windows Explorer or Finder (on a Mac) as a removable hard disk.
If you browse to the iPod itself, you will see a number of folders on it for some of the additional features like contacts, calendars, and notes.
What may be conspicuously absent by default, however, is the “iPod_Control” folder discussed above. This is because the iPod sets this as a “hidden” folder, which is not normally visible to the operating system.
In Windows, you can easily configure Windows Explorer to show hidden files and folders by selecting Tools, Folder Options and clicking the Show hidden files and folders item:
In Mac OS X, the process of displaying hidden files and folders is actually somewhat more complex, and requires entering commands into the “Terminal” application. To do this, open “Terminal” from under your Applications/Utilities folder, and then type in the following at the command prompt:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
(Note that if you don’t know how to use “Terminal” or where to find it, you should probably stop reading this section now and skip ahead to the Third-Party Tools section, where all of these details can be easily handled for you)
Once you have typed in these commands, return to the Finder window and select your iPod from the drive listing, and you should see the iPod_Control folder:
Since viewing hidden files on Mac OS X can quickly become inconvenient, you can later turn OFF this feature by going back to Terminal and simply typing in the above two commands again, replacing the word “TRUE” with the word “FALSE.”
Once in the iPod_Control folder, you will see a number of sub-folders, including a Music folder. Despite the name, it is in this folder that all of your audio and video files actually reside. The only information that may be on your iPod that would be stored elsewhere are iPod Games and photos, which we will discuss at the end of this article.
Unfortunately, you’ll notice that the folder names and even the file names do not in any way represent the specific content.
Fortunately, however, the internal ID3 tags are still intact, so any application that can read these tags can easily sort this back out. In fact, you can take these tracks and simply reimport them directly into iTunes via the File, Add to Library option and it will happily sort them all out for you, even renaming and restructuring them in the process if you have the Keep iTunes Music folder organized setting turned on in your iTunes advanced preferences.
In fact, in a complete disaster-recovery scenario, you can even import ALL of your music files directly from the iPod itself by using the File, Add to Folder option in iTunes. To do this, you will first want to ensure that the Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library option is enabled in your iTunes advanced preferences:
Once you’ve confirmed that this setting is enabled (thus ensuring that iTunes will actually copy the tracks back to your hard drive instead of referencing them directly from your iPod), you can simply select File, Add Folder to Library (Windows) or File, Add to Library (Mac) and choose the \iPod_Control\Music folder directly. iTunes will copy all of your media tracks from your iPod back to your iTunes Music Folder location, organizing them into sub-folders by ARTIST and ALBUM in the process, and naming them appropriately, all based on the internal tag information that is still stored within the files themselves.
Once your music is all safely back on your computer and imported into your iTunes library, you could then reconnect the iPod and choose the Erase and Sync option, which would erase the content from your iPod and replace it with the newly-restored content in your iTunes library.
Next Page: Third-Party Software - The More Sophisticated Options....
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1
Here is another well-featured and more important free product : Floola (http://www.floola.com/)
Posted by romzzz on July 10, 2007 at 1:58 PM (PDT)
2
My favorite is iPodDisk. It mounts the ipod like a drive with all the albums and artists. By far the best in my opinion
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ipoddisk/iPodDisk-1.3.dmg?download
Posted by brmac on July 10, 2007 at 3:20 PM (PDT)
3
Holy moly, what an awesome article!
Haven’t even yet completely read it, but i’m sure it’s gonna be worth it.
Too bad it didn’t come two weeks earlier, when i myself had to rebuild my iTunes DB from my iPod as my external HDD was dead.
I successfully rebuilt the complete DB using SharePod, a MP3 Tagger and loads of time
Posted by Manuel Grabowski on July 11, 2007 at 4:32 AM (PDT)
4
iPodDisk is for Mac.
On PC, your best bet is CopyTrans http://www.copytrans.net/copytrans.php as it does not only copy your songs to your computer but also all useful data such as ratings, playlists and imports all that to iTunes.
Posted by Bob1234567890 on July 12, 2007 at 7:19 AM (PDT)
5
Very good article!
I was wondering why XPlay and Anapod Explorer were not rated or mentioned?
Posted by melanchete on July 15, 2007 at 4:01 AM (PDT)
6
Although they are both excellent tools in and of themselves, XPlay and Anapod Explorer are designed as full iPod management tools to replace iTunes, and are therefore somewhat beyond the scope of this article.
Although Yamipod also provides this type of functionality, it was included due to its wide cross-platform support and its free availability.
Posted by Jesse David Hollington in Toronto on July 15, 2007 at 9:39 AM (PDT)
7
I’ve recently transferred my itunes music files to an external HD & have also uninstalled & reinstalled itunes. itunes can access my songs but has wiped all of the playlists, playcounts etc. I was thinking of downloading copytrans to sort this out, but is it possible to use this just to update playlists etc. or will i have to copy all of my music files & then delete the originals? Thanks for your help!
Posted by aaaaaaaaandy on July 18, 2007 at 4:12 PM (PDT)
8
My hard drive died and I am in desperate need of this article. It is not clear to me whether or not any of the software included in the article will allow you to recover videos, pictures, tv shows and games that are currently on my 30g ipod. Please help!
Posted by Middie on July 25, 2007 at 9:21 PM (PDT)
9
I get the following error when using CopyTrans. All my songs/artists/playlists show on the screen and I desperately need to copy the contents of my iPod to my itunes...ideas anyone?
System Error: 0002 ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND
CopyTrans Error: Source song not found on iPod.
Posted by outghost on July 27, 2007 at 9:21 AM (PDT)
10
My iTunes doesnt have an “add to library” option. It has both “Add to Library from File” and “Add to Library from Folder”. I use iTunes 7. When I try to use the “Add from Folder” option, I get to the Ipod_Control folder and I can not go any further into it to get to the Music folder. Any ideas? Right now I’m going in to that folder from My Computer and copying all the folders into my iTunes Music folder and copying them in one folder at a time and its taking forever!!! Thanks.
Posted by givemenoise on July 30, 2007 at 8:11 PM (PDT)
11
ok, my problem is that i’m going to be moving to california in a month or so. I can take my Ipod with me but the computer is my mothers. My uncle will have a computer and I may get a laptop. I’m wondering how I can transfer my library to a different computer.
Posted by Ronaldbbbb on August 2, 2007 at 12:03 PM (PDT)
12
Hi, good article but having some small problems.
Managed to get into my ipod’s music folder, which then had a 49 F folders (ie F00 to F49) inside of which are all the music files.
Problem: my itunes is now empty. I tried ‘File Add Folder to Library’ and itunes does nothing?
I picked the entire music folder first, then tried individual F folders, and still nothing happened.
I tried this both on the copy I took of my ipod (to safeguard it in case something happened when I connected to an empty itunes and lost everything!) and also to the actual files on my ipod…
Any ideas?
Thanks - Pete
Posted by petemw2506 on August 6, 2007 at 8:58 AM (PDT)
13
Have you done any reviews on CopyGear for Mac OS X? I am wondering if this is the way to go for my new MacBook. Thanks - Jon
Posted by iJoni on August 7, 2007 at 5:59 PM (PDT)
14
Also if you have any review on iRepoX. Thanks - Jon
Posted by iJoni on August 7, 2007 at 6:28 PM (PDT)
15
I used ipod access to transfer my music from ipod to my laptop. Now I get an error message stating the majority of songs could not be used because the original file could not be found. Can I utilize this material?
Posted by scalpeldoc on August 8, 2007 at 8:11 AM (PDT)
16
my friend just bought an ipod and wants to transfer the music from my ipod to his pc. what software does he need? we have pc’s
Posted by lazysalvadorean on August 14, 2007 at 1:55 AM (PDT)
17
I have never bonded my video ipod to any machine let alone my own macbook but now i want to back up the audio files I have on the Ipod but am afraid they will get wiped when I bond my ipod to the macbook, has anyone any ideas?
Posted by anthonycronin1 on August 15, 2007 at 9:56 AM (PDT)
18
Great article! Though I didn’t make time to read it all, I don’t recall seeing any mention of having to remove the hidden attribute from the Music folder prior to trying the “Add folder to Library...” step? For iTunes 7 anyway, it wouldn’t import it with the folder properties hidden attribute set (used the Windows folder method because I don’t trust other software much).
Does anyone else think that it’s a pretty pathetic attempt to combat music/software piracy by simply using hidden folders?!? HA! What a joke...though I laugh now, I won’t be surprised if upcoming iTunes releases start using some sort of nasty algorithms or encryption. It’ll just make it harder to crack and extract.
Again, great article, a real lifesaver!
Posted by gimmie5 on August 19, 2007 at 12:08 PM (PDT)
19
FYI, for those of you who are trying the “brute-force method” of copying your media files back manually, I found that you have to make sure the folder that contains your music (the iPod_control/music folder in this article) is not a Hidden Folder. If it is, iTunes will not allow you to “Add Folder to Library.” If you right click on the folder (even in your iPod), and select Properties, you can uncheck Hidden as a property and then it should work fine. I just successfully got my entire library back!
Posted by waterguard on August 20, 2007 at 3:09 PM (PDT)
20
Thanks JDH - this article saved me untold hours of reloading my iTunes with 150 CDs and 20 DVDs!
I have a problem still - iTunes Video library does not recognize the 20 movie files that were copied over from the iPod. I asked CopyTrans to copy ALL files and I found the movie files in the iPod Music folder.
I’d appreciate your insights on how to fix this.
Thanks,
JC
Posted by JCPA on August 27, 2007 at 12:09 PM (PDT)
21
My Ipod is formatted for Windows because all my music is on there, but I’m going abroad soon and only taking my laptop which is a mac. I want to move all the files on my laptop over so I can re-format it.
Will Ipoddisk work for that? Or will it only read mac formatted Ipods?
Posted by kpleary on September 4, 2007 at 1:50 PM (PDT)
22
*I want to move all the files on my Ipod over to the mac.*
Posted by kpleary on September 4, 2007 at 1:51 PM (PDT)
23
Last step…
I was able to see all my music files and then when I went to do the final step in Itunes - Add to Library… Itunes could not see the files...so deflated.
I was able to transfer them to my desktop and then tried again… still itunes can not see the files? What is the trick to finally and safely bring my music into the library? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Posted by al*c*a on October 10, 2007 at 5:50 PM (PDT)
24
My Ipod was formatted using Mac.
The Mac is no longer and I want to transfer my Ipod data base onto my Windows/XP desk top. I can seem to find where any of the software listed with allow you to transfer Mac data over to a Windows system. Can anyone advise? Thanks!
Posted by HeyMsDarla on October 13, 2007 at 2:11 PM (PDT)
25
Great software, last pc completely crashed and the only copy of my tunes were in the ipod, now they are back in my itunes on my new pc. Well reccomended.
Posted by christiebhoy on October 21, 2007 at 3:27 AM (PDT)
26
Thanks so much. Your article and especially the step-by-step instructions on how to salvage a hard drive crash (no backup of my music files)was a lifesaver! I was able to successfully export all my music from the iPod to my new hard drive, immediately backed up the music files to an external drive, then allowed iTunes to “erase and sync” the new library with confidence.
As noted by a couple of earlier posters, don’t forget to “unhide” the iPod Control folder(s) or the files will not copy over using the listed procedure.
Posted by mhowie on October 21, 2007 at 7:48 AM (PDT)
27
As posted before by al*c*a, I also followed the instructions exactly and although I could see the hidden folders through Finder, iTunes could not see them. The instructions to select File, Add to Library through iTunes does not work.
You guys need to update your guide. Please do, we need your help!
Posted by skadiwolf on November 4, 2007 at 8:42 AM (PDT)
28
It seems that the iPod / iTunes tools mentioned do not work in iTunes 7.5 to copy AudioBook files from iPod to iTunes. The File/Add Folder to Libarary function and the Transfer Purchases function both act as NoOps if the only content on the iPod is AudioBooks which were imported as .m4b type files. If anyone has ideas about recovering such files to my PC, I’d like to hear them.
Posted by dvhirst on November 27, 2007 at 3:20 PM (PDT)
29
I thought i’d recommend another progra for your ‘Third-Party Software’ list.
iDump - http://www.softpedia.com/get/IPOD-TOOLS/Multimedia-IPOD-tools/iDump.shtml
I’ve been using it for about a year now, and everytime I format my computer, I use iDump to get all my songs back from my iPod. I even use it to give some of my songs to my friends. It’s free and works great. You should consider adding it to your list.
Posted by nematzz on December 19, 2007 at 10:03 PM (PDT)
30
My Ipod/Itunes is using windows XP. When I try and connect my Girlfriend’s Ipod to download my music (not purchased) on Itunes to her Ipod Nano, Her Ipod Nano does not show up in Itunes, even after reset?
Please help.
thank you
Posted by jptravels4fun on December 22, 2007 at 3:47 AM (PDT)
31
Fantastic article!
U made me and my nano friends.
Thanks...to an angle in disguise
Posted by Nano_K on December 23, 2007 at 12:27 PM (PDT)
32
I could not enable disk use from the new i-tunes version...do you think apple has disabled this feature!!!
Posted by mu on December 30, 2007 at 6:51 AM (PDT)
33
I wonder what the drawbacks are to the method I used when I changed computers - prior to getting rid of my old computer, I saved the entire iTunes file from my hard drive onto a external hard drive. Then, after downloading iTunes on the new computer and authorizing it using my account, I simply replaced the iTunes folder on the new computer with the one from the external drive. The only difficulty I had was with music that I did not purchase through iTunes - for these I created a separate file and used the import feature in iTunes; I had to delete the ones that wouldn’t sync with the iPod with the ones that synced with the new folder.
Am I missing something?? Seems like all the complicated steps of transferring music are not necessary....someone who is more tech-literate than I please help if I am setting myself up for a disaster later on.
Happy New Year…
Posted by Consigliere on January 2, 2008 at 2:43 PM (PDT)
34
hi, i managed to transfer my music from ipod to pc using the ‘brute force’ method, adding the ipod music file to the library and copying files to my itunes music folder as i did so. It worked fine, except that only about half the songs have transferred across. There doesn’t seem to be any rationale behind which songs have transferred - even within individual albums some songs have appeared and some have not, so i don’t think it can be to do with formats.
Any ideas why this might have happened and what I can do about it?
Posted by Theopeterson on January 2, 2008 at 3:56 PM (PDT)
35
Great article!!
My question is… i have a pc formatted ipod mini and need to transfer the songs onto a new mac. (obviously i do not have access to my old itunes on my pc) What software is best to use?? i am not a very computer savvy person. please help!!
Posted by okniruzd on January 9, 2008 at 7:32 PM (PDT)
36
If you are trying to recover your music from your iPod, you obviously do not want to select Erase and Sync. Simply click Cancel instead, and your iPod will remain connected to your computer, but the auto-sync process will not run.
I tried this and I can’t ‘see’ the iPOd in My Computer. When I try to run the recovery programme - SharePod it doesn’t find the iPOD. Can anybody help?
Thanks
Posted by John Gerard on January 13, 2008 at 7:47 AM (PDT)
37
I manually installed the music from my ipod to my pc using your instructions and now all of my songs are coming up “original file could not be found”. What did I do wrong and how do I fix this? The only way I can play the songs on my pc is if I have my ipod connected as a disk. The only way I can see to fix it is by selecting one by one “convert selection to AAC” and even some songs are not able to do it. I hate itunes. -_- If I had actually paid for my ipod (it was a gift) I’d want a full refund for the headache it’s been.
Posted by HeatherWillson on January 17, 2008 at 5:40 PM (PDT)
38
heather, I think you need to redo whatever you did to get your music from ipod to pc - except this time:
go to edit, click preferences. Then on the advanced tab, make sure the “Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library” is ticked.
Then redo what you did, and the files should store in your library folder, and will play on your pc.
Right now, either you have changed the location of the library, and iTunes does not know where the songs are, or they haven’t been copied at all (more probable).
Posted by o.m.w on January 20, 2008 at 1:58 PM (PDT)
39
Is it possible to get ipod games of your ipod and onto your computer thanks
Posted by preliveson on February 2, 2008 at 12:03 PM (PDT)
40
thankyou for that. i switched my computer on this morning to find that everything i owned had gone without a trace. im not ashamed to say i was almost in tears and was ready to re-download all of my 300 songs and movies etc, so this what a big big help.:D I did however loose my movies and tv shows etc and songs that werent on my ipod but im glad that i at least got the majority of my music back
Posted by jackie0hh on February 11, 2008 at 3:50 AM (PDT)
41
I recently tried the Brute-Force Approach, and I couldn’t get the whole folder to transfer. I can only transfer 1 file at a time. This will take too long as I have several thousand to transfer. I was able to move the f01, f02, etc folders on my hard drive music folder, but they do no appear as songs on my iTunes. Any suggestions?
Posted by Zeketradamus on February 28, 2008 at 11:59 PM (PDT)
42
Can anyone give me a free program to do it on an ipod touch please?
Posted by haggarddie on April 11, 2008 at 5:42 PM (PDT)
43
Great article. It was really helpful. However, I’m having a few problems, maybe someone can help?
I tried a bunch of programs (like the ones listed in the article), but they didn’t work. I really want to get one of my playlists on my computer too (and other stuff like the last time played), so I finally just ended up buying CopyTrans, which seemed like a really good program. When I run it though, only some of the songs were transfer. Also, sometimes it will say the iPod’s no longer connected halfway through even though it’s still connected (and it’s in Disk mode). I emailed CopyTrans and they said there were probably errors on my iPod and I had to buy another program that would fix all the errors, but it’s $40 and I’m not willing to pay that much on something I don’t even know will work.
I’m sure there’s a program that’s free that can fix errors? Any ideas? Or suggestions for other good programs that work?
Btw, I tried manually moving my music, but that doesn’t work either and the iPod doesn’t stay “connected”. Thanks for any help!
Posted by fivergirl on April 13, 2008 at 10:21 AM (PDT)
44
THANK YOU!!!! This article was incredibly helpful… especially the pictures
I have an 80g iPod, and got a new laptop… before I read this article, I was trying to transfer my library from my pc to the laptop with an external hard drive without success. I was able to use the “brute-force method” and after reading every portion of the article and the comments and questions left here by other users, I was able to recover my entire library straight from my iPod.
There were a few small details like the “hidden file” selection in comment #19 that were totally key. Once I saw that, I realized how to get my music to finally play without having to leave the iPod plugged into the computer. Before that I could see my list, but nothing would play without the two being connected. Yay!!
Posted by snazzybettie on April 26, 2008 at 6:36 PM (PDT)
45
I just got my first 160 Gig I-pod I love it but my friend loaded it all up for me with his music. I am looking for a recomendation on what softward application to use to back up everything on my external hard drive as well as manage all my none I-tune purchases music. Please help.
Posted by Croket on May 2, 2008 at 6:42 AM (PDT)
46
On Leopard (10.5.2), did the terminal command to “unhide” the files, could see them in Finder, but not in iTunes. Tried various approaches from creating alias links, etc - no luck. Can’t import directly from the iPod until I resolve. Any help (updated guide perhaps?) would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
-Float
Posted by Floatbag on May 5, 2008 at 12:15 PM (PDT)
47
I tried the “Brute Force Method” and when i get to the Add to Library option, the hidden folders on my iPod remain hidden (as in, the iPod_control). I did the command through the Terminal, and the folders show up when I’m viewing them in Finder, but not through iTunes. Help!
Posted by sirallanv on May 5, 2008 at 5:36 PM (PDT)
48
I have a Touch ipod. I deleted all my albums. I clicked ‘Manage Manually’ box before I deleted everything. When I connect my ipod, my music is still there. I need it back to my itunes. Help please.
Posted by Jacie on May 7, 2008 at 1:48 AM (PDT)
49
Thanks for this guide. I downloaded Senuti 0.50.1 but that didn’t work, it left me on “Insert your iPod” screen. After fumbling with that, I searched and found a 0.50.2 version. It worked pretty well (It couldn’t recover 1 album, but no problem.) It did recover the rest of my 181 albums though. I’m not sure how long it took, as I wasn’t really expecting it to work, but surely under 1 hour.
Again, thanks for the guide, if it weren’t for it, I wouldn’t have discovered Senuti… (I’ve been searching the whole day and don’t remember hearing Senuti being mentioned) Well, it’s 3:30am, now I can rest. LOL
Bye.
Posted by Jacie on May 7, 2008 at 3:28 AM (PDT)
50
note: i couldn’t add folder from my ipod directly… i had to copy the folder to my harddrive, and then change that folder (and subdirectories and files) to NOT be hidden [use file>properties], then I could add folder in itunes.
Posted by UPDATE instructions on May 7, 2008 at 7:53 AM (PDT)
51
I think the best software to retrieve ipod data is TuneAid (http://www.digidna.net)… Mac and PC and iPhone and Touch supported
Posted by lazy on May 9, 2008 at 3:05 AM (PDT)
52
This is great. However there are a few more things I had to do to get this transfer done.
1. Copy & Paste the Music folder from the Ipod over to another location on the new computer
2. Right click newly copie Music folder and choose Properties, uncheck box for Hidden File. This unhides the file! Itunes will not copy a hiddlen folder to it’s library.
I guess the real point here is you not only have to choose “view Hidden files” you also have to go into the folder’s properties and unselect “hidden file”
Posted by libby on May 11, 2008 at 2:28 PM (PDT)
53
If you are using a pc, copying files from ipod to pc is SIMPLE. Open the ipod from your list of drives. You’ll probably see 3 folders because the one with your music is hidden. Go to TOOLS, folder options and view tab. Select show hidden folders.
Copy those folders to another folder and import that folder into Itunes. I don’t know why anyone would use software to do this. It’s pretty simple.
Posted by mo on May 14, 2008 at 9:51 AM (PDT)
54
Great article, thanks. I’d love to see a similar one for Podcast (receiving) software. iTunes just seems so limited.
Posted by iPhoner on May 14, 2008 at 11:47 AM (PDT)
55
Back in January (’08) my system crashed and I had to run a recovery on my pc. After finding this article I put the process of transferring the music from my ipod back on to my computer off for three months because this guide seemed so long and stated that the manual process was “involved”.
But, just to piggyback on mo’s post on May 14 - The article is great and I am glad I now know how the ‘innerds’ of my ipod work but, I feel like I had to read through too much just to get to literally the 3 - 4 simple steps of the “brute-force method”. Software is DEFINITELY not necessary.
Posted by Princess on May 15, 2008 at 2:21 PM (PDT)
56
I tried several solutions. On my XP box with iTunes 7, I just used iDump. Worked like a charm first time. FREE!!! Rockin’ good.
Posted by iWasPizzedOffUntilNow on May 15, 2008 at 4:15 PM (PDT)
57
Software is DEFINITELY not necessary.
Thanks for your feedback, but as with anything there are pros and cons to each method, and it’s important to understand that this third-party software does exist for a reason, since it fills certain gaps.
Software is not strictly necessary if you’re just concerned about getting all of your content back in a full-recovery scenario.
However, this method will not retrieve any of your other library database information such as ratings, playlists, or play counts. Further, the direct approach is not particularly useful if you only want to retrieve specific files from your iPod on an as-needed basis, since the files are not organized in such a way that you’d easily be able to find them by anything other than track name. Retrieving all of the tracks from a specific album for example, would be difficult without the use of third-party software that can read the iPod database and identify these files.
Note that the direct approach also requires that you have a reasonable degree of comfort working with your computer, which many iPod users do not. Ironically, it’s more cumbersome on a Mac, since more steps are required to get access to hidden files and folders.
For users who don’t care about this extra metadata and have enough of an understanding of file-systems and how to access hidden files to be comfortable with it, the manual ("brute force") method is the most straightforward solution if all you care about is doing a full recovery and getting your content back.
For many people, however, the other information like playlists and content ratings is equally important. Third-party software is required to recover this information.
Also keep in mind that this only works for the traditional iPod models. The iPhone and iPod touch will most definitely require third-party software for the average user, however, since even if you’ve “jailbroken” your iPod touch or iPhone, you still do not have access to it through “Disk Mode” and have to rely on other tools such as an SFTP client.
Posted by Jesse David Hollington in Toronto on May 16, 2008 at 4:12 AM (PDT)