Q: I had hundreds of photos stored on an external hard drive and they are also on my iPod. My external hard drive crashed and I was unable to retrieve any of the photos. Is there any way to transfer the photos from my iPod back on to my PC? (I am afraid to plug my iPod back into my PC for fear that it will wipe out my photos on my iPod).
– Lesa
A: You’re actually in luck, as we’ve just recently updated our Guide to Copying Content from your iPod to your computer, and it now includes a section on copying back photos, which can be found on page 4.
The important point to keep in mind if you are synchronizing your iPod back to the same iTunes library is to ensure that you hold down CTRL+SHIFT (Windows) or CMD+OPT (Mac) to prevent the iPod from running an automatic synchronization. In reality, iTunes shouldn’t attempt to remove the photos from your iPod if the external hard drive can’t be found at all, but it’s always better to be extra cautious in a situation like this.
Note that unless you’ve chosen to store the full resolution photos on your iPod when you first synced your photos, the maximum resolution that you will be able to retrieve is around 720×480 from a 5G iPod, or 176×132 from an iPod nano.