"How do I transfer my music *from* my iPod?" ANSWERED

AP via Florida Sun Sentinel ^ | June 20 2006, 2:45 PM EDT | PETER SVENSSON

[martin_fierro]

How do I transfer my music from my iPod?

By PETER SVENSSON Associated Press Posted June 20 2006, 2:45 PM EDT

Q: How do I transfer music from my iPod onto a computer?

A: Apple Computer Inc. has intentionally made this difficult in an effort to hinder music piracy, but if you really want to do it, it's not that hard. And you might be really interested in doing this if your PC hard drive has crashed, taking your music with it.

Apple's anti-copying provisions amount to scrambling the file names of the songs on the iPod and telling the operating system that the files should be invisible. There's no encryption involved.

These measures are easiest to get around on a Windows PC, where you can simply tell the system to show hidden files.

Here's how transfer the music to a PC running Windows XP (other Windows versions should be similar):

# Plug in the iPod to the computer.

# Click on My Computer. The iPod should show up there as a hard drive.

# Click on the iPod icon to open it.

# If you don't see a folder called ``iPod Control,'' go to Tools: Folder Options: View. Check the option to ``Show hidden files and folders.''

# Open the iPod Control folder, then the Music folder. It contains the iPod's music and videos, divided into folders. Copy them over to your hard drive's My Music folder.

...

< -- SNIP -- >

[martin_fierro]

I get asked this a lot, so FYI.

[Publius6961]

Thank you.

[martin_fierro]

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[clamper1797]

You are welcome ...

member of iPod chip design team

[satchmodog9]

Well, that would at least replace two of the 120 gigs of music I have on my drive.

[Publius6961]

Did you have to post that... ummmm,
that set of overalls?

[martin_fierro]

Maybe you can answer this one for me:

I ripped my CD collection to my PC, then copied it to a 4th Gen 40 GB iPod.

Sometimes I listen to the music on the iPod; other times, on the PC with iTunes.

But each time I listen to a song -- either on the iPod or on the PC -- a new "Last Played" date gets assigned to the song file.

So the same song can have different "last played" dates, depending on when it was last played on the iPod or PC.

Because of this, iTunes treats the same song file as two different files, and ends up duplicating a lot of music files on the iPod -- thus taking up unnecessary space.

FWIW, I use "manual update" to the iPod, not Automatic.

[martin_fierro]

There. Better?

[JerseyHighlander]

Don't know of any program specific, but

There are programs avilable to scrub (or replace) file attribute fields in bulk.

So, manually scrubbing the pc hdd files of the last played field before transfers to IPod could do the trick.

Also

I think ITunes has a "search for duplicates" option in it. I know that fixed a similar problem I had.

[AnnaZ]

Also, CopyPod worked well for me.

[Toby06]

I think everyone should buy an external hard drive. AN 80 gig is about 80 bucks, and you won't lose your stuff. SUPER easy to use, too.

Now my kids have Ipods, makes filesharing easy too.

[martin_fierro]

Yeah, I currently use a free Java-based app called "Seek and Destroy Music Duplicates" by Pekarna, but wanted to kow if there was a way to tweak iTunes to prevent the file duplication from happening in the first place.

[Echo Talon]

oh boy..

[satchmodog9]

It was a big priority with all my music and my wife's dog photos. I spent about 400 hours ripping all my vinyl to the PC alone. Also backed up a lot on DVD. Just in case.

[soccer_maniac]

THANKS

[Sonny M]

bump

[Bella_Bru]

Bumped and saved. Also copied and printed out.

I have a question, which might be good for a new thread:

What happens when the battery finally craps out? I hear you usually have to lay down $50 and send your iPod to Apple so they can send you back a refurb (not your iPod BTW) with a "new" battery. That or you have to replace it yourself, which is a little tough. Is this true? And if so, should you remove your music and in the manner decribed above and put it on CDs before you get a new battery??