Getting Your Music Back From Your iPod and Onto Your Computer
It happens - your laptop is stolen, your hard drive fails, your music library becomes corrupted. And yes we all know the importance of backups and security copies but we don’t always do it as often as we should. You’ve lost your main iTunes library, and the only copy of your music is left on your iPod. What should you do?
First - under no circumstances should you connect your iPod to your computer, or any other computer.
Why? If you do the sync process will instantly erase all the music on your iPod and everything will be lost. Not just a bit, not just a few tracks, you don’t get a second chance, there’s no secret code to recover the tracks - it will all be erased.
You can recover your music from your iPod but you will need some extra software, you’ll need to read how to use it and follow the instructions carefully. The software you need varies depending on whether your computer is Windows or Mac. Various products are available but these notes reflect the experience we’ve had with two products we trust.
Windows
Ever since the first few weeks of podServe and CD ripping we’ve used a real lifesaver. It’s XPlay from a company called Media Four. Their product is great for many features (you could use it as an alternative to iTunes). For us its main function is to copy tracks back from an iPod. In overview terms this is what we’d do:-
-remove iTunes from your PC
-create a new directory into which you can recover your music
-download and install Xplay from mediafour.com
- connect your iPod to your computer, WAIT, until your iPod (iPod Classic, iPod Nano, or iPhone) is recognised by Xplay.
Once Xplay has recognised your iPod you’ll be able to open the hard drive on the iPod, just as you use the standard Explorer interface to look at the contents of your local drive. Highlight all the tracks resting safely on your iPod, copy them and then paste them into the rescue folder on your local drive. This can take a long time - you might be recovering up to 120 GB of data. Just be patient, when all the tracks are copied you be safe again.
When the tracks are copied over download a new copy of iTunes, go to File and find Add Folder to Library; navigate to the rescue folder and press go. After another exercise in patience your iTunes music library will be back in the condition it was in before disaster struck and you’ll be able to sync your iPod just as you did before.
Mac OS X
The software we use is Senuti (iTunes backwards, get it?). Install Senuti, and take a look at the fadingred.com website where there are some useful tutorials on how to use Senuti. First you have to enable disc mode, but once Senuti has found your iPod it compares the contents of your iTunes library, presently sadly empty, with what’s on your iPod, happily full. You get the option to copy back from your iPod to re-populate your local library, and when you’ve selected that your iTunes library will be repopulated.
Some time later, iTunes has been filled and you can connect your iPod to sync it as before.
Alternatively ....
Contact us, we’ll do it for you.
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podServe
Just imagine, all your CDs on your iPod. All done for you.