How To: Move Music from iPod to PC in 5 Easy Steps

This is a good step by step buide, but for a small amoutn of money you can get some software that will make this really EASY - and will also transfer Photos, videos, podcasts, etc.

My Favorite is MEDIAWIDGET - EASY IPOD TRANSFER which you can find at :
http://www.bootstrapdevelopment.com/showProduct.aspx?id=13
or
http://www.easyipodtransfer.com

but there are free ones if you look around

Why would you want to buy software, when this is super easy? I think it’s funny that people are willing to spend money on something they can do themselves, for ‘free’, and it takes an extra 10 minutes.

The problem with this kind of software is that it doesn’t unscramble the names of the songs. The iPod scrambles the names of the songs to the point where they are totally unrecognisable (such as fjdkdkdkkd.mp3) and the software available doesn’t address that problem. That’s not so much of a problem if you only have 10 songs but when you have 100 or 1000, then individually listening to each song and renaming it manually is not really an option.

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Ryan

Well it depends on how you arrange your music. Is it all on your computer as well as the iPod? Do you synchronise your PC music with your iPod? if everything is in its own folders on your PC then you can just drag the folders over to your external HD and they will stay in order. Then wipe iTunes so your playlists and old links are gone.

Then when you want to play your music again from your external HD, load up iTunes and point it towards the external HD so all the music reloads again into iTunes with the correct links.

Moving everything to the external HD will not delete the ID3 tags in your music. So you will still have the singer / band’s name, the song name, the album name, the album artwork, etc.

I hope this helps.

its alot easier if you just search your ipod for with the music option ( or *.mp3 *.m4a etc.) and then just copy all those files, instead of each folder individually.

Does anyone know if this will work with an iPod that is currently formatted with Mac? I need to move my music from a Mac iPod to a new PC that I bought. Thanks

No, it won’t work. If your iPod is formatted with Mac then you need a Mac computer to transfer the songs back to the iTunes on the Mac computer. Then you reset the iPod back to factory settings to clear all the previous settings. Then you need iTunes for the PC - PLUS you need a PC cable to attach your iPod to the PC so iTunes detects it. You obviously can’t use the Mac cable for the PC.

I bought my current iPod from someone who had a Mac. I ended up having to do all of the above. That’s how I know.

Thanks. Is there anywhere on the internet I can access more detailed instructions on what you wrote above?

Kurt - I don’t know. Try Googling it. But I have thought of one method if you can get hold of a Mac computer.

Connect to iTunes on a Mac and use the procedure explained in this post to move all your music to the Mac computer.

Now wipe the iPod back to factory settings.

To get your music off the Mac computer, plug in a flash drive or USB stick and move the music to the flash drive.

Plug the flash drive into the PC and move the music over to the PC.

Use a Windows version of iTunes to move the music back to the iPod which should now be formatted for a PC.

Since I have never used a Mac before and have no experience of a Mac, I can’t be 100% sure if this is all correct. Maybe somebody familiar with a Mac can verify if this method would work??

There is a program called IDump that does it all for free and deals with the file name problem too! You can tell it a folder to store the music in and then select (for example) artistalbumtitle and it will make sub folders with artist in the folder you selected and then sub folders in the artists folders for the albums and then put the songs, correctly name, in the album folders. It does it (i assume) by reading the tags of the songs. If you want it can also do year, genre etc. folders and it can do it pretty much any order you can think of! It also works with videos and is 100% free (forever!) you can get it on http://www.codershole.com if i’m not mistaken. (ps its fast)

Mark,

I also am getting an external hard drive. I tried dragging the “Music” folder to it but it just appears as “F1″ and “F2″ and so on. How do I put my music from my iPod to my external HD? And no, I don’t have the music on my computer.

Thanks

Thank you so much for your help, you got my music back! My E-drive on my computer crashed containing all my music and pictures, i got my pictures back but I couldn’t get my music, even the shop couldn’t. So now I’ve got it al back and what’s more is now it’s all ordered!

Thank you again

Hey, i’m surprised nobody has mentioned the free program Floola, which does all this and more, works on both mac and windows, doesn’t need to be installed on your computer and much more! you should check it out it’s great floola.com

This Helped alot. The only problem I had was that I had multiple artists and I couldn’t tell which song was which on the coverflow so I had to type in the song name under “Album”…..for 340 songs.

Good guide though!

Can anybody tell me how to move music from iPod to PC in 5 Easy Steps using Window Vista Home Premium? Thanks in advance!

this is an absolute genius idea

it worked very well

[...] Fonte [...]

Hey thanx guys,

We got robbed a week ago, everything was gone, but i had the ipod with me. At least i can reload my music on my roommates pc. Guys, i learned something, no mater how precious are your data, bakcup on an offsite location.

I do Backup my stuff, but its in an other pc connected remote from the closet.
plus on DVD in the shelf, on a steelrod with lock at each end, But they stole it too.

I just vanished in thin air, like thoses small businesses from 9/11. All my data, all my contact and contract, the upcomming classes and seminar a was about to give. over 10 years of data, gone.

It can happened to you, guys and girls BACKUP, i say it for you.

signed.
a vanishing magician

can someone help me PLEASE! I have a mac fornatted ipod and have just purchased a laptop which runs on vista because my mac g4 ibook dies on me… anyway I have 1000’s of songs on my ipod that I need to transfer to my new laptop but cannot find a way to do it. I would be INCREDIBLY grateful if someone can help me asap.

Hopefully

Laura.

i have windows vista and the windows explorer on this system is a little different then the other one, do you have any idea how to do this using vista? if so can you email me?

Justin,

What exactly is the problem that you’re being hung up on? If your trying to find the “Tools” tab, you can press [Alt] and the tabs will come right up at the top of the windows explorer window. After that, the process should work out for you.

The third step is that simple or am I missing something? It doesn’t seem a 10 minute operation if you have 1000 songs on your Ipod. Do these steps work on Vista too?

Okay, I think I have a challenge. I have about 50 gigs of music on my PC ipod, about 16.5 of which comes from my itunes account. I do have some music files stored in their own folders on my laptop’s hard drive but they are also burned into itunes and if i remove these original folders i get the dreaded exclamation point in my itunes library. The rest of my 33.5 gigs comes from music that’s been ripped from other itunes, etc. I’m getting an external hard drive to backup my ipod because my 3 year old computer doesnt have a writeable dvd-rom and i only have 25 gigs of free space on my hard drive. Like i said, i can’t import about half my ipod’s music into my own itunes library (i can only play it as an external device) but how can i transfer my music onto an external hard drive? should i follow the above steps but gradually? for example, copy 15 gigs from my ipod onto my hard drive, transfer said files to the external drive, erase the 15 gigs on my laptop to make room and repeat? if so, how can i tell what’s 15 gigs worth of files and how will this affect my songs when i’ll eventually need to re-upload them onto my ipod from the hard drive? also, how will this affect any of the files that i’ve downloaded from the net but not from itunes? that is, for those files that have their own folders on my laptop’s hard drive but have been imported into itunes? i’m worried about getting that damned exclamation point.

thanks so much for the assistance.

Thanks…this process took 15 minutes and was very simple for us non-techies.

No need to do all this, its a lot easier just:

1- Show all hidden folders as described in step 1 above(different in Vista look here: http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1521/how_to_view_hidden_and_system_files_and_folders_in_vista)

2- right click the iPod_Control folder -> select properties -> uncheck the hidden box at the bottom

3- Open I-Tunes goto the file menu, then add folder to library

4- Browse to your music directory on your ipod , mine is found at: E:\iPod_Control\Music

5- Click OK

Job done I-Tunes will add all your music to your library, perfect if you have a got a new PC and want to transfer your music over!, save 20quid on something that dosen’t work as well! :>

but what about if this has happened then you want to put it on your laptop because im having major trouble?

I did this step by step and am fairly tech savy but after my 3000 songs were loaded into the itunes library they still have all the wierd scrambled names. I even let it sit there for an hour and a half while it got all the album artwork to see if that would magically change the names but no. Am I missing something I changed the folder then checked the box of keep it organized before adding folder to library so why do I still have scrambled names? Any help please.

I did everything as you said it but still my ipod (it’s a touch, don’t know if that matters) doesn’t appear anywhere! Can you help me?

I think I see what Roger Jones is getting at above— I skipped the 4th step because I was concerned about “wiping iTunes” and didn’t want to take a chance. Once all the files are copied into your new folder (step 3), it seems to work to just go to File in iTunes, Add Folder (whatever you named it) and the files will be named properly when it transfers them in. I hope I’m not missing something drastic– but that worked for me.

i can’t find the windows explorer thing. Well, ok. I was messing around cause i was trying to transfer the itunes music to the windows media player, but i didn’t know that it would totally erase the songs from the itunes library. So i tried to get it back from the external hd, but it says it cannot be located. also, when i go to my music in my documents, it only says itunes library, damaged. So i really want them songs back. if u could help that would be great. thanks

when i try to add the folder to my library, nothing comes up…it just stays blank…why does it do that???

I’ve got an old pc with my ipod music. This pc syncs with my ipod.
Now I’ve got a new laptop with loads of different music.

Specs; Ipod video 30gb 5th gen Laptop; Windows vista

Question; I like to tranfer my ipod music to my laptop WITHOUT loosing my existing music on my laptop.

Anybody knows what to do in this situation?

Much appreciated

Henk

this just cleared my ipod somehow…obviously i messed up but i have no idea how i thought i was following the instructions exactly.

when i copied the music to another folder, it looked like it was fine. but then when i opened the new folders, there was nothing in them. so i plugged my ipod back in, and the music had disappeared. and now my ipod is blank and since i cleared my itunes i have absolutely nothing.

is there anything i can possibly do? cuz now i just lost 2500 songs completely and have no way to get them back

is the intruction same on vista

Thia was all going well until I started to receive error messages such as:

Cannot copy [file name here]: The parameter is incorrect

Any ideas? I’ve tried copying the entire ipod folder in one shot, copying each subfolder at a time, and even copying the files one at a time, which with 28GB of music would take a while. But each time I try it I eventually get this warning pop up and from that point on I get the same warning for every file.

I’m pretty sure I’ve followed your instructions so maybe I’ve a software problem on my laptop/ipod?

Gavin

It worked!! I had lost my 5000 songs …. Thank you Mark.

Hello!
I had deleted music files off my pc and was wondering if this works even though I did that? As of right now if I do connect my Ipod to my pc those songs will get deleted.
Thank You Either Way!!!!!
April

It DOES work on windows vista. Thanks a lot for the tip… It wasn’t THAT fast (when you have more than 2k songs) but it did work and that’s what matters =)

Hey,

I have a Mac, but it is formatted to run Windows too. Well, my windows side crashed about a week ago, but the mac side still worked. So i used that side and used this software that i downloaded for free called iPod Access, i believe. Then when i got the whole computer problem fixed, i switched back to the Windows side, and everything was wiped out. All of my files and songs, everything. So i downloaded the software again, and i started moving all of my songs. Now its saying theres not enough room in the C drive. But i dont know how thats possible when, before, it worked just fine when i had a ton more stuff on my computer. Literally everything is gone, and its saying theres not enough room. i dont know what to do. It takes way to long to redownload all of my songs, so id rather just move them. Can anyone help me?

thanks.

it’s Workkkkk
thanks man
it’s sooooo easy guys just try it

I just did the steps and it worked perfectly moving my songs from my computer to my external hard drive. Thanks for the information, I’v been trying to figured this out myself.