I have downloaded iTunes to my new Sony Vaio.
But I cannot work out how top transfer back the 2800 or so tracks from my iPod classic into the library on my computer. Surely someone out there can help . Please !

Apple deliberately hides the music on your iPod. They could easily have included the ability to read tracks from the iPod back to the computer. Alternatively they could have used the iPod like an ordinary external disk, and stored them as visible files in the same structure as iTunes uses. Sadly, they chose to do neither, so that they could retain maximum control of your iPod.

The files can be made visible, and then copied back from the deliberately obscure structures in which they are stored, but if you are not a computer programmer you need some third party software to do the job for you.

A Google search will reveal several tools that will do the job for you, some free, some commercial, and some which allow you to use a restricted version for free, and then pay a licence fee, usually modest, to make it legitimate. Typically these will allow you to transfer 10 or so tracks at a time in the unregistered version.

I have used Xilisoft iPod Rip in the past, and it does the job, but it is just one of many such programs, and it is for the Mac, I don't know if there is a Windows version.

The transfer would normally be carried out between computers and the iPod synchronised to the new computer. However as VH2 has said there is software available to transfer music back from the iPod to a computer. I too am a mac user so I wouldn't know of any suitable Windows software. I'm sure a spot of Googling will throw something up.

The late Steve Jobs was known to be something of a control freak; hence only Apple can build Apple computers, many Apple computers cannot be upgraded or repaired, and the Mac OS cannot be installed on anything other than an Apple computer. Which is why I choose to use a PC!

I suspect that iPod music files are made invisible to help prevent uncontrolled copying, although I'm sure most 16 year-olds would soon find a way around that one!

I thought there was a manual synchronisation option in ITunes, but sadly my own iPod seems to have died again, so I cannot check for you.

SB

This is yet another reason not to buy apple.

Here's the answer to the first half of this problem.

That should tell you how to view hidden folders in a hard drive.

Then there is going to be a series of folders (probably) with obscure names. If your lucky there might actually be some that are understandable. The music files are somewhere in one of those folders (probably in another folder, in another folder etc.).Hopefully it won't take too much digging.


From memory of when I last did this (a while ago) all of your music, depending on how much you have, will be seperated into numbered folders. (they might have a letter in front of them like f, not too sure. But having a lot of numbered folders will be a give away.)

This is probably specifically to annoy you as if you have several thousand files you will have several hundred folders,each of which you might have to sort through separately. (although theoretically iTunes could grab all of them in one go.




Now this is the absolute worst bit imo. Unless apple have changed their gameplan, each music file,whether aac or mp3 will be assigned a random 4 letter code.

Not just that but your iPod won't store any of their descriptive data in any logical format.

This means that all of your music will be transferred to your computer and given names like: zxsr or ftap etc. etc. with no indication for your computer whatsoever of what they are meant to mean. At this point you are going to have to rename them all by ear. If you have sets of albums, iTunes does have an option to name a set of music from that entire album. But it is still a lot of effort.



Overall you might be better off getting some of the software above. otherwise your in for long nights and lots of headaches/screaming.

I found this link useful when I was consolidating my i-tunes library.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1329

Or this might help
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527

No there won't !!

It is completely impractical, unless you have some programming skill, and can write a program to trawl through the ridiculous structure that Apple has inflicted on us to obfuscate how the iPod works, and make this very task a lot harder than it need be.

This is the only practical method for most of us.

Overall I would agree with you.

I'm just going through the methods I once used to do this, mainly to highlight the reasons not to do it the way I did.

Not entirely accurate. But at least it all works with a minimum of pratting about by the poor user.

I'm sure both are true. As others have pointed out, if you are not averse to fiddling around in Explorer it is possible to extract the music files and import them into iTunes on the new PC. There might be something useful here:
http://www.engadget.com/2004/11/02/how-to-...-off-your-ipod/


Yes manual synchronisation is possible but that copies from the mac/PC to the iPod. Not the other way round. The only "backwards" synchronisation is iTunes purchases made on the iPhone, iPad, etc.

This might explain why my iPod sometimes likes to rearrange album tracks into a different order, with no obvious way of correcting the order of play.

This has only happened on two albums to date. One was corrected by deleting and re-copying it from CD (twice), but the other defies all attempts to play tracks in the correct order.

I did call the Apple help line, but the person on the other end of the phone line seemed to think this was a 'feature' rather than a problem, and could not understand why I would rather not hear a Benedictus or Agnus Dei played before a Kyrie.

SB

Put the tracks in a Playlist on your Mac/PC in whatever order you want them to play. Then sync your iPod.

Then when you want to hear your liturgies, use the playlist instead of the Album

The second link would work great if I had the old computer, but its gone when I retired. I only have the music files on my iPod still.
Thanks for all your suggestions but I think I have decided it might be best to start again.
I wont need such a large library now as I will be driving far less.

OK, thank you. I will try this when I get my iPod fixed, or more likely, when I get a new one.

I don't know what has happened, but the computer didn't recognise the iPod it when I plugged it in, (it was still working at this point). I then tried unplugging it and plugging it back in, at which point it died altogether, and won't respond to any amount of button pushing.

I have looked on the iPod forum, and this seems to be a common problem.

SB

Is it a "Classic" click wheel model? Sometimes the hard drive cable comes loose and it's remarkably easy to fix - with a guitar plectrum

The playlist solution is one that would work.

Although I would check to see if the albums have their songs numbered in order or not. That might be the root (although I doubt it, numbering is normally automatically done).

View > View Options > tick track number and OK.

After that all of your tracks in iTunes should appear with their track number as dictated by the album. If they don't have a track number that is probably the problem.

This is what I didn't understand. The tracks were all correctly numbered, but just wouldn't play in that order!

SB



It is a second generation iPod with solid state memory; not the version which plays videos, and looks like an iPod on steroids.

We have a spare iPod in the house, as Apple replaced our son's original Gen 1 iPod with a new one because of a potential battery safety issue. However, I will take mine to the Apple shop next time I'm in Toon, to see how much they will charge to fix it.

SB

I thought there was an option to get iTunes to synchronise from another source? I thought that's what I did when I bought a second PC and needed copy my library? Or am I imagining things?

I'm wondering how much of a safety issue a battery can become, and how. Unless it was leaking.

I have normally done it this way, transferring files between computers. I did this when I moved from PC to Mac at home and it worked all right but it was a laborious process and I lost playlists and other little luxuries in the process.

In the end I decided that none of the free software really did the job and invested in a little programme called Senuti so that I could synchronise between iTunes on the different platforms and my iPod (including from iPod to the computer). There's a free trial version available too. See here.

EDIT: Just checked and it's for Mac. There's a similar-looking programme that works with both Windows and Mac called CopyToy but I can't answer for how good or reliable it is, not having used it.

Ah. Not a cable problem then.

Could you not ask the IT department to copy the original files from your computer onto CD's or a DVD?

An alternative, but less satisfactory solution would be to set your iPod to 'Play', and then record the output onto computer, or a sound recording device.

SB

I visited the Apple store in Newcastle on Saturday to see about getting my iPod fixed.

Anyhow, they plugged it in to one of their machines, and lo and behold it works again!

I don't know what the problem was, but they thought it might be because I hadn't used it for a couple weeks, and that the battery had become flat. Most importantly it works again now, so I am pleased about that.

Whilst there I asked about transferring music from the iPod to a computer. Apparently, if you right-click on the iPod icon in iTunes tere is an option to copy music which was purchased from the iTunes store, but you cannot [easily] copy music which has been copied from CD or other sources.

(I apologise if anyone else has already posted this information.)

SB

Easier on Macs without a special utility but there are free ones for both:

http://lifehacker.com/394046/copy-music-fr...mputer-for-free

I> never had both computers at once, as I retired March 30th and handed onld on in. I didnt buy the new one until two weeks later.
Anyway Ive reset the iPod now, and have already put nearly all Bachs Keyboard works on to it

Further to the question I raised at the start of this thread, my daughter has since also bought a new computer and had the same problem. However she has solved it using this:-

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527

I dont think this this was available when I first had the problem as I checked the Apple support website
Too late for me now but may be useful to others.

I've done this transfer from of Itunes library from one computer to another several times, and it is a bit of a nightmare to be frank.

Unfortunately you can't just transfer all the files to a CD, because it won't hold enough and writing/reading a CD is slow.

You can do it over wifi, but it is exceeding slow so I wouldn't recommend it!

The way I've done it is to transfer files to a memory stick and then transfer the files to the new computer, delete files on memory stick and repeat.

When you find the relevant files, they are in folders by artists- try and keep track of what you've already transferred.

To transfer all my music files (on IPOD ~16Gb) took about 3-4 hours.

Good luck!

That doesn't cover transferring tracks from your iPOD does it (which is what you wanted initially)?


Well I have to say it - it's easy to transfer from mac to mac and there is a tool to transfer from Windows PC to mac (Migration Assistant).

Maybe this is of some use on PCs:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1727