Transfer ipod to PC

bethsdad

Evening all,

My downloaded music seems to have disappeared from itunes (long story involving an over zealous 10 year old who doesn't know quite as much as he thinks he does). I can't find it anywhere on my hard drive, and it is not in the recycle bin.

The music is still on my ipod, which I now don't want to plug in because I believe that if I have an empty itunes library, it will wipe my ipod clean.

I have tried recovering the music files from the hard drive using PC Inspector File Recovery, and have found some of the missing files, but when I recover them, it doesn't seem to recover the actual MP3s, just an empty folder, if you see what I mean ....

My question is, is there any simple (and preferably free) way of transfering the music from my ipod back to the PC and into itunes?

Many thanks for your help in advance

bat999

Hi
There's a whole list of iPod managers at Wikipedia.
The one that is often recommended for Windows PCs is Sharepod.
From here:-http://www.getsharepod.com/

Wikipedia list here:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_managers

bethsdad

Cheers for that. Will I need to uninstall itunes first?

bat999

No I don't think that you need uninstall iTunes.
Just keep it shut down until you're sure that you've got all your music into a folder on your hard drive.
Then afterwards load the music into iTunes.
Then sync your iPod.

bethsdad

Thanks a lot for your help, Bat999 I shall get it sorted tomorrow (left my ipod at work).

scottishblondie

If you haven't gotten anywhere yet...

You should be able to just get into the "hidden" music folders on the iPod and copy everything over to your hard drive without any special software. The files will all have funny names and be in loads of folders, but when you re-import them into iTunes before you do it go into the settings tell it to "organise my music" (or something like that) and it should rename all the files and put them in the right places.

1. Go to the control panel, file and folder options, and check "show hidden files and folders"
2. Plug in iPod, shut down iTunes if it starts and make sure you don't do any synching
2. Open the file explorer, and see if your ipod is mounted as a drive. If it is, you should see a folder call "iPod_Control". Go into it and copy the folder called "Music" to your hard drive. Inside this folder there will be a bunch of folders called "F00" "F01" etc. These contain the music files.
3. Disconnect iPod, open iTunes and import the folder you copied over, making sure that in the iTunes settings you have set it up to copy the files to your library and to organise them.

Also, if "iPod_Control" or "Music" don't show up, just type it into the bar at the top of the explorer window.

Hopefully that should get you up and running. If your iPod doesn't show up as a drive in the explorer, come back and let me know