So my desktop needed a bit of love, so I backed everything up and did a wipe/reformat to clean things up a bit. Now I'm in the process of reinstalling my programs and what not, and I'm concerned about getting my music back on my HD. I have about 18 gigs of music on my iPod, and I'm afraid that if I sync it with iTunes it's going to delete it all. I opened iTunes to see if I could find some kind of option, and to my suprise all my music titles showed up in my library with the (!) beside them. Does this mean I can sync and they'll download from the iPod, or what? Is there some other way I can get them off, another program or something?

Thanks, you guys rock.

 

i dont know about the recovery, but the titles are there because of the .xml (i think) file somewhere (my music - folder maybe) that keeps track of files and their locations, good luck

 

There's a program you can buy for $10 that will transfer all of the music on the iPod back on to the computer

 

found the name of it ...CopyPod, you can also find a sample version for free, and go through alphabtically and add each group of 100, thats what i did, but it takes a while

 

looks like that should do what i need, i'll try it when i get home from work. thanks for the help

 

Theres another way to do it and its free. We did it with my buddy's ipod when I took all the music from his ipod and put it on my compter just like that- IPOD to HD, syncing his Ipod up to a differant computer with diff. music files.

I'll double check with him today, but you do is open itunes, then click on EDIT i believe (this is where i need to dbl check), then open Preferences. This will freeze iTunes and will not let it sync with your iPod.

then you open up MY COMPUTER and your iPod will show up as a hard drive. There you can copy or drag all the files off your iPod and stick them in a music folder to import back into iTunes.

Does it work, yes. This is how I get music off my friends iPods, I just can't remember if its edit>preferences and thats it or edit>preferences>iPod


NOTE: we did NOT attempt to put my music on his iPod with his current files on the iPod. That would have erased all his music.

 

interesting. it's already setup to use the iPod as an HD, but when you open it up you can't see the music files. so you're saying when you do it this way, you can see those files??

 

I believe if you don't have iTunes installed and plug up your iPod via USB cable than your PC will mount it like an external drive and you can use it as you would an HDD. Now, I've never tried to recorver music this way, but seems that it might work.

JUST REMEMBER TO SAFELY REMOVE YOUR HARDWARE (BY DISABLING IT) OR YOU'LL HOZE YOUR IPOD AND HAVE TO HARD-RESET IT.

 

Unfortunately no, I tried that at first to get off my documents and some other things I had stored on there. Like I said in the post above, for some reason they have it set up so that you can't see the audio files on there when you view it as an HD

 

when we pull the files off, we can see them. you have to open a certain file if I remember correctly. I called my buddy who showed me how to do it, but havent heard back from him yet.

 

Winamp plus this plugin should let you copy music to and from your iPod.

 

Is any of the content licensed, as in downloaded from iTunes? Things will get more interesting at that point.

 

Some of it, but not much...why?

 

The license for the content tracks with the device and is managed by iTunes. If you drag & drop outside of iTunes, you'll lose the license and the ability to play those tracks.

 

The DRM information is included in the song file itself. When the song is accessed to be played, iTunes checks to see if it is authorized to play the song. If the computer is already authorized, then the song will play, otherwise, it will ask for authorization, and will connect to the iTMS in an attempt to authorize the computer for playback.

 

Correct, but he's talking about wiping the harddrive and then pulling the tracks from the iPod to the PC. When he wipes the PC, he's gonna lose the license store. Then, the signature of the computer will shift with the reformat and re-install of iTunes. The track is licensed to the iTunes install, on that PC.

I've been wirting DRM code for the last year, and this is how "we" do it. Granted, I'm not writing for Apple, but that "other" company . It's quite possible that I'm wrong, but it may be worthwhile for him to try the concept before blasting the drive.

In theory, he should be able to go to any other PC with iTunes and see if he can drag & drop a purchased track and play it. There wouldn't be any difference between that and blasting his own HD and reinstalling iTunes.

 

If no hardware is changed, and windows is just reinstalled, there should be no loss of authorizations (you get 5). You will have to sign in again, confirming your authorization, to play the file. If everything goes right, you will use the same authorization as before the format. If it takes a second authorization, then there is a process to deauthorize the computer, and get back that 'lost' authorization.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300161
If all that fails, Apple allows you to deauthorize all your computers once a year. Once that is done, before you can play the songs again, you have to reauthorize the machine.

 

ahh... 'k. Interesting way of dealing with the PO'd consumer in a situation like this.

kpooch75... Take note!