Transfer Music From iPod-To-PC/iPod w/o software
This is something that I figured out using a software called EphPod, but as soon as it started working, i figured out a better way to retiveing your music from your iPod back to put it either on your PC and keep it there, or transfer it to a new iPod. What I figured out with the EphPod software, it stopped transferring music when it still had a little under 300 songs left to transfer, which I guess wasn't too bad, but I don't know which 300 songs it left out without having to manually look for each track.....forget that. But while that program was going, I figured out where the files were coming from, and you can't see it at first, but here what you do:
1. Plug up your iPod to your computer, with or without iTunes opened doesn't matter because it opens it automatically anyways.
2. After plugged up, go to My Computer and look for that drive letter which should be titled by your iPod's name, and go into that link.
3. You see next the folders for Calendars, Contacts and Notes, but there's a hidden folder there. Go to Tools > Folder Options > View, and bubble "Show hidden files and folders", at least for this time being so that you can continue to the next step.
4. After you've unhidden the files and folder, a new folder appears, "iPod_Control".
5. Go into that folder and you'll see a Music folder. When you open that folder, what you'll then find is a bunch more folders, for example, my folders all started with the letter F and a number, for right now, on a filled 30GB iPod, it said folder F00-F49. Within each of those folders you'll find .mp3 files filenamed with random letters, so the tracks aren't organized at all when you find them, but if you were to drag one of those files on a prgram such as WinAmp, you will see the ID3 tag come up as the tag that you had previously tagged it as BEFORE putting it on your iTunes Library then eventually your iPod. But....if you drag the file(s) onto your iTunes Library, you will then see it tagged like how you've had it tagged before when you oringally put it on your iPod, including album artwork and track info.
So with this done, no it's not a good way to rebuild your comptuer's music folder because now you have to re-title all the mp3 files, but this is a great and quick way to transfer the music from your iPod to put on another iPod, which is what I plan to do in upgrading to an 80GB iPod. This also worked with a video file that was on my iPod because I found the .m4v file within one of the last couple of folders. This transfer seemed to be successful because the number of songs on my iPod, according to iTunes, matched the number of total files found within those folder that I copied over from the "G:\iPod_Control\Music" folder off my iPod, which I just simply copied over to my desktop.
So hopefully some of you find this tool useful in case anyone else found themselves in this kind of problem, here is my solution for it and hope you find good in this solution as I have.
[3099 byte] By [
djluis2k6] at [2007-11-11 16:51:59]
# 2 Re: Transfer Music From iPod-To-PC/iPod w/o software
Also it is easier to use software to do the transfer
In all fairness, djluis' method isn't really all that complicated. As long as you understand what he said and know what you're doing, you could have the transfer up and going already just in the time it takes you to download and install software. And then you'd still have to learn how to use the software. By that time the transfer would be complete. Sure, it's "easier" to wait for a bus than to walk somewhere yourself, but if you're just going down the street and the bus won't be here for an hour, what are you going to do?
@djluis: Like honeybee said, you don't have to retitle all the MP3 files. If you import the files into iTunes, it will read the song/artist/album names from the internal tags embedded in the files. If you then let iTunes organize your files (they must be in your "iTunes Music folder location" as defined in Edit->Preferences->Advanced->General in order for iTunes to do any organizing/managing of your files), it will rebuild the folder structure based on said tags.
You can even import the files straight off the iPod, without having to copy them first. Just make sure you have "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checked so that iTunes will make its own copy on the hard drive, otherwise it will just try to import the files and read them from their current location, which is on the iPod.
bwh79 at 2007-11-15 16:53:07 >
# 3 Re: Transfer Music From iPod-To-PC/iPod w/o software
In all fairness, djluis' method isn't really all that complicated. As long as you understand what he said and know what you're doing, you could have the transfer up and going already just in the time it takes you to download and install software. And then you'd still have to learn how to use the software. By that time the transfer would be complete. Sure, it's "easier" to wait for a bus than to walk somewhere yourself, but if you're just going down the street and the bus won't be here for an hour, what are you going to do?
@djluis: Like honeybee said, you don't have to retitle all the MP3 files. If you import the files into iTunes, it will read the song/artist/album names from the internal tags embedded in the files. If you then let iTunes organize your files (they must be in your "iTunes Music folder location" as defined in Edit->Preferences->Advanced->General in order for iTunes to do any organizing/managing of your files), it will rebuild the folder structure based on said tags.
You can even import the files straight off the iPod, without having to copy them first. Just make sure you have "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checked so that iTunes will make its own copy on the hard drive, otherwise it will just try to import the files and read them from their current location, which is on the iPod.
Yeah I know, then I guess for some reason, I found all my files filenamed with random letters, but when I put them back into my iTunes Library, just as I said at the beginning, they were properly ID3 tagged how I originally tagged them, along with the album cover's, too. I didn't already have the music on my computer because I actually transferred these songs from a Dell DJ mp3 Player before getting this iPod so I didn't have the songs on my computer anymore, and I'm not really wanting to save my music to my computer, I just want to be able to transfer it to my new 80GB iPod.
