A tutorial I wrote a while ago, I know a few people here use an iPod, so I thought it could be useful.
Right, so somehow you have lost your music library from your computer, and you still have it on your iPod. Don’t worry, we’ve all done this, it happened to me because I developed my own file system for my new OS, unfortunately, the file system needed some “fine tuning” to actually work, and I had to reformat my whole HD.
So now let’s assume you have an iPod full of music, and a windows installation without all the music. First off, make sure you have iTunes installed. Now without iTunes open, plug in your iPod to your computer (I haven’t tried this with firewire, only USB). iTunes will fire up and ask you something about replacing the music library, etc… Hit “No”. Now go to Edit>>Preferences and click the iPod tab. If it says that there is no iPod connected, you did something wrong, close iTunes and plug your iPod in again and click “No” again. Otherwise, check the box that says “Enable for Disk Use” or something like that.
Now hit OK. iTunes will ask you the music library question again, hit “No” again. Hit Start>>My Computer and locate your iPod, either Removable Disk or whatever your iPod is called. Double click that icon, now in Windows Explorer, go to Tools>>Folder Options then click the View tab. Check Show Hidden Files and Folders and uncheck Hide protected operating system files. Now in your iPod root, go to iPod_Control. Now right click on the Music folder (it will be translucent) and choose copy. Navigate to wherever you want the music and paste the folder. You have now copied the songs off of your iPod and jumped the first hurdle Apple have put in the way. If you open the music folder, you will notice that there are lots of strangely named folders (F01, F02, etc.), and in those are strangely named files. Don’t worry! These files still have full ID3 info, so if you import them, your library will be just the same. Go to iTunes, press File>>Add Folder to Library, now find the Music folder you copied off of your iPod, click on it once and press OK.
You have just defeated Apple’s protection to stop you getting files off of your iPod. There are programs that can do this, but it’s much more fun to do it yourself!
-Ben
