How to copy songs
from your iPod to your PC
A reader points
out a straightforward way for Windows users to transfer music from an iPod to
your hard drive, without extra software:
1. Connect the iPod to your PC. If iTunes
starts syncing (ie erasing) your music automatically, hit the X in the upper
right hand corner of iTunes display, to the left of the search box, to stop it.
2. In Control Panel, Portable Media Devices,
double-click your iPod.
3. Navigate to the Music folder.
4. Select all the music folders, and drag and
drop them into a folder on your hard drive, or directly into iTunes.
And you’re done!
The iPod music folder structure is strange and inexplicable, but once you move
your files into iTunes you can set it to automatically organize your folder by
artist and album to clean that up. (To do this, in iTunes Edit menu, choose
Preferences and in the Advanced tab, check “Keep iTunes Music Folder
organized.”)
If you give this
a go, lemme know how it goes. I’ll ammend the instructions with any additional
info for other versions of Windows and iPods.
Just for the
record, I did not write this article, but I would have known how to do this.
But one thing I ahve noticed is that you do not need to go into the control
panel. Instead just make explorer.exe show hidden folders. Then, navigate into
the iPod directory, go into iPod_control, and follow step four of the article.
Software
