Using an iPod to rebuild your music library
Last week some family members suffered a corrupted hard drive on their only PC. They had no backup. They're relatively light computer users--no online banking, no important business documents--but the lesson still hurts. Their e-mail contacts weren't too hard to recover--they simply called everybody they had regular e-mail contact with and told them to send an e-mail. Their digital photos are gone forever, unless emergency tech support courtesy of their son-in-law produces a miracle. And their music library?
A program like Music Rescue will let you get your music library from your iPod to a computer--useful in case your old computer is dead.
(Credit: Music Rescue)That's one nice thing about having a large-capacity MP3 player: if you're lazy about backup, at least you still have all (or most) of your tunes. The easiest solution for iPod users, in my opinion, is to use a utility like Music Rescue (I used it back when it was called iPod Util and highly recommend it) or 4Media iPod to PC Transfer for a Windows PC, or Senuti for Mac. Follow the instructions carefully--you don't want iTunes on your new replacement PC to try and automatically sync its (empty) library to your (full) iPod or you'll overwrite all the songs in their last remaining location!
If you don't mind improvising a bit, this CNET tutorial from 2006 describes how to set up your iPod as an external drive in Windows XP, although you'll have to skip step 1 if your original PC is dead. (Steps 3 and onward should work for many other MP3 players as well.) Apple has also posted instructions for moving songs from an iPod to a Mac or PC, but again they assume that the computer with your original library on it is still working.
If you're among that minority of users who bought a Zune player from Microsoft, it has a pretty straightforward reverse sync process.
Of course, the most important lesson to learn is backup, backup, backup. If you've got a few GB of files you just don't want to lose, an inexpensive flash drive or online service (I use Microsoft's SkyDrive, which has a 5GB capacity and is free) is probably fine. External hard drives are for large amounts of critical data--like if you're building multitrack recordings. If you want backup and restore--that is, the ability to restore everything on your computer to the way it was, not just recover lost data--then you'll need disk imaging software for PC or an equivalent Mac solution.
Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
I've always used raid (mirrored drives) for my media. That means, if one crashes, the other has a copy. It's sort of a set, and forget thing. If you aren't sure what it means, or how it it used. It's known as 'RAID-1' (I believe). For example, two drives (let's say 500gb drives), appear as a single 500gb drive to your computer. What is written to one, is written to the other. It's a simple thing to have set up on nearly any computer, or have it ordered that way. That's a cheap way dramatically increase your ability to recover your data (unless the whole thing is stolen).
The other thing, is a larger capacity external storage. Sooner or later, people (like yourself), are going to realize that storing this media on CDs as backups, is akin to accountants printing out mountains of paper for their backups. It is so much more economical, quicker, and efficient to simply make digital copies.
2)An unlimited number of iPods (synced to your library) can store your iTunes music.
3)You can keep an iTunes file on any PC, even if you do not authorize that PC. It just means you can't listen to it.
4)You can burn any playlist on your iTunes up to 7 times before that list is no longer burnable.
5)You can burn audio CD's of your DRM iTunes files and re-rip them into DRM free mp3 files. This is done with iTunes.
6)iTunes has a backup feature that allows you to burn your library on disc(s)
Your understanding of iTunes is so grossly misinformed that even you should dismiss your own statements.
i had my entire library back into my new computer within about 15 minutes. literally...
Too bad about that person's photos. We've all lost some file(s) along the way, but as others have pointed out: backup, backup, backup if you really want to save your stuff.
at that point the only place where your music exists is on your iPod. and that's when you need software to come in and save the day.
I have a Zune and I lost my collection once when I spilled coffee on my laptop. The hard drive was fine but the laptop itself had shorted out. But when I came to restoring my 4500 track music collection; when I got my new laptop, all I had to go was download and install Zune Marketplace then click the Restore Collection button and my entire library was restored.
- by OStrolphant October 29, 2008 7:48 AM PDT
- Can you not just copy and paste? this is how I would get songs off other people's iPod onto my computer. Just show hidden files and copy and paste, the song names are all garbled but once you play them once they fix all the info automatically.
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