How to Recover Music & Photos From iPod to PC

Apple prohibits the transferring of files from the iPod back to the PC to limit piracy. There are certain situations where this is highly inconvenient and piracy is far from the user's intent. If your hard drive ever crashes, your iPod may be the only backup of photos and music that once lived happily on your computer. Or perhaps you are migrating files to a new computer. Luckily, Apple included the ability to use your iPod as an external hard drive and it is due to this functionality that one can easily recover photos and music.

Things You'll Need

• iPod
• iTunes
• Personal computer

Instructions

1. Make sure your iPod is enabled for hard disk use. This means that the iPod can be viewed and used as an external hard drive. To enable this option, connect the device to your computer and open iTunes. Select your iPod from iTunes sidebar to bring up the iPod Summary page. Check the box "Enable Disk Use" and select "Apply."

2. Connect the iPod to the PC you are planning to transfer its contents to. The iPod will show up in Windows Explorer as a removable disk and assigned a letter drive when connected, just as any other removable storage.

3. Double-click on the iPod within Windows Explorer. There will be a handful of folders on the iPod including "Contacts," "Calendars," "Notes" and "Photos."

4. Right-click the "Photos" folder and select "Copy." Right-click again somewhere on your Windows desktop and select "Paste." This will copy the entire Photos folder and its contents onto your computer. Depending on the amount of pictures, this will take a few minutes.

5. Select "Tools" from the menu bar within Windows Explorer and select "Folder Options." Under the View tab, select the radio button for "Show hidden files and folders." Select "Apply" and "Ok."

6. Navigate back to the iPod hard drive folder again. A handful more folders should now be visible, including "iPod_Control." Open this folder.

7. Within "iPod_Control," open the "Music" folder. All your music files are within this folder, though they are labeled in such a way that only the iPod and iTunes can understand them.

8. Open iTunes and access the "Preferences" via the File menu. Under the "Advanced" tab, enable the option to copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library. This means that any file added to iTunes will be copied to and organized within the iTunes Music folder within Window's My Music folder. Select "OK" and close the preferences.

9. Drag the Music folder within "iPod_Control" onto the Library heading within iTunes' lefthand sidebar. This will import all the music files on your iPod into iTunes. Not only that, but all the files will be copied to your computer's hard drive and organized within the iTunes music folder. Because iTunes can read the metadata associated with the music files, despite their strange naming convention, all the files will be sorted by artist, album and songs as they are on your iPod now. Depending on the amount of files, it will take some time for the files to copy over.

Tips & Warnings

• Navigate back to "Folder Options" on Windows Explorer and re-hide the hidden files after completing.

• Use this method only to recover your legally-owned music and photo files.

References

• iLounge.com: "Manually Copying Content from iPod to Computer"
• Apple Support: "Using Your iPod as a Storage Device"
• Microsoft Support: "Windows: View Hidden Files"