How Do I Save a Song From My iPod to My Hard Drive?
The iPod is by far the most popular personal digital audio player available on the market today. Each new generation of iPod offers increased storage space for your music, photos and videos. Uploading your media to an iPod is simple with iTunes, but freeing it from the iPod's hard drive is a bit trickier. However, there are ways to transfer music from your iPod to your computer's hard drive and the process is fairly simple and quick.
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Instructions
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Open Windows Explorer by clicking the "Start button," highlighting "Programs," then "Accessories" and clicking on "Windows Explorer." Choose "Tools" at the top of the Windows Explorer screen. Choose "Folder Options," then click "View" and go to the "Advanced settings" window. Click the check box next to the option titled "Show hidden files and folders," which is located under Hidden Files and folders.
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Connect your iPod to your computer using a USB/firewire cable. Refer to your iPod or computer user manual if necessary. Double click "My Computer" on the desktop and open the iPod folder, which appears once the firewire/USB connection is made.
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Open the subfolder titled "iPod_control," then highlight the "Music" folder. All of the songs on your iPod are located in this folder (but completely jumbled). Drag this folder to your desktop to copy all of your iPod's music to your computer's hard drive. Make sure you let all of the files transfer before removing the firewire/USB cable from your iPod.
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Open your iTunes program. Drag the newly copied "Music" subdirectory folder from your desktop to the Library section of your iTunes window. This adds all of the songs to your computer's iTunes collection. Most of your songs will likely have what is known as an ID3 tag embedded in the MP3 file. This tag contains all of the information about that particular song (name, length, artist, album, etc.). iTunes will read these ID3 tags as the music is added to your library and automatically rename and organize your collection.
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Tips & Warnings
You can use your iPod as an external hard drive as well. If you ever need to switch computers, you can save your media collection on the iPod's hard drive, then plug it into your new computer and transfer the files over to the hard drive on your new computer.
There are also programs available that automatically transfer songs from your iPod to your hard drive. One such program is Senuti. Its design is based on the design of the iTunes music software and is available for both Windows and Apple platforms.
Make sure your music files have finished transferring before you delete any of the original copies to avoid unintentionally destroying your media permanently.
References
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