my PC crashed, wondering about ability to get Itunes library back from the Ipod(s)

I have a fairly involved methodology for backing up Itunes.

I have a variety of automatic and manual back-ups - in a variety of places - but I still find myself in an awkward position where I've got approximately 1,000 songs in a 31,000 song library that are exposed (i.e. weren't backed up when one of my hard drives crashed the other day).

I'm sad to report I don't think the hard drive can be repaired. I've tried being able to "see" the drive in a variety of places - and it's more than un-bootable... it appears empty to the three things I used to try to look at it. Maybe the manufacturer could pull it apart and rebuild the drive - but that's not feasible - for a variety of reasons.

I'm toying with the idea of finding a software app to see if it's feasible to take what's on my three ipod classics and put them onto a PC. There's no shortage of these apps - but they all seem to vary and I'm curious if anyone out there can say good things about one of them.

I'm not worried about the music as much as the metadata. I don't have many (any?) static playlists. The ones I used were "smart" playlists that paid attention to the year of release. If I lost those, I could easily re-create new "smart" playlists.

I don't care about song ratings (I never rated anything) and play counts aren't too big of a deal either - but it would be nice if the play counts survived an import process.

I'm even willing to go the Apple Store and pay them to recover the library - as long as they understand it will go onto a windows machine. I have an Imac as well as a PC - but I'm not in the mood to purchase another Imac. Ideally I'd like to just walk into an Apple store with a big drive formatted for Windows and pay them (if need be) to put EVERYTHING on the three Ipods back into one big Itunes library (formatted for Windows) that I could then take home with me and use on a Windows PC.

I understand Apple is sensitive to the idea of consumers trading itunes libraries with their friends - so the process seems to be designed exclusively for the download (computer to device) direction. But I find it difficult to believe that they don't have tools that allow for music to move in the reverse direction (device to computer) for disaster recovery situations.

There is some overlap with the three Ipods (meanings for the most part a song usually lives on one of three devices - but sometimes a song might live on two devices).

Worst comes to worst, I have a second machine that has 30,000 of the 31,000 songs safely sitting on it. It's mostly that my Ipods were all synced to the machine that died - and I would have to wipe them to sync with the other machine.

I'm not in the mood to wipe anything right now - LOL

 

Foobar should do the trick I think. Install it, and the iPod component, which you might need to google to look at what you can do, but I'm pretty sure once you have it on there you can get it all up on a playlist view (as in the whole library) and select it all, then copy it to some where on your machine. File names might be strange, I don't know how iTunes formats then by default, but then you can rename them from the metadata anyway, I think.

Hope that helps to some extent?

http://www.foobar2000.org/

http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dop

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/24473/how-to-use-your-ipod-with-foobar2000/

 

Apple doesn't provide such a tool. There are third-party tools that can copy songs from iPod to PC.

You probably know this, but you should maintain up-to-date backups of your music since drives do fail. I've suffered total drive failure myself, but recovered quickly and simply from backup.

 

Another option is IPod Getter. I've used it and it works. Not sure how it works with the metadata but it definitely recovers the music.

 

Good recommendation. If you want to use a tool, try SharePod. I've used it a few times and it worked like a charm.

 

this my friends...is one of the downfalls of digital media archiving.
all HDDs fail sooner or later.

 

My son seemed to think "SharePod" was the best of the (long) list of (similar) products.

I've got three Ipod classics. Two of them had about 10 to 11 thousand songs - and the other has about 18,500 songs.

I tried to basically separate them into year ranges - but the one that's almost full had some extra songs because I also told it put everything Beatle/Dylan/Motown related (independent of year of release) onto one device. So those songs would tend to live on both their normal year range disc - but again on the disc that covered the range of years from 1964 to 1975. When I attempt this - I will definetly do that one last. I'd prefer to not have a lot of songs show up in my library twice.

Doing the math, I probably have about 1/3 of my 31,000 songs in the "was on the more than one Ipod" category. SO that would be a lot of doubles to hunt down and delete.


Acronis saved me from a problem about two years ago - but that wasn't an option in this case.

I've also had hard drives die on a raid-based NAS - and that's been easy to deal with. Just go buy a new drive and put it into the slot that has the problem.

 

Stay Positive. It can be done! Can't remember which software I used 6 years ago, got everything back from Classic model iPod.

*Also if you ever bought through iTunes online store, send an email to customer service they would send you a Download link for backing previous purchases

 

Search the audio forum here. You will find several threads like this that discuss tools and how to do what you need to do.

With older iPods you can do it without software. Just view hidden files and it will show all the files on the iPod but the names will be based on Apples naming standards. Once you drag them back into iTunes they will appear correctly.

 

If I only l got a dollar every time somebody made this misinformed partially true, partially false, quote,

I'd buy some new components!

 

A while back, I used:

Copypod

$19.95. If it is still around, it was pretty easy.

 

And also why three backups are necessary. Even better, keep the backups in different places if you can, which will help in the event of nuclear attack. In truth, I've had far more occasions where a physical CD disappeared from my collection than instances when I lost a rip of a file on a hard drive (or one got corrupted), probably by a factor of 10.

A few $10-$20 utilities that will backup from iPod to PC/Mac:

Media Widget:
http://www.easyipodtransfer.com/ipod-to-itunes-transfer

Transferpod:
http://www.transferpod.com/

Copytrans:
http://www.copytrans.net/

Senuti:
http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/

I've used the latter, but bear in mind that in some cases, the original file names will evaporate and you'll need to rename the files.

Use this experience as a lesson: once you get everything back, do a backup immediately. In fact, do several.

 

I tried "Sharepod" last night and it seems to be working quite well.

My biggest fear was that I would somehow accidentally wipe my Ipods when I attached them to the computer.
That didn't happen. I guess it could have happened, but I read the instructions and I was careful to check the
device option in Itunes that says "prevent automatic syncing".

I have one of my three Ipods loaded back into Itunes. It went pretty quick (about as fast as it takes to sync
from my PC to an Ipod). I kept "watching" it go through its paces like a nervous parent.

I noticed that my playlist seem to now be "static" playlists (versus rule based "smart" playlists) but my rules were pretty
simple and I can create new smart playlists.

I noticed that some of "sort" fields seem to have not made the journey. That's a potential problem - but it's not 100 % percent consistent because I also noticed that a lot of the sort fields did survive. I just might need to look for things showing up in strange places and adjust. Jackson Browne for some reason was showing up under "J" (instead of "B"). The real litmus test will be some of my Motown.

I don't think it created duplicates anywhere in my library. I need to check to see if eliminated some of what I would call "false" duplicates (that seem to be - but aren't... usually when I have more than one version of a song - like a live performance).

I was kind of forced to upgrade from Itunes 10 to Itunes 11 along the way.

I've had Itunes 11 running on my Imac - and Itunes 10 running on my PC. Never really been a fan of Itunes 11 but I was always curious if the problem my AppleTV had with displaying correct artwork was caused by Windows or the Apple OS (versus the version of Itunes).

It looks like the culprit was Itunes 10. My AppleTV was much happier with my PC-based library now. I tend to have a lot of songs with individual artwork - but for some reason around the time Itunes matching came out - that got broken and the AppleTV wanted to just display the artwork for the first song in an album. I tend to put things like 45 rpm scans in the "item artwork" for each track in the Motown singles box set. Now it's displaying things like it did with Itunes 11 on the Imac. Prior to Itunes 11, it was still broke on the Imac.

The actually COMPUTERS (and Ipod devices) never had a problem displaying the correct artwork. Just AppleTV.


I think my disaster preparation plans will be better when my ongoing ripping project ends... right now it's an almost nightly ritual for about 5 years. Sad thing is I don't even feel like I've started - LOL

 

I used iRip from thelittleappfactory.com to do this a few years ago. I had to go through and re-tag a lot of the stuff, but it was still better than losing it all.

 

Hopefully I won't need to retag too much. If that gets too cumbersome, I'll go looking for the latest stuff I ripped - and only be working with that.

My biggest fear hasn't been losing music as much as metadata - which is why I went through the trouble to keep the library on two different machines (loosely tied together using Apple's "home sharing" feature).

 

They don't have to. Unhide the folders when you connect the iPod to a computer, and you will see where your music files are. The names will look like gibberish, but you can pull them off the iPod and put them somewhere else until you're ready to import them into iTunes again (which will restore the file and folder names). No third party software is needed to do this.

 

Yep, I've used that technique myself. But, when I've recommended it to some users they seem to prefer a more user-friendly tool.

 

In my case, the "value add" using the 3rd party software seems to be that it's preventing me from putting duplicates into my library as I pull the data from the Ipods back into the computer. If I was doing raw file adds - I'm not sure I could prevent that.

The simple fact that my Itunes library grew to a point where it couldn't fit on one, then (later) two 160 gig Ipod classic devices forced me into a mode where I split my library onto three Ipod classic devices - using an imperfect strategy that put some songs on multiple devices.

I realize it's kind of odd to have a "deck of ipods" - but I tend to only have one in the car at a time...

It sure is amazing to know how many songs I can hold in the palm of my hand.

 

just marking the thread for another time.....

 

Agreed.

 

I keep reading and re-reading your post and I'm confused. Please explain the "Unhide the folders" to this non-techie Mac guy, so I do the correct thing.

Maybe you can help me, while I've got your attention, but, since my iPod 160 gig "classic" is full, I want to save a separate library of what is on it, on the same computer, so I can always just re-sync it if I have any issues with the iPod. That way I can still add more songs to my existing iTunes library, but not have to uncheck hundreds of songs every time that I want to re-sync my iPod? I've tried to just start another library and copy and paste the songs that I want in that iPod library, but it won't allow me to do it, without completely re-importing all of the original discs.

 

I do something similar to what you are trying to do (or was and will hopefully again in a few days).

I have three Ipod classics. I named them different colors.

"black ipod", "blue ipod", and "white ipod"

Once upon time, all I had was "black ipod".

Prior to filling the "black ipod" - everything just always ended up on it.

But when my library grew to about 20,000 songs, it became filled and I purchased a 2nd Ipod class ("white ipod")

I have a bunch of "smart" playlists in my library that I call "Class of 19xx". For example, I graduated from high school in 1981 - but I entered my freshman year in the fall of 1977. So my "Class of 1981" playlist is built from a rule that says "year is between 1977 and 1981" (which actually works out to be 5 years - 77,78,79,80,81).

I've done something similar for a bunch of year ranges, starting with "Class of 1946", "Class of 1947", "Class of 1948"... up to "Class of 2013". My "Class of 1945" list is so empty that the rule for that just says "Any year less than 1946".

I originally started with decades - but I found defining "the 60s" or "the 70s" (or whatever) was just too broad of a range... because many times a decade seems to have a distinct early, mid, and late period... and that late period seems to bridge into the next decade. For example, the late 60s and early 70s sound kind of natural together. Ditto for the late 50s and the early 60s... late 70s and early 80s... etc.

So when it came time to split my libary onto two Ipods - I created two additional "smart playlists" that referenced the other playlists.

The smart playlist called "black ipod" included "Class of 1945" up until "Class of 1972". The smart playlist called "white ipod" included "Class of 1973" up until "Class of <current year>".

Then I also built some exceptions to those rules by creating some smart playlists called "Beatles" (which included Beatles proper plus anything released solo after the breakup) and "Motown" (which included anything that I labeled as "genre" Motown" - and went from the 50s up until today).

I also found it useful to create a smart playlist called "never played" that contains any song with a play count equal to zero.

So then when I was ready, I "erased" the older (black) ipod and resynced it with the smart playlist I called "black ipod".
Ditto for the 2nd ipod, synced with a smart playlist called "white ipod".

I put the "never played" smart list on both of them.

So the way it worked is anything recorded prior to 1973 - plus anything by a Beatle - or a solo Beatle - or anything in the Motown genre - plus anything I haven't played (yet) - ended up on the black ipod.

Then anything recoded in the year 1969 (or after) - plus anything I haven't played (yet) - ended up on the white ipod.

Note that there is a middle range of years (1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972) that ended up on BOTH ipods. Note also that I let "beatle" records that were released after 1973 (like a McCartney solo album) continue to live in its natural year range. So the 1980 "McCartney II" album would be on both ipods.

It took me about two years to fill up the first Ipod classic and another two years before I was ready for a third.

It was a little tougher this time to find a natural split in years for the three Ipods - especially since I wanted to continue to have one Ipod store all of my "Beatles" and "Motown" on that Ipod. I also tend to define "Motown" broadly - for example "Heatwave" by Linda Rondstadt is classified as part of the "motown" genre in my Itunes library. Sometimes I hate that because there is some non-Motown sounded stuff (like gospel or jazz) that I don't really like classifying as "motown" but I still stick to the rule - if was released by a Motown label - or written by a Motown writer (like the Invictus label stuff by HDH) or sung by a Motown singer after they left the label (like the Four Tops on ABC records), I label the genre as "motown". I really wish Itunes supported the ability to define a song as being in more than one genre - but that's not here (nor is anyone promising it).

Before my recent disaster I had three ipod classics organized as follows:

"black ipod" - "Class of 1945" up to "Class of 1967" - plus anything by Elvis Presley (no matter what the year) - plus "never played" list

"Blue ipod" - "1964 year" "1965 year" "1966 year" "1967 year" and then "Class of 1968" up to "Class of 1976" plus anything by The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Motown, The Stones, and Dylan (no matter the year of release) - plus never played list (note that the "19xx year" lists are not year ranges just that exact year).

"white ipod" - "Class of 1977" up through current year - plus never played list


This strategy pretty much keeps me from having to avoid doing massive resyncs when I add a new CD.
Plus its pretty easy for me to know what lives on what Ipod classic.

I was wanting to make the cut between the "black" and "blue" ipods be 1964 - but I had to kind of play around with the cut-offs so I left open room for incoming discs. Plus I added smaller ranges of the "blue ipod" (just 64, just 65, just 66, and just 67) because I felt like there was a lot of change between each year. Note that those years still live on the "black ipod" (as part of the "class of 1967" list).

The final breakdown was as follows:

"black ipod" was about 55% full
"blue ipod" was about 80% full
"white ipod" was about 55% full

Clearly "blue ipod" is going to be a problem as I rip additional music from 1964 to 1976... but my plan is to keep subtracting off the last year (76, then 75, then 74, etc) to free up room if needed. At some point, I may need to just forget the idea of trying to keep all of Motown on one Ipod.

"black ipod" might also be a little too empty right now - because I may not be filling it at a rate that keeps pace with the other two ipods. Clearly my "white ipod" will continue to fill because its the widest range of years - and I can easily see myself having to break that one into two separate Ipods at some point.

I figure it will take me about another two years before I start thinking about a 4th Ipod classic.

NOTE WELL: I *NEVER* CHECK OR UNCHECK ANY SONGS.

The only time I ever actually think about what lives on what Ipod classic is when I get a new one and I start thinking about how to split them. Until that happens, everything is done automatically through the "smart" playlist rules. Even when I go to split the "ipods" I can see the the song counts for each list and alter the rules to try to balance the counts BEFORE I actually make the changes to the actual Ipods.

I rarely use earbuds or headphones to listen to the things. It's usually the 30 pin connector docked into my car radio.

I'm probably setting myself up for a major disappointment if car radios stop supporting the 30 pin connector - but that hasn't happened yet.


This sharepod software seems to be working beautifully to recover the library. It still is a little scary however because I think its possible to hit the wrong button and wipe something accidentally.

 

Oh my, your post #22 almost made me dizzy from just thinking about managing my own iTunes library that way! I'm very happy that your system is working for you, but I would never be able to keep all of that stuff straight.

My issue deals more with just needing the music and more importantly, the "playlists", as they are on my current iPod, separated for easy re-syncs and then just allow my regular iTunes library to continue to grow, as I add more music.

 

LOL

The shorter version is they are divided into chronological ranges.

The hard part kicks in when there are exceptions.

Believe me - it was simpler when it was just one Ipod classic.


The big problem (in my mind) is that you can't just give a 160 gig drive a completely new set of songs quickly. This becomes pretty apparent if your library grows to approximately double the size of an Ipod classic.

 

It doesn't work on a Mac that way. It works on a PC. In the folder options, there's a place you can change an option to "unhide" hidden folders on the computer. I have this applied to everything on my PC because I want to see every folder and file that's on it.