Has a virus or hard drive crash wiped out your entire music collection on your computer? No problem. Here's how to copy music off your iPod and back onto your computer.

Requirements:

• Any iPod, except the iPod Shuffle, with firmware 2.1 or later
• A computer with iTunes installed and enough hard drive space to store all the music from your iPod

Imagine that you have a HUGE music library and all of it is kept on your trusty PC or Mac. You of course have a fantastic speaker system, to listen to that music in the highest quality, and an iPod, so that you can listen to your music wherever you go. Now imagine that one day, your computer's hard drive crashes, and that music library is now gone. All of the music imported off of CD's which you might have lost by now, all of the music downloaded off of free-music web sites, and most importantly, all that money spent on the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) has just vanished!

You then remember that all your music is still on your iPod, Safe and intact. You plug it in, you mount it to the OS, and then you realize that iTunes only allows the downloading of music from iTunes to iPod, not iPod to iTunes. (This is to prevent the stealing of music, says Apple). Do you really want to spend hours re-importing music, and repurchasing music from the iTMS? We didn't think so.

Luckily for you, there are several alternatives.

Option #1:

Yes you can "rip" music off any iPod. There are several applications that make this task very easy. A couple good programs to try are Pod Rescue () or the much cheaper Tune Transfer (). Any feature packed application will cost around $20-30.

Option #2:

If you are cheap and want a free solution, you have several options. However please keep in mind that this option is the "hard way" and won't be very easy for the average computer user. If you aren't super savvy with computers, then please try option #1. There are many free applications for both Mac and PC that will copy the music off your iPod. Mac users can use iPod Viewer or iPodRip. UNIX Savvy Macintosh and Linux users can use command line to pull the music off their iPod. PC users should look for applications like iPOD AGENT, PodUtil or CopyTrans.

No matter what program you use, this is the general "ripping" procedure for coping the music off your iPod:

With a Helper Application:
1. Download a "ripping" program (PodUtil, PodWorks, etc.) and install it on your computer.
2. Make a new folder somewhere on your computer that will have enough hard drive space to hold all the music files from your iPod.
3. Using the ripping application you purchased or downloaded, copy all the music off your iPod and put it into that folder.
4. It's a good idea to archive your music at this point. Burn all your music onto CDs, DVD-ROMs, or copy them onto an external Firewire or USB hard drive.
5. Drag that folder into the main iTunes window. You music will then import into iTunes. This make take several minutes depending on the amount of songs and your computer's processing power.

Without a Helper Application:
Here's a way to quickly get files off a PC iPod without any extra software.
1. Plug in your iPod.
2. From the Desktop, go to My Computer and find the iPod (usually designated by a drive letter. i e. E: or F:)
3. Open the damn thing.
4. Go to Tools > Folder Options > View (the tab) > scroll to Show Hidden Files and Folders and click it.
5. Click OK
6. Go back to your iPod folder/drive, there you will find a new folder called iPod_Control
7. Open it.
8. The Music folder in it will have a bunch of folders named F00, F01 and so on. THEY HAVE YOUR MP3s. Look through the folders to find your stuff.

NERD NOTE: You can also use the Search utility in Windows and search for a particular audio file on your iPod. Just make sure you specify to search in Hidden Files or Folders. There, a solution that requires no extra software, just a few extra brain cells.

Why Apple prevents you from easily copying music off your iPod:

The problem is, the ability to copy music off your iPod can be used for good or bad purposes. Ripping music off your iPod is an excellent last resort when you've lost music off your computer. However, being able to copy music off your iPod also makes it frightenly easy to steal thousands songs in a matter of minutes. With fast Firewire and USB 2.0 speeds, stealing a whole music library could take as little as 5 minutes. To help appease the record companies, Apple has disabled the ability to easily copy music off your iPod.

NERD NOTE: Macs can read both Mac and PC disks (including iPods). So both Mac and PC iPods can be used on Mac computers.

"It worked to perfection.  I enabled my iPod as an external hard drive and then used PODutil to transfer all of my songs to a new folder on my computer.  I then dragged that folder into iTunes and my library filled up!  The songs all play and it was not that big of a hassle.  Thanks!" ~ Eli