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My kids killed 'their' computer, which had over 1000 combined songs in their respective iTunes folders. That's the bad news.

The songs aren't lost since they remain on their actual iPods. That's the good news.

We have a new computer. That's more good news.

Turns out iTunes doesn't have the seemingly basic built-in functionality to download/transfer ALL the songs from their iPods into the new computer. It will let them transfer songs they purchased from iTunes, but not the hundreds of songs they loaded onto iTunes from CD's. That's the bad (and very frustrating) news.

I know there are several downloadable applications out there that let you circumvent this embarrassing chasm of a hole in iTunes' product. That's the good news.

Having spent an hour or so looking for the "right" one to use, and finally realizing there's no way to tell 1) which intend to take you through a dozen FREE!! screens before finally telling you you can use their FREE!! product for a one-time payment of $29.95, and 2) which ones will actually do what they say they will do for FREE!! or otherwise) ... I was hoping maybe the collected wisdom of TN could save me some time and what little hair I have left.

Best way to download/transfer the entire collection of songs from an iPod to a new computer?

First question.....did you buy a Mac?

No?

Oh.

Either way, the music that they've imported off CD's should be in there as mp3 or mp4 files. Not sure in a PC where they'd be, but on a Mac they're in the music library (iTunes) folder. Should be simple enough to copy them to a drive or to other CDs (more time consuming) and load them (copy) them into the new computer.

Om, in my experience, the best program to use for this purpose is called music rescue. Great quality, no errors in retrieved media that i have noticed, and it's free, although it's encouraged that you donate.

Big Ears

I think perhaps one of us isn't understanding the issue. The PC where he had all his song files is what died ... so the only place he has/had them all stored was on the iPod itself. We were trying to find an easy way to simply download them all (purchased and CD-burned alike) from the iPod into the new PC.

Geez. Guy gets a Mac he goes all nuts on ya.

Music Rescue. Will give that one a close look tonight.

Many thanks, sir.

Yeah, that'd be me. A day or so later I was looking at this and realized how much of an idiot I was. That's what you get when you're so busy you don't really read the whole sentence......serves me right.

Hope you got this worked out.

Course, if you had a Mac, you'd have everything backed up on Time Machine and wouldn't be in this mess.

Had to say that..........

;-)

This won't help with the current situation but I am putting our entire music library on a new NAS (Network Attached Storage) I just picked up. It is basically a file server for the home. I have it configured with 4 hard drives and RAID system so everything on it is redundant. If I lose a drive, I can just replace it and I don't lose any data. It is also accessible from any computer in our home so that my wife and I don't have to have any of the music or photos on multiple machines.

Hope you got this worked out Om.

I could be wrong but that's never stopped me before...

I think the answer is the simplest solution. That is, just install iTunes on the new computer and plug in the iPod. iTunes will then ask if you want to overwrite the (empty) iTunes library with the songs on the iPod. Problem solved...I think.

Obviously you only get one shot with this so if I'm not mistaken, I think you might be able to switch the iPod over to disk mode before you do it. That way you could copy the contents onto another drive just in case.

I have no suggestion - just wanted to comment that, for as popular a system as the Ipod is (and innovative in it's own way), it's one of the least intuitive and user-friendly I've ever worked with. It took me a day to figure out that a circular sweep of the dial controlled things like volume, menu selection, etc....even reading the manual. I've had more than my share of problems with the system.

Dude! The iPod is one of the easiest and most intuitive pieces of consumer electronics ever...as is everything Mac. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

Seriously, maybe you're just wired differently. Dealing with DRM and its attendant issues can sometimes present problems but the basic use of the system is about the easiest thing ever. In fact, I've never actually read the manual. I just started putzing around with it. Just my .02

I've been thinking about getting one of these for a while. Which one did you get and how has setting it up been?

Would that it were that easy. That's is how I figured it would work too, but unfortunately iTunes will only let you download from your iPod to your new computer songs purchased from iTunes. It won't let you download all the songs on your iPod that you had uploaded from CD's.

My son jumped the gun and simply started over with his CD uploads (he wasn't interested in waiting on The Oracle, apparently) and is good to go now. My daughter, on the other hand, is counting on Daddy to fix it.

Still haven't gotten around to trying out Music Rescue. Read up on it a bit and it looks like a winner though. I'll update as soon as I give it a spin.

I went with a unit made by Intel that is getting some great reviews for SOHO use. It's the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-e. It comes without hard drives so you can use something you are comfortable with. I used Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives (4 of them) but you don't have to fill ever drive bay or go with drives that big. I just wanted the max amount of space. I liked this better than a lot of other units I looked at where you have to use that manufacturer's drives or can't change drives out at all in case of failure.

It preforms really well in speed tests due to the higher end processor used on the board by Intel. It is very quiet, all the drives are mounted in a floating vibration reduction tray which is very unusual for hardware in this price point.

So far, I am very pleased. I think I will be even more happy once I have updated my switches to gigabit speed from the current 10/100 that I have been using for years. It uses a web interface that is easily accessed through either IE or Firefox (others are supported but I have not tested) and it is very easy to understand/work with. I have moved all my photos to it (over 200GB right there) and am now working on our music library, my wife's photos and my software library.

The unit, 4 1TB drives, tax, title and license it was $705. This seems to come down more every week so I would not be surprised if you could get it cheaper now.

Hey, Om. See if this is of any use to you. It includes steps for doing it on Mac or Windows, as well as recommended 3rd party apps to make the job easier if you don't want to do it manually.

Get Your Music Off of Your iPod - Wired How-To Wiki

The information was most recently updated 3 weeks ago, so hopefully it will help.

I agree, as long as all you want to do is download and play songs. The minute you want to maintain your library, or safeguard it from being corrupted, or switch computers, all that vaunted 'ease of use' is nowhere to be found. If you haven't had your ipod just plain decide to erase all your music on it's own accord - well, sorry, but you've just been lucky. It ain't about apple, mac, or anything else, its just not that reliable a system. May be better than any alternatives to date, but it's not nirvana.

My experience.

I've had this exact same problem myself when my family got a new computer and I had to transfer my songs and videos and whatnot.

I'm incredibly technologically challenged so I just had my brother who's really good with technology do it for me. I do know that I had to transfer other songs that I didn't download from itunes from my old computer to the new one but I just used a flash drive so it wasn't too bad at all.