2. Plug in your iPod. In Windows Explorer, a folder will now appear with the name of your iPod.
Double-click on that. Go to the sub-folders “iPod_Control” and then “music”. You’ll find your music there randomly scattered across multiple folders and with scrambled file names. But don’t worry, the ID3 tags are still fully intact and we are now going to “unscramble” the files.
3. But first copy all the music from those iPod folders into a new folder on your hard-drive. Move all the songs into one single folder and discard all the folders that your iPod made. By the end, you should have one folder in your hard-drive with all the scrambled files together.
4. Open up iTunes and do the following : Go to Edit > Preferences. Under the Advanced tab, under the General “sub-tab”, select the local folder where you have copied the music from your iPod (by clicking Change…).
Check the box “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” and click OK. Also make sure you have wiped all previous music from iTunes so your playlists are blank.
5. In iTunes, click “File” then “add folder to library”. Select the folder where all your copied music is. iTunes will now re-import all your music back into the playlists. But more importantly, because you have previously clicked “Keep iTunes Music Folder organised”, iTunes will now start renaming and organising your songs into their correct names, albums and folders. This may take a while depending on how many songs you have in your iTunes library.
There you have it. Oh and don’t forget to go back into Windows Explorer, and to Tools > Folder Options > View. Reverse what you did so the hidden files remain hidden again. You may also want to de-select “Keep iTunes Music Folder organised” if you don’t normally use that option.
SkyLi answered Thursday April 1 2010, 4:04 pm: Hi!
There are two ways, that I know of, you can do this.
1) buy a massive disk drive, basically like a large flash drive. You can transfer EVERYTHING this way. Take the songs and put them on the flash drive. Then plug it into your new computer. Open iTunes, Click File, Library, Import play list. By the way the large flash drive like drive I'm talking about is worth some money.
2) download all of your songs on to your iPod. Plug your iPod into the computer. Go to File, then scroll down to transfer purchases from iPod. With this you can simply delete all the songs from your iPod once you've transferred them that you don't wish to actually have ON your iPod but still in your library.
good luck!
~Sky [ SkyLi's advice column | Ask SkyLi A Question ]
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