Recovering Music From An iPod Part 2

Accessing your iPod’s (again, pre-2007) music and transferring it to your Mac is similar to the process of doing so on a PC. Like the PC method, you have to set your iPod to manual transfer and open it from the Finder (the Mac equivalent to the Windows Explorer). Whilst browsing the iPod in the Finder, you will find yet again that the iPod_Control folder is missing from the listing.

In order to reveal the iPod_Control folder and the music contained within, you’ll have to use the Terminal utility, which can be found in “Applications” under “Utilities.” Once there, you have to type:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Once this command is complete, you should find the iPod_Control file along with the Music folder back in the iPod finder window. From there, repeat the steps for iTunes listed in the PC section, and you’re all set to go!

So, you’ve got an iPod touch or another post-2007 model iPod, you can’t use the method listed above, but you’ve got 13,000, songs that you want, nay, you need, back on your computer. Rest easy, as all hope is not lost; there are a number of software solutions available for iPod music recovery. The methodology will vary from program to program, but we’ve provided a few popular examples for you to check out.

iPod-to-Mac

There are both free and paid software solutions for PC and Mac. While some lengthy Google searching will provide you with a variety of programs with varying levels of functionality, we’ve found that the major differences between paid and free transfer programs are style and features. Paid programs are generally more user friendly and can retrieve more data from the iPod, such as playlists, play counts, etc.

Free Software:

• Senuti (Mac OS X – 30 Day Trial)
• SharePod (Windows)
• iRip (Mac OS X)
• YamiPod (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux)

Paid Software

• Pod-to-PC (Windows — $19.95)
• Im Too iPOd Computer Transfer for Mac (Mac OS X — $29.95)