Prevent Automatic iTunes Syncing With Your iPod
Before you connect your iPod to your Mac, you must prevent iTunes from syncing with your iPod. If it does, it might delete all the data on your iPod. At this point, your iTunes library on the Mac is missing some or all of the songs or other files that are on your iPod. If you sync your iPod with iTunes, you’ll end up with an iPod that’s missing the same files. To prevent the iPod from syncing with iTunes:
Connect the iPod to Your Mac
ITunes quits. Your iPod is mounted on your desktop without any syncing between iTunes and the iPod. ITunes launches and displays a dialog box to inform you that it’s running in safe mode. You can release the Option and Command keys.
Make Music Files on Your iPod Visible for Copying
After you mount your iPod on your Mac’s desktop, you might reasonably expect to be able to browse through its files using Finder. However, if you double-click the iPod icon on your desktop, you see folders named Calendars, Contacts, and Notes, but you won’t see any music files. Apple chose to hide the folders that contain an iPod’s media files, but you can make the hidden folders visible by using Terminal, the command line interface included with OS X. You can’t copy the music to the Mac until you can see it. The two lines you enter into Terminal allow the Finder to display all the hidden files on your Mac. The first line tells the Finder to display all files, regardless of how the hidden flag is set. The second line stops and restarts the Finder so that the changes can take effect. You may see your desktop disappear for a moment and then reappear when you execute these commands.
Locate and Identify the iPod Music Files
Now that you’ve told the Finder to display all hidden files, you can use it to locate your media files and copy them to your Mac. To go to the music files on your iPod: The Music folder contains your music and any movie or video files you’ve copied to your iPod. You may be surprised to discover that the folders and files in the Music folder aren’t named in any easily discernable manner. The folders represent your various playlists; the files in each folder are the media files, music, audiobooks, podcasts, or videos associated with that particular playlist. Even though the file names don’t contain any recognizable information, the internal ID3 tags are intact. As a result, any application that can read ID3 tags can sort out the files for you. You need to look no further than your own computer; iTunes reads ID3 tags.
Use the Finder and Drag the iPod Music to Your Mac
The easiest way to copy the iPod media files to your Mac is to use the Finder to drag and drop the files to an appropriate location, such as a new folder on your desktop. The Finder starts the file copying process. This may take a while, depending on the amount of data on the iPod.
Add Recovered iPod Music to Your iTunes Library
You have successfully recovered your iPod’s media files and copied them to a folder on your Mac. The next step is to unmount the iPod and add the recovered music to your iTunes library.
Dismiss the Dialog Box
You can now disconnect your iPod from your Mac.
Configure iTunes Preferences
Add to Library
iTunes copies the files to its library. It also reads the ID3 tags to set each song’s name, artist, album genre, and other information.
Hide the Copied iPod Music Files
During the recovery process, you made all the hidden files and folders on your Mac visible. When you use the Finder, you see all kinds of strange-looking entries. You recovered the formerly hidden files that you needed, so now you can send them all back into hiding. That’s all there is to manually recovering media files from your iPod. Keep in mind that you need to authorize any music you purchased from the iTunes Store before you can play it. This recovery process keeps Apple’s FairPlay Digital Rights Management system intact. Enjoy your music!
What You Need to Transfer iPod Music to Your Mac
An iPod with your music and other content intact A Mac with iTunes 9 and OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or earlier The cable that came with the iPod
To restore your music to iTunes from an iPod you need to accomplish several things:
Prevent the iPod from syncing when you connect it to the Mac.Make invisible files visible so that you can copy them.Locate the Music files on your iPod and save them to a folder on the Mac desktop.Unmount the iPod.Configure the iTunes preferences.Move the recovered music to the iTunes library.Re-hide the hidden files you made visible.Yes, making a backup is easier, but if you are desperate, this method works.
