The Complete Guide to Ripping and Copying Music from iPod to Computer
I’ve written about a few applications that will allow you to copy music, photos, and video from your iPod to your computer. There are quite a few apps out there now that allow you to do this, and since my previous posts continue to be among the most popular, I’ve decided to do a round up of a majority of the software available to accomplish this.
The following list includes both Mac and Windows software for copying iPod files, so theres a little something for everyone. Hopefully this list will allow you to find one that is easy for you to use and works without any problems, as a few of you have left comments saying you’ve had trouble getting them to work. Before attempting to use any of these programs, make sure you have gone into iTunes and disabled the auto update feature for your iPod. You will want to have it set for manual update.
iPodRip
Website - link
System - Mac and Windows
Cost - Free Trial, $14.95 to purchase
iPod rip supports any file type that the iPod supports including video and podcasts. Using iPod Rip will allow you to recover all songs, meta data such as ID3 tags, ratings, play count etc., and associated playlists. iPod Rip also allows you to play the song with an iTunes like interface so you can decide whether or not you want to copy a particular song. While importing, iPod Rip will send songs directly to your iTunes playlist. Copying the songs is as simple as dragging and dropping, or selecting all songs and hitting Go.
Music Rescue
Website - link
System - Mac and Windows
Cost - Free or £10 if you want the registered version
Formally known as PodUtil, Music Rescue is a free alternative for ripping your music from an iPod. Music rescue is one of the few that support windows 2000.
Senuti
Website - link
System - Mac only
Cost - Free
Senuti is just what the name says - iTunes backwards. Super fast, search capability, playlist support, and it imports directly to your iTunes library..cause your gonna do that anyway. Best of all its free and a girl created it so bonus points for geeky girls.
iPod Music Liberator
Website - link
System - Mac and Windows
Cost - $24.99
I havent used this application, and the price alone will make me not ever use it. However I have heard good things about it, and if your having trouble getting some of the other ipod copying software to work, then iPod Music Liberator may be worth checking out.
iPod Access
Website - link
System - Mac and Windows
Cost - Free
iPod Access is another alternative that offers some great features. iPod Access suports music, video, images, and podcasts. It also allows for file renaming, and single button sequential backups. The sequential back up is a nice little feature because it will automatically back up any new addtions that arent already on the computer.
So there you have it, there are 5 options for you to copy your songs from your iPod back to your computer. But wait, theres more. I have 6 more alternatives that are notable mentions.
iPod Disk - Mac and Windows versions available
PodWorks - Mac only
Anapod - Windows only
CopyTrans -Windows only
XPlay - Windows Only
iGadget - Windows Only
If anyone has any others they are fond of using please leave them in the comments. The more options people have the better.
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Floola(http://floola.com/) is good choice.
Thanks, I’ll check that one out
when I open ipodrip it says (An unhandled exception has occurred in a component in your application. Click continue and application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. Argument ‘Length’ must be greater or equal to zero.)
I press continue and it says: Loading Ipod data and then just sits there forever.
Any ideas? I am using windows vista.
I have the same problem with my XP sp2 OS as Bowen: says
(An unhandled exception has occurred in a component in your application. Click continue and application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. Argument ‘Length’ must be greater or equal to zero.)
Can anyone give me a hint?
MY pc crashed. I have an 80gig ipod with video. I need to transfer my ipod music back into the new harddrive. I want to interface with itunes and have itunes recognize, just like before the crash, my ipod library. I don’t want to rely on a third party vendor to manage my music. I need a seemless least intrusive sofeware program to do this. what can you recommend? thanks in advance.
i recommend using any of the recommendations i made in this post. Your going to have to use one of these 3rd party softwares to get the music off the iPod. Apple does not support you doing this. Once you get the music back on your pc hard drive with the software you can use itunes like you did before.
I am using IPOD to computer program and I am having problems with the program detecting my IPOD. I made sure that my IPOD is conntected by checking the USB port status. It shows my IPOD connected to my laptop. Still i can not get the program and my IPOD to talk to each other. Need HELP!! thank you
Lionel
Try iPodCopy, it works for the PC and the Mac. It automatically detected my iPod when I plugged it in. Was able to transfer everything from my iPod to my computer.
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/ipodcopy
Try IDump - it’s not a bad alternative.
I put a lot of songs on my computer at work and used iTunes to download to my iPod. Then I got a home computer and put more songs on that computer, and when I tried to sync songs from work, I was forced to erase my iPod and download the songs to my home computer, then to my iPod. Later, my home computer crashed and i lost all my info and downloaded songs. I still have my songs on my iPod from home, though, I don’t have the program on my home computer anymore.
My probelm is that I copied a whole different set of songs at work and the songs are still left on my work computer. I downloaded the iPodRip to be able to sync my home downloads currently on my iPod to my work iTunes, but can’t figure how to use it to put the songs from my iPod onto my work computer, which has a different set of songs. Did you follow that?
Can you help?
I have the same problem with my XP sp2 OS as Bowen: says
(An unhandled exception has occurred in a component in your application. Click continue and application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. Argument ‘Length’ must be greater or equal to zero.)
Can someone please assist me with this? I even removed IpodRip and reinstalled and the same problem arose.
how might i coppie the mussic- currently on my ipod- though it was taken from another computer- on to my current computter
lotta love
boo
iPod Copy Expert do the job excellent. It can copy songs, play lists, ratings, play counts to computer or even iTunes.
So a friend has given me their ipod to use because they got a new one. I’d like to hook it up to my PC to at least be able to see all of the songs they have, problem is, she had a mac and so my PC wont read the ipod and she and her mac are thousands of miles away. Is there anyway to access the data without having to erase everything and start from scratch?
Thanks for the help here. I would like to rip the contents of my ipod to my pc, about 15,000 songs. The ipod was loaded from my mac though. Can I use any one of these programs? My understanding is that the formatting is different for mac and pc. If I get the songs onto my pc will I be able to play them?