Extracting Music from iPods and other devices
Peter Shepheard I downloaded TinkerTool and followed the instructions below. I copied 73 tracks to iTunes without any problems. I could not follow the purple bit but found it worked if I opened a folder F01, F02 etc, highlighted all the files and dragged them to the iTunes icon in the dock that worked. I had to hjold the mouse pointer over the dock item for a short time. I also tried dragging the selected folders into the iTunes Music as below and that worked too.<br />
The file numbers look pretty odd!
Article from: http://www.macworld.com/article/1054342/twowaystreet20.html My comments in italics - pretty colours on my pdf!
TinkerTool
The Mac doesn’t include a utility for making invisible files visible so you must download one. My favorite tool for this job is Marcel Bresink’s free TinkerTool. Once you’ve downloaded TinkerTool, follow these steps:
Plug in the iPod.
If iTunes doesn’t launch automatically, launch it.
If the music library on your iPod is not linked to iTunes’ music library (as would be the case when you’re restoring your music library from your iPod to a fresh copy of iTunes installed on a reformatted drive), iTunes will ask if you’d like to sync the contents of the iPod with the contents of the iTunes library. Click Cancel. Select the iPod in iTunes’ Source list and make sure the Summary tab in iTunes 7’s main window is selected.
Enable the Manually Manage Music option as well as the Enable Disk Use option.
Launch TinkerTool and click the Finder tab.
Enable the Show Hidden and System Files option.
Click Relaunch Finder. If you do not do this you will not see hidden files.
Move to the Finder and double-click on the iPod’s icon on the Desktop.
You’ll discover that several more items now appear in the iPod window. Among them is a folder called iPod_Control. Double-click the iPod_Control folder.
Inside the iPod_Control folder you’ll find a variety of folders. The one you care about is the Music folder.
Drag the Music folder to your Mac’s Desktop to copy it to your computer. As the name implies, this is where music is stored on the iPod.
In earlier versions of iTunes you could simply drag this Music folder to iTunes’ main window and the music within it would be copied to iTunes’ music library. This is no longer the case. You must now open the Music folder, open the the folders within (these folders all begin with the letter F), and then drag the contents of the folders into the Library entry in iTunes’ Source list.
I opened the folder selected all the files and dragged them to the iTunes icon in the dock as I described above. This copied all the music and the artwork into iTunes.
The songs you copied from the iPod will be added to iTunes. If you’re a tidy type, before copying those files to iTunes, open iTunes’ preferences, click the Advanced tab, and make sure the Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized and Copy File to iTunes Music Folder When Adding to Library options are enabled. Enabling these options will organize your iTunes library in the way iTunes prefers.
If you then look in your folder:<br />
Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music you should find all your Albums and music. It’s not a bad idea to copy all of this onto a backup and then you have a safe copy that has no connection with iTunes.
There are other options I came across but as TinkerTool is FREE and works I would stick with that.
WARNING:
Take great care when hidden files are visible not to delete anything if you are in any doubt as to what it is. This tool can be dangerous.
I hope someone finds this useful.
TinkerTool has many other uses I am sure but please heed the WARNING.
Peter