So far I have looked at free software- or ‘freeware’ - as a way of getting hold of the tools you need to get your iTunes songs back from your iPod and onto your PC or Mac hard drive. The second option is shareware.

Shareware just means that you can download a program for free but there are strings attached. There are limitations built in to encourage you to buy it. With shareware you pay after a trial period and then you get what the people selling it call ‘additional functionality’. This means you can try it free to test it out for a limited time then it expires. Basically, the software company will share it with you - but put limitations on what the software can do to get you to buy it.

For example:

1. It can mean that it is good for - say - five hundred tunes and no more.
2. Or, it can mean that it will let you transfer maybe ten or twenty songs from your iPod music and then the transfer will stop. You will get one of those pop up messages asking you if you want to buy it now. You click something like ‘later’ and it continues for another ten or twenty songs and then it stops and you get the pop up again
3. Or, it will let you transfer songs but not let you use all the features available Read more »

I am going to have a lot more time to write about using your iPod very soon, and I hope to do plenty of research in order to give answers to all the problems you can encounter as an iPod user. The reason is that I will no longer be working full time, so I will also need to generate more income from this site. When you have a popular blog like this one you can get paid for writing reviews on your site, as a form of blog advertising.

It is up to me to select well targeted paid opportunities for the site, so it is relatively easy to ensure that my site still contains relevant and interesting articles, albeit that some of them will be in the form of sponsored blog reviews. I am looking forward to discovering some useful new sites from the opportunities that are on offer at Blogsvertise, and also making some much-needed cash as well.

Just a quick word on Pay Pal before we go on.

I’m sure you are familiar with PayPal, but, if you’re not you need to get an account quickly! It is the safest way to pay for stuff on the net. Whether you are buying this iTunes Library Rescue software to get those tunes back from your iPod or if you use ebay you are well advised to sign up.

I have to say that although I was incredibly skeptical about the whole concept when I first was introduced to it, but I’m a huge fan now. I buy and sell things frequently on ebay and with having a paypal account, I can pay people or be paid almost instantly. It really is the net currency now and you can relax that it is safe.

It is wonderful. Gone are the days of watching the mailbox, waiting for a personal check or money order to arrive. Gone are the days of all of the old-fashioned payment methods. Now, with a click of the mouse, you can pay someone on the other side of the world. Plus, you can relax in the knowledge that your money is safe and you won’t get ripped off. Check out the Pal Pal site and they explain everything.

Here’s a link to Pay Pal . Just click and away you go!

So, ruling out free software (freeware) and shareware, that only leaves one option - pay for it! I have said that freeware and shareware can be great for a lot of things and I am usually really happy to use them when a software program is expensive or when the stakes are not so high. But this is my precious music we are talking about here!
Most of this software costs between $10 and $30 and at these prices I do not see the point of raising my blood pressure any higher than it is already! The full versions of these programs are surprisingly cheap. If you can raise the money why raise your stress levels?

There are programs out there that are good with Mac and PC, Mac only and PC only. But you’ve got to know what you are looking for. Amazingly, it takes a lot of searching to find what you want- and the detective work can just about finish you off! That is why I started writing this guide.

1. I have tracked down the main software programs that are available
2. I have checked them out
3. I have then researched what other people are saying about them in chat rooms and forums. Amazon is really good for that- in the ‘Customer Review’ section you get some really interesting feedback
4. I have then picked my recommendations of the best of the best
   

OK- Pay Pal time ( or maybe Credit Card) !

I am going to pay to copy my iPod music into my new iTunes library. So buckle up! Here we go!

There is lots of software out there that will get your tunes back. There are three types available

1. Free Software
2. Free to Try - then buy the software
3. Just Buy it!

OK, let’s look at the options.

At the end of the day you make your own decision which one to go for. That depends on your level of computer savvy, how hacked off you are at having lost iTunes in the first place, and how much you want to take chances with the one remaining copy of all your iPod songs!
I am going to give you honest opinions in the next three posts, based on my personal experience.

OK- Your hard drive has crashed so you have had a good cry, shouted at the dog, blamed your other half, drowned your sorrows and cursed the fact you did not burn your music onto CD in the first place

First step- ask a buddy what to do. You’ll probably get the ‘I do not have a clue’ and a smug look because their tunes are safe. Do not worry- you will have the last laugh when their hard drive dies and they are left with all their tunes stranded. That is when they will be coming to you for the answers!
Second step- search the web. Type in “Restore iTunes music” “Copy iPod music” “Rescue iPod music” maybe “Transfer iPod music”. Largely you are going to get links to forums where desperate people are asking for help and where computer geeks make the answers difficult to understand. You will also get a few articles from computer mags which again are scary. Most importantly you will get sites where you can download software. But which one to choose? What is freeware? And what is shareware? And do they work? Which is the best? What if I screw up and lose all the music on the iPod? HELP!!!!
Third step- relax and keep reading the posts. Also, probably best to apologize to the other half as well and buy the dog a treat. I am going to sift through the options and tell you which programs are good for PC or Mac Hard Drives

The good news is that we are not alone! Hard Drives are failing all over the planet right now and gigs and gigs of tunes are saying bye bye!

My back-up discipline was appalling. My hard drive - holding my iTunes library- was an accident just waiting to happen - so why did I not do the sensible thing? Because guys do not always do the sensible thing! My hard drive crash taught me a big lesson, though - back up. These days you can get 400 gigs of storage for $150- there’s no excuse. Everybody thinks it will not happen to them- we know it does! Read more »

It would be great if you could just plug your iPod into your PC or Mac and restore your music with a click of a mouse. Well, guess what? You cannot do it! In fact, one wrong click and you will lose everything on your iPod too.

Remember, the iPod and iTunes are designed to be, essentially, one way traffic. Unless you are really, really careful with the settings the iPod will simply copy everything that is in your iTunes library. That is OK if everything is working sweetly-it is a disaster if you have had a hard drive crash and lost all your music. You reinstall iTunes on your new hard drive but, of course, the iTunes library is now empty because the music went down the pan with the old hard drive. Plug in an iPod now and it will copy everything that is in iTunes, i.e. NOTHING! The iPod will copy a blank library. Essentially it will copy an empty iTunes library and delete everything it previously held and. Not good.

Losing your music off your PC or Mac is bad enough- losing the only copy you have left (on your iPod) is a disaster

The reason Apple makes life difficult is because of fears about piracy- the record companies were worried that we would all run around offering buddies free music off our iPods and demanded that Apple stop that happening. So, the designers of the iPod kept the record companies happy and made sure transferring files from the iPod to computer would be a nightmare.

But hang on a minute! Record label bosses might be grinning but I am not! Read more »

• 2 years of downloading music
• Hours and hours spent lovingly putting together playlists in iTunes and then transferring them onto the ipod
• The joy of listening to my 25 gigs of pure music pleasure

And then one day- CRASH! Adios and goodnight to the hard drive on my trusty laptop…..and over a thousand songs in iTunes. (Here’s the ‘I told you so’ moment- I should have backed everything up, either by burning onto CD’s, DVD’s or transferring to a backup hard drive. But I did not do it. If I had I wouldn not be writing this blog now….and you would not be reading it!)

All the tunes were on my iPod (40gig photo), but Apple do not let you transfer the songs back onto your computer. More on why in a later post.

I went on the internet and searched ‘data recovery’, ‘mac data recovery’, ‘hard drive recovery’- you name it. Over days I analysed scores of search results to find out how to get my songs back. I did it and in the end it was easy.

But I was amazed that nobody had just done a simple guide to all the data recovery software that’s out there that would help dumb guys like me rescue their tunes. That is what this is all about!

In these posts I am going to tell you about the software that is out there, which one I used and how I got the tunes back. So relax-you are going to copy your tunes back from your ipod!