Copy Music from iPod to Hard Drive

Apple does not use any kind of encryption to store music on the iPod. All they do is rename all the MP3's to weird names and place them in a weird directory structure which is hidden.

Following method works on Windows (did not test on Mac, but I'm sure there's a way to do this on a Mac). Your MP3 files on the iPod should have at least some kindda tag for the file to show up in the search.

• Enable show hidden files

In Windows, go to folder options and enable show hidden files. Now, connect your iPod, and browse the iPod Hard Drive.

• Browse the iPod's Drive

All the music files are stored in the folder H:\iPod_Control\Music\ (assuming the iPod is mounted on drive H:) in folders F00, F01, F02 and so on.

Go inside any of those folders and switch to Detail view. Now choose details from the view menu and select Artist Name, Album Name, Genre etc. This is what it would look like in Explorer.


This is how you see the Music.

• Do a Search in Explorer (Ctrl+F)

Now you wanna copy music from a particular artist say "Metallica". Go to the folder H:\iPod_Control\Music\ in Explorer and do a Search for files (Leave the name blank or *) containing text "Metallica". I bet the result would look like this:


You can do whatever you want with the files from here. Copy them, burn them ......

• Rename the files

As for the weird names, use a Renaming tool like Ant Renamer or even better use an ID3 tag tool like ID3-tagit to rename the files and move them around.


Conclusion:
Over all, this is not the best way to back up music, from iPod but it does not involve additional softwares like Anapod or Yamipod (which also work but seem to break too often and cost $$).
Its FREE, it works (until Apple finds out, of course) and its almost too easy.