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!

Freeware is software which is free of charge, for an unlimited time. The vast majority of guys putting freeware on the web are honest and get their kicks from just giving something back to the online community. However- I am a nervous traveller. Especially when I am travelling around the internet! I am convinced that there is a whole community of people out there dedicated to infecting me with a virus. (I was previously convinced that whoever put the old hard drive in my laptop fixed it so it would go belly up as soon as there was enough music on there to really ruin my week) Read more »

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!