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! I had a legitimate reason to want the music off my iPod. I had a hard drive crash. There are other reasons too- you buy a new computer or you want your music on more than one computer. Or maybe you had to do a PC or Mac restore and now your iTunes library is empty. There are perfectly legit reasons why you might want to transfer iPod tunes to another computer. So what do you do?

Apple will not have much sympathy- the party line is that you should have backed up. You know the score- you should have been burning those iPod tunes onto CD! Some ‘know it alls’ on the internet will tell you can restore your music. That is as long as you are a dead calm computer whiz with nerves of steel who is accustomed to delving around in Mac hard drives or PC hard drives. All you have to do is put your iPod in ‘disk mode’, understand all about ‘hidden folders’ and negotiate your way round bizarre file names. Oh, and do not forget, if you have fixed the hard drive and iTunes is loaded it will open and ask if you would like to associate this iPod with this computer, deleting its content! CLICK YES and it is likely you will delete everything on your iPod and the only remaining copy of your precious music!

All of the above is not my idea of fun. One wrong nervy click of the mouse and you are screwed. That is why I spent days searching online for the answers.

Thankfully, Apple did leave a rescue route. There were no restrictions that stopped clever non-Apple, third-party software developers designing tools to help you reclaim your iPod music and getting your songs back! Remember the same issues will arise when Apple launches the iPhone.

Coming up are my recommendations on the best of the lifesavers!