Mike DelGaudio

I keep my MP3 library on an external drive, and sync iTunes to my iPof form there. So, when my external hard drive kicked the bucket after a power outage, I rummaged around the interwebs to see if there was a way to get the files off my Ipod and Back into iTunes.

So far I have had good success with iDump.

Here is how I recovered the music.

First, I had to get get a new external hard drive. Bummer. Luckily the prices have come way down since the last time I purchased one so I was able to get a much larger drive for the same money.

Next I downloaded iDump (Windows only, Free). They have a “just .exe” version, so there is no install. Just click the EXE and go.

I hooked up my iPod, then watched for ITunes to appear, and closed it as fast as I could after it opened. Since my Liabrary was gone from the drive, I wanted to make sure I tunes didn’t go and scrub the files off the iPod too. I don;t know if that would’ve happened, but I didn’t want to risk it.

iDump found the iPod and after a few seconds it displayed a list of all the files on the device.

Here is where a keyboard shortcut helps…. iDump, by default is set to NOT copy a file unless it is selected in the list. My list had around 2700 files. The Developers at iDump don’t seem to have a heads-down way to select a file, you have to click it with the mouse (boo!) BUT, if you want to recover EVERY file on the iPod as I did, you can CTRL+A to select all files.

Go over to the output options Tab and make sure that it is set to pull all the right file types off, and if you want the copy to go unattended (thich means you can set it to overwrite or skip files already on the disk.

Then click “Start Copy”

I did find that some files did not copy, apparently as a result of characters in the filename that iDump didn’t care for. Luckily these were all podcast files for me, so no great loss.

Best of all, since this is a zero-install app, I can put it on my iPod so if this happens again (and I’m sure it will!) I can grab the files again.

Do you have a better solution? Let me know in the comments.