Filed under: iPod Family, How-tos
Copy One iPod to Another
I hinted at this bit earlier today while talking about my new 60GB iPod. I've also mentioned parts of this in the distant past. Basically, I keep all of my music on my iPod and backed up elsewhere, managing my iPod manually, rather than letting it automatically sync with my iTunes Music folder. Why? Because I have a 12-inch Powerbook with a teeny little 80GB hard drive, so I'd rather not clutter it up with music that is already on my iPod. Whenever I want to listen to this music on my computer I simply plug my iPod into my computer. However, I worked out a little trick to ensure that I could also burn CDs of all the music on my iPod (that isn't on my computer) and basically move them back to my computer at will.In any case, if you follow me after the jump, I'll show you how I did these things, and if you want to copy all the music from your old iPod to your new iPod, I'll walk you through one way of doing it...
I wrote a very basic AppleScript, once upon a time, called iPodFolderOpener, which does nothing more than run a basic series of Terminal commands that open up all the invisible folders in the invisible Music folder inside your iPod's invisible iPod_Control folder as Finder windows. This fills your screen with windows. Before you run the script, you make sure you have navigated to the Advanced preferences pane of iTunes's preferences and unchecked "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library." Then, after running the script, you simply go to the foremost open window, select all, and drag and drop them into iTunes. Go back to the Finder. Close that foremost window, and select the next. Repeat the previous step. Continue doing this until there are no more open windows.
With a large music collection this can take a good half-hour of dragging. It isn't fun, but once you are done, every time you connect your iPod, iTunes will be able to find all those tracks and treat them like any other tracks installed in the Music folder of your iTunes Music Library. You can burn them to CD, reveal their location in the Finder, or copy them to another iPod.
So, If you have set all this up beforehand, like I had, then when you get a new iPod, all you have to do is first plug in the old iPod and let it mount, so that all those files appear as part of the local iTunes Music Folder. Next, attach the brand new iPod and tell iTunes to automatically sync it for you. All the songs in your iTunes Music Library, both the ones on your computer and on your old iPod, will automatically sync to the new iPod. This will be much slower than regular syncing, but you only have to do it once.
Once you are done syncing all of the music to the new iPod, click on it in the side pane, select its preferences from the bottom of the iTunes window, and switch it from Automatic sync to Manual sync.
Now you are all done. Enjoy!
With a large music collection this can take a good half-hour of dragging. It isn't fun, but once you are done, every time you connect your iPod, iTunes will be able to find all those tracks and treat them like any other tracks installed in the Music folder of your iTunes Music Library. You can burn them to CD, reveal their location in the Finder, or copy them to another iPod.
So, If you have set all this up beforehand, like I had, then when you get a new iPod, all you have to do is first plug in the old iPod and let it mount, so that all those files appear as part of the local iTunes Music Folder. Next, attach the brand new iPod and tell iTunes to automatically sync it for you. All the songs in your iTunes Music Library, both the ones on your computer and on your old iPod, will automatically sync to the new iPod. This will be much slower than regular syncing, but you only have to do it once.
Once you are done syncing all of the music to the new iPod, click on it in the side pane, select its preferences from the bottom of the iTunes window, and switch it from Automatic sync to Manual sync.
Now you are all done. Enjoy!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jay Contonio said 5:59PM on 6-30-2005
Ummm...all that is great until your ipod gets stolen or lost, then you have no music. Also, if you kept everything in your library on the powerbook there would be no need for this. You just plug in the new ipod and all the music will go on there.
I have no idea why you'd want to do this...man if I only had my music in my ipod and someone stole it, I would lose 20 GB worth of music. No way...no way
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Jay Contonio said 6:02PM on 6-30-2005
Also, if you were doing this to say, give your buddy all your music on a new ipod...do the same thing. Plug the new ipod into your computer, it'll sync the music...then when he gets home and plugs it in it'll ask if he wants to sync or not...hit no, and then grab a program that rips the music off the ipod into the library...bam. No dragging, dropping, windows open, nothing...
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C.K. Sample, III said 8:07PM on 6-30-2005
Jay, as I mention in the post, I keep all the music backed up on a large hard drive at home. The reason I do this is to keep space flowing on my Powerbook's 80GB drive.
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claviclaws said 6:18PM on 6-30-2005
In Tiger you can force Spotlight to index your iPod (a good thing anyway), and then use a search in a Finder window to select all your music and drag it into iTunes. Saves a good bit of mouse manipulation.
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Jay Contonio said 7:00PM on 6-30-2005
Ahh, I missed the "and elsewhere" part...Even still, why all this trouble? Plug your hard drive in, put the stuff into iTunes, attach new ipod...sync, remove hard drive.
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Mark said 9:08PM on 6-30-2005
I have another solution... i changed iTunes to have my music folder on a local network share (on my very own linux server :).
Actually, it is a result of moving my library over from my Wintel box... i put it on the server to move it and thought... "Why not leave it here and save room on my teenie mac mini hard drive."
So, to make a long story short... i have iTunes manager my music folder for me on the netowrk share. I have my authenitaction in my keychain so that any time i'm not connected and start iTunes, it automagically logs into the share and STREAMS my music from the network.
All in all, i haven't really found a bad thing about doing it this way, other than the very first iPod sync was pretty slow because it was copying all the music over the entwork... Otherwise when i add 1 or 2 albums at a time it doesn't take hardly any longer than storing the music on my local disc.
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sebastien said 9:43PM on 6-30-2005
That's not a good idea if you like the playcount feature i thin it wont keep track of the numeber of times a track is played if you fdont have it sync automatically.
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Tom said 10:25PM on 6-30-2005
Or you might be able to use TinkerTool, turn on hidden files, restart the finder, and drag the single iTunes control folder from your iPod into iTunes. I haven't tried this, but it should work the same way as CK's plan. The Applescript is more fun, but the repeated dragging sounds like a pain.
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Tim O. said 11:53PM on 6-30-2005
Hey, all you other people: The reason he does not just sync his songs automatically to his iPod, it that his 80 gb HDD is not big enough to hold all of his music, along with his other files. For this reason he keeps it all on his iPod, and makes iTunes feed off of it for the music. It makes perfect sense to me. Now, with that said, I will not be doing this. Why not? Well, my iPod's HDD is on the verge of dying. I can play music with it, but the second I plug it into my 'book, it goes crazy. I have not been able to sync my iPod in months. It may be time to buy a new one... I think I may wait to see what the iPhone looks like first, though.
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Matt Schinckel said 5:26AM on 7-01-2005
To Mark: I too have all of my music stored on a server, and I have a script that automatically mounts the share point.
The other advantage of this system is that multiple users (on multiple machines) can share all of the music, without having to double up on storage space.
There are some issues if you go down this road: mainly if you get iTunes to keep music arranged. (This is a good idea for other reasons, though, like if you also listen to the music via something that won't run iTunes, like an Xbox.)
I have documented a heap of stuff (issues, how I got around things) on my website. http://schinckel.net
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Felipe said 8:36AM on 7-01-2005
why don't you just leave your music on an external HDD and tell iTunes to access it, then you wouldn't need to plug in your iPod every time. Although it wouldn't work if you were on the road and the HDD was left at home, then you would need to do what you did with the iPod.
Well, I didn't think it is the best way to work that around. First, the playcount feature wouldn't work as well as it would with iTunes, second, pluggin in the iPod every time you want to hear your music would wear off the battery a lot faster, unless you buy a new one every year.
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arnaudt said 5:44PM on 7-03-2005
Hey CK !
Glad to -finally- see/read someone who does just like me ! ;)
I have so often been considered as some kind of freak because I didn't have any mp3 on my Powerbook -55Go- and all of them on the iPod -40Go-, and I didn't do any sync between the two, I'm happy to see I'm not alone to have some common sense ! :)
I really don't understand all those people who have the same mp3, both on their laptop AND their iPod. Come on people : you bought the iPod - not cheap- expressly for that purpose ! Why would you want to have them doubled and take twice the place ?
I can understand when you have 1° few mp3s 2° a little iPod (mini or shuffle) 3° and A LOT of place on your desktop, but not in other cases, like CK and me ;)
BTW I also have a backup of the iPod (in case it's stolen or broken) and I've been using IpodRip to "clone" it (I shoud say "backup" it)
But lately I had problems with this app (it didn't launch anymore) so I switched to iPodAccess that works fine too.
But the two apps give great results in backuping your iPod to an external drive.
Hope this helps :)
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Jeff Bullock said 10:39PM on 9-08-2005
could you folks help? My son's computer died before he could back up his ipod to a new mac. Can he use his full ipod to sync with his new mac? Do we just plug and go or is there something else we need?
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