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| Sunday, March 4, 2007 12:18 AM |
| Technology! |
 by Fëanor |
I've finally found what seems to be a good piece of software for copying files back onto your computer from your iPod, which is something I went looking for way back when I first tried to find a good option for backing up my iPod. It's a piece of downloadable shareware called Music Rescue (formerly PodUtil) made by a British company called KennettNet Software Limited. It lets you copy any or all of your files onto your PC (or Mac) from your iPod, and even gives you options for automatically adding them into iTunes and rebuilding your playlists. It's pretty brilliant! I'm running it right now, actually; it's copying all of my files down into meaningful directory structures and with meaningful file names onto the external hard drive that I bought a while back, pretty much exclusively for this purpose. This makes me feel a whole lot safer and better, because previously I was backing up by simply copying the entire encrypted iPod Control folder, with all of its meaningless titled folders and files, which for all I know might have been entirely useless as a backup measure.
I went looking for software like this again, btw, because I had just put together a playlist on my iPod that I wanted to turn into an MP3 CD, and then realized to my horror that I wasn't able to make a CD directly from my iPod, so if I wanted to do this, I would have to track down all of the original files where they sat, scattered across three computers and tons of CDs, or figure out a way to dig those files out of the iPod. The latter option seemed far more palatable.
This is one of the things I really hate about the iPod. I know, piracy and all that, but I really wish it could just be a totally open external hard drive that just happened to also play videos, games, and music.
Luckily, this software seems to transform it into just that.
UPDATE: One caveat: I have yet to be able to get this program to close properly. Every time I try to exit, it freezes on me, shows up as "Not Responding," and I end up having to force quit. Still, small price to pay, I suppose... |
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