How to get songs off of a Mac-formatted iPod in Windows?

February 24, 2007 10:10 AM

Is there a way to get songs off of a Mac-formatted iPod in Windows?

My girlfriend's iBook G4 recently drowned in a pool of water. Nothing was able to be recovered from the hard drive and we'd like to get all 40GB of songs from her iPod.

However, we only have Windows machines to work with. Is there any possible way to get the songs off of the iPod? Or are we screwed.

I've heard of programs such as PodUtil, etc..., but don't think they'll work with Mac-formatted ipods.

posted by JacksonEsquire to computers & internet (8 answers total)

0. Make sure that "Show Hidden Files" is on - My Computer, Tools, Options, View
1. Plug the iPod in
2. It will show up as a external hard drive under "My Computer"
3. Double click on the drive, iPod_Control, Music

All those folders will contain the music - just copy and paste it into a folder on your PC hard drive.
posted by k8t at 10:20 AM on February 24, 2007

I'm pretty sure you'll need a utility that lets you read HFS formatted disks. I've used one in the past year, but I don't remember what it was called. You can probably just use a demo version.
posted by Good Brain at 10:29 AM on February 24, 2007

@ k8t

That's what I had originally planned to do, but it won't work because Windows won't natively read Mac-formatted disks.
posted by JacksonEsquire at 10:38 AM on February 24, 2007

I don't think that iPods (except the old ones that are way smaller than 40 GB) distinguish between mac formatted and PC formatted....
posted by raf at 10:39 AM on February 24, 2007

As Good Brain indicates, you'll need software to read HFS+ formatted drives, of which your "Mac-formatted" iPod is an example.

You can get a trial of MacDrive 6 here, which adds that kind of support for long enough to get the files on your Windows computers with a tool like iTunes.

Another option is MacOpener.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:39 AM on February 24, 2007

Floola? I think it works although I am not a Mac user.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:02 AM on February 24, 2007

According to the last comment in this thread, the Ubuntu LiveCD can read and write HFS+ partitions. One approach, which would require you to do absolutely nothing to your Windows installation, would be to download and burn this CD, and boot from it. Then use it to copy the files to another drive.

If all you have is NTFS-formatted drives (that's what XP uses by default), and you can't reformat an external drive as FAT32, you might need to copy to a network share on another Windows machine. Linux doesn't easily write to NTFS. It can be done, but it involves hackery you probably don't want to get into.
posted by Malor at 1:03 PM on February 24, 2007

Blazecock Pileon has it - your iPod is Mac-formatted so you need to get one of those utilities to get at the files. (AFAIK, the only iPod that doesn't differentiate is the Shuffle.) Then, you can either copy off manually (the directory structure is basically the same - you'll find it) or use something like Anapod Explorer to get the stuff off. Whether or not you use a utility depends on whether or not you care that the file names and organization on the iPod are not at all what you'd have in, say, iTunes. the id3 tags are all intact, though.
posted by mrg at 8:26 PM on February 24, 2007