This has happened to me once before and I had to download all the music all over again. Does anyone know if there is anyway to recover the music from my iTunes on a laptop that no longer works? All the music is still on my iPod which I still have, can I connect my iPod to another computer and just transfer the music from that?
Your best bet would probably be to just transfer the music off of your iPod onto another computer. It’s possible if you took your laptop somewhere they could recover your files, but that would cost money of course.
There are some programs out there that can do the iPod to computer transfer for you, but I prefer to do it myself (no risk of spyware etc that way). To manually transfer your music off of your iPod:
1. Enable viewing of hidden folders on your computer. How exactly to do this varies by operating system, so just run an internet search for “show hidden folders in ______” where blank is Windows XP or whatever operating system you have.
2. Connect your iPod to your computer and open it up using My Computer. When you open it up you should see a folder labeled “Music”
3. Copy that music folder to your computer – you can drag and drop it or do a right click and select copy and then right click where you want to transfer it to and select paste.
4. Import the music files into your iTunes library. There are options for doing this under the “File” menu in iTunes – by file will take one song at a time, by folder will take a whole folder of files at once.