iPod Music recovery?

Varega

Hey guys, first time poster in this subforum, I got a quick question regarding iPods and their anti piracy measures.

A woman at work has a corrupted install of iTunes. She, without trying to repair it, uninstalls iTunes and reinstalls it. The music that she has burned, has that been lost? And does a new install of iTunes require a complete wipe of an iPod and resync? I'm not very familiar with iPods, so I'm kinda at a loss.

Also, she has an account with iTunes with purchased music. Is that purchased music redownloadable at no charge?

ArcSyn

Varega wrote: »

Hey guys, first time poster in this subforum, I got a quick question regarding iPods and their anti piracy measures.

A woman at work has a corrupted install of iTunes. She, without trying to repair it, uninstalls iTunes and reinstalls it. The music that she has burned, has that been lost? And does a new install of iTunes require a complete wipe of an iPod and resync? I'm not very familiar with iPods, so I'm kinda at a loss.

Also, she has an account with iTunes with purchased music. Is that purchased music redownloadable at no charge?

BEST SOLUTION:

A third-party program that recognizes iPods like Winamp is able to copy the music from the iPod onto the computer, yet the DRM will still be intact. (meaning it won't play in Winamp, but it will work in iTunes once she has reauthorized it for her account) This way she can easily retain everything on her iPod and doesn't have to worry about redownloading it all from iTunes, or reripping (and tagging) all the stuff from CD.

FYI:
Uninstalling and reinstalling iTunes will not delete purchased songs (unless perhaps it asks and she said yes?).

The songs she has burned to CD may not tag properly, but she can re-rip them into iTunes for her iPod.

If you choose to auto-sync your iPod, if the music is not in iTunes, it WILL wipe the iPod. If you choose to manually sync, the music will stay on the iPod indefinitely.

iTunes does NOT allow you to redownload purchased music. I find this the be the biggest flaw of iTunes. However, if she calls up support and does a little begging and pleading, they may allow her to redownload her collection again.