iPod/Mac help SOS

[JazmenFlowers]

So, last week my 6 month old iMac G5 crashes. And so goes all my songs on my iPod and all pictures in iPhoto (including my Vegas pics and pics from my first row concert experience ) just a mere week before I had about saved enough money for an external hard drive. Good news is Apple is replacing the computer, bad news is they can't necessarily replace my data. The guys say they have restored 50 gigs, but I have no idea if that's a lot of a little, I'm hoping it's everything, but in the event it isn't, I'll have to have a ceremony for my pictures and move on (although luckily I had put a few on snapfish), but my songs I absolutely can't replace, we're talking years of gathering (taking 3 months to organize and load) and the past 6 months of downloading...ugh. I've heard there is an extractor program for iPods - anyone have any ideas, suggestions...I'm on the verge of tears.

After this is all over and I've backed up my info, I swear I'm gonna drink a fifth and break out the little black book...sheesh

[Gypsy-Rhiannon]

A friend of mine has told me you should try this:

http://wbyoung.ambitiouslemon.com/senuti/

Hope it's of some help to you!

Pip

[pianogirl04]

I feel your pain, Jason. A few months ago my iBook G4 crashed -- two months out of warranty. Two measley months. I cried for days... I lost all my school files (not that much of a loss) and a lot of pictures -- luckily I updated my iPod one last time before it crashed so I have pretty much everything I lost, but still... To top it off, my combo drive's started to make these funky grinding noises when I load a disc ever since I got it back. But anyway...

How big was your hard drive? I don't know what's standard on iMacs right now. 50 gigs is a huge chunk. When I got my iBook I got it with a 30gb hard drive and when I had it replaced, I dropped in a 60gb. It runs a lot faster now for some reason (and also runs hotter -- the fan comes on in like 15 minutes and stays on for an hour).

I was looking for an iPod extractor of sorts to do what you want to do, but I wanted to be able to pick individual songs off of it as I please. I didn't find that, but I did find a nifty tool that gives you access to your iPod directory as it is so you can back everything up to your comp again after a hard drive wipe -- it's called iLinkPod, hit it up on versiontracker.com. The cool thing about this is that it doesn't give you unlimited access to your iPod -- it shows you the file structure that the iPod uses and it puts the music files in a folder on your desktop so you can drag and drop songs from the iPod back to the computer but you don't risk messing up your iPod or doing anything to it that could cause it to malfunction. It's super safe, to my understanding. I haven't used it much because it works best when you're transferring large quantities (it keeps all your filenames as they are on the iPod, btw) and it's kind of difficult to find specific songs because sometimes the iPod uses a filesystem that disregards the name of the song... it's interesting. I really think this'll do the trick for ya.

[JazmenFlowers]

thank you both so very very much.

Jason