My laptop crashed, now my ipod doesn't want to sync?

If you’re asking if you can transfer all your songs from your iPod back to your laptop, you can’t. You can only transfer the songs that you orginally purchased from iTunes back to your laptop.

I had this problem the other day. I accidentally wiped out all the music files from my entire iTunes library on my desktop computer. I called Apple technical support and they said only purchased songs can go from the iPod back into iTunes on a computer. Everything else is lost. I had to spend 5 hours putting all my CD music back into my iTunes library so I could then re-transfer them back into my iPod.

If you have to go this route, you might consider making back-up discs of all your iTunes songs so that if something like this happens again, you can just load all the music on the discs right back into iTunes. I have about 800 songs on my iTunes and it took me 5 CD’s to back all of that up. They compress the music data files to fit as much as they can on each individual disc.

Thanx BF That’s it. I had maybe 30 cd’s ripped onto my hard drive. The last 2 years of putting them in the order I wanted etc. I guess right now as long as I don’t sync it, I can keep what I have, and just keep it charged until I can take the time to re-rip them all. I did call Apple support, but since it’s almost 2 years old, they wouldn’t help. I thought about going to the Apple store at the mall, but now I won’t waste my time trying that route. They are usually very helpful at the Genius Bar.

Since this is the second time I crashed and burned, we have bought a backup server for the house. I lost 2 years of my rental homes books. I had to reconstruct 2008 expenses over 6 houses for my taxes. Not again. It backs up specific directories, so I’ll be sure to make my music go there too!

Appreciate your help – sorry it happened to you too.

@Skippy. Your backup server for your house sounds like great idea and very practical too I would imagine. As far as my iTunes headache, at least it was a learning experience and it actually worked out for the better in two regards because I ended up making better playlists than before and I was more selective and happier with the music I added back into my iTunes library.

Their is a program called yami pod it will pull all the music from your ipod onto your pc or mac and decode the file names for you. Its a good program.