Transferring music etc. from iphone to new computer

[zukes]

Okay, so I am a dumbass. Bought a new laptop a few months ago, cleared out my old one and gave it to my niece.

I now want to update my iphone to the latest software, something I always forget to do, however it says that I will lose all of my non itunes purchased music, contacts etc. if I upgrade as this is not my home computer.

I have very little itunes purchased music as I took my collection of CD's, put them on my old computer and then put the music that is still listen-to-able onto my phone and threw away the space taking CD's.

I have been reseraching ways to transfer, but you either need the old computer, or have had to back up the files form the old computer, neither of which I did.

So am I screwed? I suspect that jailbreaking my phone is one option. I doubt that I can use my old laptop as I am sure my niece has her itunes on there now.

[Russic]

Mac or PC?

I can only speak for the Mac side of things, but I've used Senuti in the past to great success. Free 30 day/1000 song trial.

http://www.fadingred.com/senuti/

[Rathji]

I had to do this many years ago and used Sharepod.

[Bertuzzied]

Originally Posted by zukes

Okay, so I am a dumbass. Bought a new laptop a few months ago, cleared out my old one and gave it to my niece.

I now want to update my iphone to the latest software, something I always forget to do, however it says that I will lose all of my non itunes purchased music, contacts etc. if I upgrade as this is not my home computer.

I have very little itunes purchased music as I took my collection of CD's, put them on my old computer and then put the music that is still listen-to-able onto my phone and threw away the space taking CD's.

I have been reseraching ways to transfer, but you either need the old computer, or have had to back up the files form the old computer, neither of which I did.

So am I screwed? I suspect that jailbreaking my phone is one option. I doubt that I can use my old laptop as I am sure my niece has her itunes on there now.

sorry but that is total crap. how ridiculous is that?

[Royle9]

Just did the same thing, upgraded computers and my iphone/itunes was "locked" to another computer. Unless you have access to your old itunes library files (which it doesn't sound like you do) you are unfortunately hooped from what I found out. Anything on your phone that wasn't downloaded via itunes aka purchased will not be able to be put back on.

You can plug your phone in, see the master list of songs/playlists but you cannot copy any of the songs off of the phone at all. I had to redo everything last week, it sucks watching 7-8gigs of music get flushed into cyberspace

(phone is jail broken for what its worth)

[CKPThunder]

You are allowed 5 authorized computers for your iTunes library. Can you just not go into iTunes on your new computer and just authorize that computer? I think it's under the 'store' menu at the top. This should work unless you have exceeded your 5 computer limit. If that is the case, just call Apple to remove the previous 4 authorized computers from their database.

If you are looking for an app, I used deTune for the Mac and I have also tried sharepod for Windows. I believe they were both free.

[opendoor]

For purchases it's easy, but you'll need a 3rd party program for stuff you loaded on yourself. Sharepod is great and it's free.

It's a pretty stupid "feature" for Apple devices and I don't know why it's like that. That said, you really should always have at least 2 copies of any files you intend to keep (3 if one of those copies is on a mobile device). If your phone died any time in the last few months you would've lost everything anyway because you didn't have it backed up. Losing some MP3s isn't that big of a deal I guess, but it's a good habit to get into. I always cringe when I hear about somone's hard drive dying with years of baby photos on it that they never bothered to back up.

[oilyfan]

A great example of where iTunes match and iCloud eliminate this problem. iTunes match moves everything you have on your computer into iCloud. And iCloud allows you access to that libabry on any iOS device. Never need a computer again to sync.

[return to the red]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I had to do this many years ago and used Sharepod.

did this about a year ago

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

A great example of where iTunes match and iCloud eliminate this problem. iTunes match moves everything you have on your computer into iCloud. And iCloud allows you access to that libabry on any iOS device. Never need a computer again to sync.

Still, the idea that you should have to pay for a service to transfer ripped music to a new hard drive is ridiculous.

The current system doesn't bother me too much because I keep enough on and off site backups that I probably won't lose any data in any realistic scenario, but 99% of people don't operate that way. I can't for the life of me think why it makes sense to anyone at Apple that someone whose hard drive dies or who gets their computer stolen shouldn't be able to recover their data from their phone.

[silentsim]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Still, the idea that you should have to pay for a service to transfer ripped music to a new hard drive is ridiculous.

The current system doesn't bother me too much because I keep enough on and off site backups that I probably won't lose any data in any realistic scenario, but 99% of people don't operate that way. I can't for the life of me think why it makes sense to anyone at Apple that someone whose hard drive dies or who gets their computer stolen shouldn't be able to recover their data from their phone.

That's not what its intended for :P

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by silentsim

That's not what its intended for :P

No, but there's no other officially supported way to do that, which is something I find astoundingly stupid.

[CKPThunder]

I was sort of correct. Here's a better explanation and method.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3991

[You Need a Thneed]

I have gone into the desktop, opened my ipod as a drive, shown hidden files, and copied them all onto athoer hard drive before. I have no idea whether that still works.

The thing about that is that you have to do all or nothing, since all of the hidden files had gibberish names, but were restored when imported back into iTunes.

[REDVAN]

One time I accidentally deleted my library off my machine, but I still had all the songs on the iPod.

I could get them off no problem, but none of them had the correct song title/artist etc, and were just called HTXI or some other weird 4 letter combo.

Anyway, it can be done manually, but it might also involve a lot of work.