I think its been about a year since my computer broke. The thing just up and died and it took my 2 hard drives with it. I started with a sloooooow hand-me-down machine with a 20g hard drive to tide me over. Eventually I turned the bastard off because it just wasn’t worth the time it took to do anything. Recently, I upgraded to a much faster hand-me-down, this one is lightening fast in comparison. But circumstances left me still with the 20g hard drive.
Translation: I haven’t sync’d my iPod to a computer in a year.
So today I took the plunge. We stopped by WalMart on the way to breakfast and I bought an 80g Seagate External USB hard drive. After breakfast, I downloaded and purchased CopyPod which promised to get my tunes off of my iPod and onto my PC – including my playlists and ratings (yes, I said purchased .. because, we’re talking about my entire music collection, my ratings, my playlists, my mother fucking data .. this is important shit).
The drive connected flawlessly. I hit the power button on that thing and my computer saw it instantly.
Score 1 for me!
I decided to move on to the iPod. Since I didn’t read the directions, I didn’t realize that I could copy my music directly to an iTunes library automajikly through the CopyPod software. Since I didn’t read the directions, I copied my music to a folder on my shiny new drive. After an hour or so of crunching, the copy was done. I opened up iTunes and browsed to my music on my shiny new drive and added those songs to my iTunes library. Bada Bing, Bada Bang, Bada Boom – all of my songs appeared – with no ratings .. no playlists .. no nothing. Shit.
Score 0 for me.
Ok .. so, I delete all of the music off of my shiny new drive. I open CopyPod back up and see that ‘copy to iTunes’ is an option. So I give it a shot. I spend another hour playing addicting flash games. When the copy process is complete, I clicked OK on the ‘complete’ dialog and mindlessly closed the program (I was a bit distracted as my volume suddenly became un-muted). So, I open iTunes again and browsed to my music on my shiny new drive again and added those songs to my iTunes library, again. Bada Bing, Bada Bang, Bada Boom – all of my songs appeared, again – with no ratings .. no playlists .. no nothing, again. Shit.
Score -1 for me.
I decided it was time to read the directions. Apparently, had I not closed the program after the ‘complete’ dialog box, I would have seen another dialog box that said it was about to automatically import my shit into iTunes. Heh. Who knew?
Take 3.
Delete the music off the shiny new drive. Copy the music to my iTunes library. LEAVE THE COMPUTER ALONE for about an hour. Click OK on the dialog box that says its completed the copy. LEAVE THE PROGRAM OPEN. Click OK on the dialog box that says its about to automatically import my shit into iTunes so keep your grubby hands off of it. LEAVE THE COMPUTER ALONE for an hour or two (went for Mexican food .. mmmm .mmmm). After dinner, I watched CopyPod finish its import into iTunes and waited for it to close iTunes and give me the ‘all clear’ dialog box.
I opened up iTunes and didn’t have to browse to my music on my shiny new drive and add those songs to my iTunes library. Because Bada Bing, Bada Bang, Bada Boom – all of my songs appeared – in my library – with ratings .. with playlists .. with everything. Sweet!
Moral of the story: I could have spent my afternoon tweaking my iTunes library as I’ve been thinking about for a year now. Instead, I spent the day fighting against myself. Heh.
All’s well that ends well though … I’m pretty damn satisfied with the way it turned out in the end 😀