Transferring songs from IPod Mini 1st Gen to a I Pod Nano 4th Gen?

As Apple says, by design " Syncing music to iPod is a one-way street." This was from the beginning a concession to an industry concerned about the potential for rampant piracy if iTunes/iPods made two-way sync easy or automatic. Because that is a real concern & the Discussions Terms of Use prohibit us from discussing or promoting illegal activities, please do not comment on any way to circumvent this restriction here.

That said, if you are legally entitled to copy the Mini's music, you should have it in some iTunes library on some computer, or can place it there from its original source or from backups you have made. (If you have not made backups, now you know why this is important, not just for iTunes but for anything you want to keep.)

The techniques in How to use your iPod to move your music to a new computer & iTunes Mac 8.0 Help: Moving your iTunes Store purchases to another computer may be of use to you as well.

On another note, it is never a good idea to post your email address to an open forum, as you have done in your user profile that appears in your post. Doing so makes you an easy target for spammers that harvest known-good email addresses with automated tools.

If this is a concern for you, you should remove your email address from your profile, or at least enter it in a human but not machine recognizable form, like "meATsomewhereDOTcom."

1. Open iTunes.
2. HOLD CONTROL AND SHIFT and plug in your Mini. KEEP HOLDING CONTROL AND SHIFT until the Mini appears in iTunes.
3. Click on the Mini in iTunes, uncheck "Automatically open iTunes" and "Automatically sync" and check "Enable disk use."
4. Exit iTunes. (Leave the Mini connected.)
5. Click Start>Control Panel. (Start is the Windows logo button on the bottom left corner.)
6. Click "Folder Options."
7. On the "View" tab, there should be an option to show hidden files and folders. Make sure it is selected and click OK.
8. Exit Control Panel.
9. Click Start>Computer.
10. Your Mini should show up as a disk drive next to your hard drive, DVD drive, et cetera. Open it.
11. There should be an IPOD_CONTROL folder in there. The icon should be slightly transparent. Copy it to your C:\ drive.
12. Right click on that copy, click Properties, and uncheck the "Hidden" box.
13. Open iTunes, click File>Add Folder to Library..., and select C:\IPOD_CONTROL.
14. Once all your songs are finished importing (you have to wait for iTunes to finish analyzing gapless playback information and volume levels), click File>Library>Consolidate Library...
15. Delete the folder copy you made in step 11.
16. Sync your new nano.
17. If you're not that good with computers and are afraid of accidentally deleting something important, repeat steps 5 through 8, only this time disable showing of hidden files.