Using ipod classic without itunes.

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Using ipod classic without itunes.

Hi. Basically I have a music collection of around 1000 songs which i want to store on a harddirve so i have the freedom of putting new songs on, re-arrange songs on the harddrive and take songs off if the need arises. With the huge harddrive capacity that ipods offer it will set me up for life and there are of course other reasons why I want to get an ipod not just for storage.
Anyway my only beef is I dont want to use itunes as a means to put my songs on the ipod. Not that I have anything against itunes its just all I want is a simple way of cutting a song from my pc in the My Documents folder and simply pasting it on the ipod. non of this transfering to itunes and then transfering it to the ipod nonsense.
Another thing is all my masters are in mp3 and i dont want to be converting formats for various reasons. I have been speaking to some people I know who have ipods and they just use itunes and don't know if what i'm asking to do is possible so thats whay i'm posting this thread.
So can I use the ipod classic without using itunes? can i store mp3's on the ipod with converting the format? can i just cut and paste the songs without using any kind intermediate software? any help guys i would really appreciate it. I'm using windows xp on pc by the way.

pc windows, Windows XP, none

Posted on Sep 9, 2009 6:32 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,297 points

Sep 9, 2009 1:55 PM in response to ewrwrwer

There is alternative software that can put music on an iPod, e.g. Media Monkey or Winamp, but you can't drag & drop in Explorer because of the way that the iPod manages the files internally. It uses a database built as the device is populated to create menus of albums, artits, playlists etc. This makes starting and reseting the iPod fast in comparison to other hard drive media players I've experienced.

iTunes/iPod can handle mp3 format without the need to transcode.

Using the iPod as your only copy of these files (which I think is what you're saying you want to do) is not generally a good idea. Should your iPod's database become corrupt you would need to "restore" it, a process which involves wiping all the data from the drive. While it is often possible to recover media from the iPod's drive should it happen it it much simpler to keep the data on either your computer's inerernal drive or another external drive dedicated to media storage and backup of other important documents.

tt2

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