Photos on iPod

Purdal wrote:

I don't understand what you mean about lying about doing nothing.

My apologies. It's all-too-easy to forget that not everyone here speaks English in the same way that we do in the UK.

• • lying about = sitting, standing or laying on its side, in a corner, cupboard or garage
  • doing nothing = not being used anymore

So my question was; do you have one of your old computers tucked away, or in storage, that has the information on it? You've stated that your old computers are no longer available, but if any or them are, perhaps one of them has the pictures on it.

The iPod has generally been used as a backup for my music and I don't acutally know how the photos ended up on it, they all are in separate folders but not in the photo stream.

An iPod is not a suitable backup device, it never has been. iPods get lost, stolen, easily damaged or just fail.

Music on an iPod comes either from your iTunes Library or directly from the iTunes Store. In both cases, the copy on your computer (listed in your iTunes Library) is the backup for the iPod.

Pictures on your iPod are from two sources and as far as I know, cannot be accessed (on most iPod models) via the folders on the iPod itself:

1. 1. the iPod's camera (or screenshots) and they will be in the DCIM folder, viewable through the Photos app on the iPod, probably under the heading Camera Roll
   2. your computer. These pictures (which in turn are sourced either from photographs taken by a camera, pictures downloaded from the internet, drawings etc. saved as pictures in a picture editor programme), were copied from your computer to your iPod by iTunes. You would have specified which folder (of pictures) that you wanted iTunes to copy from, and add to your iPod. These pictures can also be viewed in the Photos app on the iPod (no, not very well named by Apple). On my iPod, it states that these pictures are downloaded "From My Mac". (nope, I have a Windows machine. Well done again Apple). Again, this is not a backup of your computer; these pictures are copies on the iPod, of the original on your computer

I think your only option now is to use a third-party app to recover the photos (pictures) from your iPod, because there is no option within iTunes to copy them from the iPod. Only photos and screenshots taken on the iPod can be copied back to iTunes.

Fellow user turingtest2 has a helpful tip about recovering media from your iPod: see Recover your iTunes library from your iPo… - Apple Community. It includes a list of software that you might find useful.

The DCIM folder only contains photos (and screenshots) taken by your device.

However, if the "photos" you are referring to were originally copied from your computer to your device (via iTunes), those will be in a different folder and not necessarily accessible directly. But, they will (or should be) still on the computer that they were copied from. Do you still have that computer, lying about doing nothing, or did you ever make a backup of that computer's contents that you could use?

I put the word photos in quotes because although they may have been taken by a camera (hence the word photo), they could equally be edited photographs or pictures created in a computer programme, that have never seen the inside of a camera. Since your device doesn't differentiate, then they are all pictures, but not necessarily all photos. Hence they are not in the DCIM folder.

You're welcome.