downloading music from ipod classic to external hard drive

While it is possible to put the music on an iPod onto an external drive, it isn't easy, and iTunes can't do it. You would need a third-party programme. Is the music not listed in your iTunes Library, and therfore, on your computer? Then all you would need to do is copy the files from their location on your computer to the external hard drive.

It should be on your computer, it's not wise to use the iPod as your only copy of your Library, since it's not designed to be a back up device.

As for copyright; this is actually a grey area, dependent upon which country you are in. In the UK for example, it is actually breaking copyright to put the CDs you own onto an iPod. But in reality, no one in the UK will be prosecuted since what they are doing is regarded as fair use. (I think these rules are about to change, in favour of the consumers.) I believe that in the USA, at least one lawyer has been trying to bring a prosecution based on "putting your CDs onto an iPod is copyright theft".

What is usually boils down to is this;

• if you are making a copy for your own use, that's okay. But if you are making a copy for you to keep, while you then sell your original CDs to someone else, that's copyright theft.
• Members of one household, i.e. brothers, sisters and children can share the music on CDs, without fear of copyright theft accusations. But if your brother moves out to his own home, then he no longer has a right to copies of your CDs.
• Making a copy, by which you make profit, or deprive the copyright owner of income, is copyright theft. So lending your CD to a friend, who then makes a copy and returns the CD to you, is copyright theft, even if you made no money from this.

I'm not sure your question was interpreted correctly.

1) If you are asking if you can move your music files from your iPod to your library on your computer, there are many software program that can do that. I'm sure if you look at the similar questions to the right, you'll get a pointer.

2) If you are asking if you can have iTunes store its library on an external hard drive, that's also easy to do. You simply define the new library on the external hard drive, and then have iTunes organize and copy the music from its original location. If you are on a PC, I'd use the disk manager to ensure that external hard drive retains the same drive letter.

I did a post a while back that gave pointers to the various solutions on this, although it was back in an iTunes 10.x world. (rummages around). Take a look at paragraphs 8 and 9 in this post ( http://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=4747 )

If the music is still on your iPod, then what you want to do it move the music from your iPod back into your new iPod library. That's easy. Define the library correctly in iTunes, and then follow the procedures mentioned in the post I linked.

That's correct. That's why you want to look into the various 3rd party tools I mentioned in my post. Back in my day, I used CopyTrans, but there are a number of other tools mentioned (look at paragraph 8). In general, you install these tools, bring them up (and *do not* bring up iTunes), and connect to the iPod. I'd suggest, before you do anything, adjust the settings in iTunes not to automatically sync when the iPod is connected (I believe that is manual management of content).

See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device. Last link in the table to the iLounge article is probably all you really need for a classic, though you'll need to use the iTunes transfer purchases command to retrieve any ClickWheel Games.

tt2

For an iPod Classic all you really need is iTunes, this iLounge Article, and Windows Explorer. The method can work even if the device's own database is corrupt. As long as the files are still in their hidden folders you should be able to pull them out, add them to iTunes, and then reorganize them according to their tags.

tt2