relocating Mac iTunes to Windows box

[zelmo]

My step-daughter, who has been living with us up to this point, is living with her dad and his wife this year, her last in high school. She has always synch'd her iPod on our iMac G4/800. She currently has about 32GB of music on the iMac. She will be taking the Windows box from her dad's to college in the fall, and I'm curious if there is any easy way to transfer the iPod contents onto the Windows box, then move the files into the iTunes library. I know there are methods out there for doing this on the Mac, but that doesn't help me much.
I sure would like to reclaim the drive space, and I'd prefer not to burn a ton of disks on my slow a$$ 2X SuperDrive.

 

[mad jew]

Without keeping playlists and playcounts:

I find the easiest way is to format the iPod for PC (necessary for later anyway) and then plug it back into the Mac, re sync all the music, plug it into the PC. enable disk mode from the iTunes preferences and don't let it re-sync with this new (empty) library just yet. Then, enable viewing of hidden files on the PC and, through Explorer, drag them back into iTunes. Make sure iTunes is set to make a copy of imported songs in the iTunes Music folder because otherwise you'll merely get links to the songs on the iPod.

Once this is done, you can resync the iPod with the PC.


Keeping playcounts and playlists:

Format the iPod using the PC, plug it into the Mac, enable disk usage and through Finder, drag your iTunes folder (with the iTunes Data file) exactly as it is onto the disk of the iPod. Go back to the PC and without letting the two libraries sync again, drag said iTunes folder back into My Music or wherever she keeps it, replacing the older iTunes data. Read this too.


Did any of that make sense?

 

[neocell]

Personally I'd ignore mad jew's first suggestion, but wrap my arms around his second. iTunes does some pretty funky organization with many folders and less than easy access, so going through the "show hidden folders" option won't be too easy. Just find your (her's) "iTunes Music" folder on your G4/800 and drag and drop it onto her iPod icon, (once, as mad jew said, her iPod has been formatted on a PC and enable disc use has been set, and, of course, it has been connected to your computer with the firewire cable). It then is just like an external hard drive and once she connects it to her winbox she can click on "my computer" select her iPod and drag and drop the "iTunes Music" folder off of it. It has to be formatted on a PC though, as windows won't recognized a Mac formatted iPod but Mac will recognize a PC formatted iPod. Go figure.

**EDIT**
I'm assuming that she has a 40GB or larger iPod, if not maybe you'll have to invest in some blank DVDs and take some time (2x = 26 min/disc x ~8 discs = lots of beer drinking time). Toast 7 will enable you to burn spanning discs, may make it a bit easier