Access Hidden Files on iPod

February 4, 2006

I found a way of getting access to the music files on my windows-formatted iPod on a mac over at Ecoustics:

Launch the Terminal.application and type:

find /Volumes/[iPod’sNAME]/iPod_Control/Music -print | awk ‘¬ { gsub(/ /, “\ “); print }’

Substitute the name of your iPod for [iPod’sNAME]. Any spaces should be replaced with underscores (_). This will print a list of all the songs inside the Music folder with \ in place of spaces. Then, simply copy the location to the song you want and type open followed by that location to begin playing that song. You can then use a standard copy command such as cp to copy any file you select to its new location. This is tedious though. To copy your entire iPod’s entire Music folder to your local computer, simply open the Terminal and write:

%ditto /Volumes/[iPod’sNAME]/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Music/iPodTunes/

Again, substitute your iPod’s name for [iPod’sNAME], using an underscore for any spaces in the name. This will copy the entire contents of your iPod’s Music folder into a new folder inside your home directory’s Music folder called iPodTunes.