08-03-2005, 08:58 AM

A friend of mine has an ipod with his itunes collection on pc, he is getting a powerbook and wants to know if he needs to wipe his ipod's hdd and start from scratch or can he just plug it into his powerbook and it will automatically transfer all his music across???

Any ideas would be great!

08-03-2005, 09:14 AM

use an application PodUtil to transfer the music from the iPod to the powerbook then reformat it to work better with the powerbook then put the songs back on them from the powerbook

08-03-2005, 09:45 AM

He can also use Senuti to copy the music to his Powerbook.

If he intends on using the iPod only with the Powerbook, then by all means he should format the iPod to the Mac. (Although I don't buy the "it will work better" statement.)

If he intends on ever connecting the iPod to a Windows machine (to use as an external hard drive, etc.) he should leave it as Windows-formatted. A Mac-formatted iPod will not be recognized on a Windows machine, but a Windows-formatted iPod will be recognized on a Mac.

08-03-2005, 11:26 AM

I am about to do the same, I am ordering a new ibook. I have all my tracks stored on an external HD and plan to connect ir to the ibook and transfer the tracks to it. Then I will simply connect the ipod to the ibook. Am I right in assuming this will work ok?
Secondly is there any benefit to reformating the ipod to a mac or would it not be better leaving it more flexible and have it formatted for both?

08-03-2005, 12:11 PM

As I said above, I've seen absolutely no advantage or performance improvement when my iPod was formatted to Mac. Since I go back and forth between my iBook and PC, I want to keep it Windows-formatted.

In regards to your other question: I would connect the external drive to your iBook and when you fire up iTunes, ask it to import the music files from the external drive. Then you'll have copied everything to your new iBook and it will be catalogued in iTunes.

Good luck!