I fear syncing my iPod. Will I lose my tunes?

Question

Here's why - a friend gave me his old IPod which he loaded with over 4,000 songs by using his Mac computer. I want to sync it up with my IBM-style DOS-based computer. I have heard that if I try to transfer the tunes onto my computer, or if I even attempt to sync the device to my desktop, I'll lose everything already loaded onto the IPod. True?

I am a high school teacher and really want to use my IPod to share news PodCasts with my history classes, but not at the expense of losing all of my tunes. Is it possible to sync the IPod to my computer and maintain the playlist?

Answer 1

It could be even worse than that. If he bought a Mac-formatted iPod (available only from Apple.com and Apple brick-n-mortar stores), it won't ever work with any PC. Only Windows-formatted iPods can be reformatted to work with either platform.

But yes, the only way to sync an iPod to a new computer is to Restore to Factory Settings, which will wipe everything from the iPod. You can still plug it into a different computer and use it as a portable hard-drive, but the only computer that can add songs to what is currently already there is your friend's Mac. Now, one option is to get him to copy all of his music files over to your computer, Restore the iPod, and then sync everything back into it from your own computer, but that would technically be illegal unless you either already own the same music (in which case you could just rip your own CDs into iTunes) or they are all songs that he purchased from iTunes (in which case he'd need to allow you to make use of two of his five available licenses on every track so you could have them all stored on both your computer and your iPod).