I have ipod classic. i do not have enough memeory capacity on my lap top to allow transfer of all my music. can i transfer my music to ipod without itunes, or transfer to ipod and then delete form itunes BUT NOT my ipod, then trnasfer more?

Question

HI
I have IPOD classic, and want to transfer all my cd's on to my ipod. I have itunes but my laptop will not support all my music which i want to put on my ipod.
If i transfer music to itunes then sync to ipod - fine - but when i want to delete a cd to enable me to put another one on my laptop (due to memeory)
itunes then deletes it off my ipod.. AGHHHH. how can i get all my music on to my ipod? i cannt seem to get it to sync via windows media. any help?
please.

Answer 1

You could use Manually Manage your iPod, but the problem with that is that if your iPod ever needs to be Restored, the procedure will delete everything on the iPod and put back on what it can find in your iTunes Library. So you would lose anything not on the laptop. Also, when you buy yourself a replacement iPod, once again, you will lose whatever is not in the your iTunes Library.
Manually Manage means just that. You manually move media onto the iPod. So if you subsequently change anything about a piece of music, such as modifying an incorrectly spelt song title, you would have to remove that song from the iPod, make the change and then put that same (now modified) song back onto your iPod.
Song Play Counts cannot be used when Manually Managing an iPod, because it's the Sync process that updates that information.
An alternative to this, is buy yourself an external hard drive to plug into the laptop. If you buy one large enough to hold all your existing music and possible future purchases, you could then move your iTunes Library and all the Playlists and song counts (using the correct procedure, which exeprienced users on this forum can help you with) to that external drive and continue to use Sync. Then, all the content of your iPod would effectively be backed up.
Using an external drive does mean that you need to have the drive connected and ready to read before starting iTunes - every time. If not, iTunes will fail to find you music and instead look on the internal drive.