IPod 5th Gen 80 GB video - Not syncing with new HD in laptop

Question

I recently upgraded my hard drive in my laptop, and am trying to have the ipod sync with the iTunes on the new hard drive in the laptop, but it says that on iPod can only be linked to one library at a time. Is there anything that I can do to take the music from my iPod to the hard drive? I have most of the music from the ipod backed up on and external hard drive, but not all. Please advise.
Message was edited by: mavericksoccer_22

Answer 1

Is there anything that I can do to take the music from my iPod to the hard drive?
Use one of the many 3rd party programs that copy music from the iPod to the computer.
One of the most recommended is Yamipod. This is a free program that transfers music from iPod back to the computer. However, it does not transfer playcounts/ratings etc.
Other free programs are Pod Player, SharePod and Floola.
If you want to recover just the structure of playlists from the iPod (and not the actual song files themselves), there's iRepo for Windows. which I understand has this feature along with all the standard features for these programs.
iPodRip also has the feature enabling you to reconstruct playlists.
There is also CopyTrans. This does preserve ratings/playcounts etc if those are important to you but this program is not free. It also supports video transfer.
Most of these programs (like Yamipod) need iTunes to be closed so there's no chance of an accidental sync and deleting music from your iPod.
Once all the music on your iPod is safely stored in your iTunes library, you can click "yes" to any message asking if you want link your iPod to the new iTunes library.